How did I get here? Individual differences in perceived retrospective personality change

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2020.104039Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Individual differences exist in the way people think about past changes to their personality traits.

  • Implicit theories of personality are associated with perceived personality change.

  • Endorsing volitional and situational causes is associated with greater perceived personality change.

  • Higher standing on socially desirable personality traits is associated with the belief that one changed more in the past.

Abstract

People's beliefs about their own past personality development are associated with current and future self-concepts. Here, we report on 2 studies designed to elucidate the way people think about retrospective changes to their own personality. We found that incremental theories of personality were associated with greater perceived retrospective personality change and that perceived retrospective personality change was associated with the belief that specific volitional and situational causes were involved. In addition, we found that across all Big-5 personality traits and agency, higher current standing (in the socially desirable direction) was positively associated with greater perceived retrospective personality change. This research demonstrates how people vary in their beliefs about retrospective personality change.

Introduction

Looking back on one’s life, how do people conceptualize the way they have changed? Elucidating the way people think about their past personality change holds the potential to better understand people’s self-concepts as dynamic evolving systems (Bluck and Habermas, 2001, Habermas and Bluck, 2000). In this study, we focused specifically on personality and investigated how people vary in their beliefs about retrospective changes to their own Big-5 personality traits.

People vary in their beliefs about how changeable personality traits are. Implicit theories of personality are one way that people structure beliefs about how they have changed, and are currently changing (Ross, 1989). Although some people tend to hold entity theories, believing that personality traits are fixed and stable, other people tend to hold incremental theories, believing that personality traits are malleable and dynamic (Chiu et al., 1997, Dweck, 2008, Haslam et al., 2004). Implicit theories of personality tend to represent the way one thinks about one’s own and other people’s personality traits (Dweck, 2008).

Empirical evidence shows that implicit theories of personality are linked to current as well as future behavior and judgments about other people. For example, implicit theories of personality are associated with academic performance (Yeager et al., 2014), the tendency to stereotype others (Levy, Stroessner, & Dweck, 1998) and predict subsequent aggressive behavior (Yeager et al., 2013, Yeager et al., 2011). This research highlights potentially important consequences of implicit theories of personality but does not elucidate the link between implicit theories of personality and people's beliefs about past changes. To our knowledge, only one study has examined the link between implicit theories of personality and the belief that one’s personality has changed in the past. In this study , 4th year college students who held incremental theories of personality tended to believe that their personality had changed more throughout the past 4 years than those who held entity theories of personality (Robbins et al., 2005). To measure perceived personality change, participants were asked to describe how much they had changed since they entered college. Those that agreed with statements describing that their personality had changed in the past also tended to hold an incremental theory of personality.

In the current work, we sought to build on this finding. However, we measured perceived retrospective personality change by comparing self-reported current personality to self-reported retrospective personality (Fleeson and Heckhausen, 1997, Quoidbach et al., 2013, Ryff, 1982, Stewart et al., 2001). This approach provides the opportunity to characterize how people think about their current and past selves and the opportunity to measure perceived overall (i.e. absolute), as well as perceived directional change. Moreover, it offers a different assessment of change compared to explicit statements that people believe they have changed. Based on the findings of Robbins and colleagues (2005), we predicted incremental theories would be positively associated with larger differences between current and retrospective accounts of personality traits.

One psychological construct that may drive people’s beliefs that they have changed in the past is self enhancement motivation. People tend to construct personal histories in ways that help maintain a positive current self-concept (Ross & Wilson, 2000). Self enhancement motivation affects the way people think about their current selves and the way people think about their changing dynamic selves. People's personal histories often take the form of changing and blossoming into the way they currently are, and remaining blossomed throughout the future (Quoidbach et al., 2013, Wilson and Ross, 2001). People often think about their past selves in a less positive light than their current or future selves (Fleeson and Heckhausen, 1997, Ross and Wilson, 2000). Wilson and Ross (2001) demonstrated that people tend to derogate their past versus current selves and think they have grown more in traits deemed to be more important, potentially as a means of preserving one’s current sense of self-esteem. Subsequent research assessing remembered past, reported current, and predicted future personality change demonstrates that people think about change differently when thinking retrospectively versus prospectively. For example, people tend to be susceptible to the “End of History Illusion,” which occurs when people believe that they have changed more in the past than they predict they will in the future (Quoidbach et al., 2013). Combined, despite evidence that people are reasonably accurate in the way they understand their own personality development (Haslam et al., 2007, Robins et al., 2005), people do show consistent biases when constructing their personal histories in ways that enhance current self-concepts (Quoidbach et al., 2013, Wilson and Ross, 2001).

People tend to hold beliefs about how, why, and when their personality has changed. These beliefs may be about how personality traits are affected by the aging process, situation/social context or through volitional control. Some empirical evidence shows that people hold a variety of different beliefs about the causes involved in their own personality development (Baranski et al., 2020, Baranski et al., 2017, Haslam et al., 2007). For example, people tend to believe that both intrinsic and environmental factors affect normative personality change throughout their lifespan (Haslam et al., 2007). Baranski and colleagues (2017) carried out a content analysis of narratives about how people believed their personality has changed. The results indicated that 18% of participants believed they actively (volitionally) enacted changes to their personality and 54% of participants believed a change in a social role or situation affected changes to their personality. Some examples of social roles or situations that can affect personality change are entering college, becoming a parent, beginning a new relationship, beginning a new job, or retiring (Lüdtke, Roberts, Trautwein, & Nagy, 2011). These findings demonstrate that people construe changes to their personality in a variety of ways that include factors related to volitional control and changes in social roles and situations.

In the current work, we sought to further investigate people’s beliefs about causes involved in their own personality development. We measured the degree to which people believed their personality changed as a result of specific types of causes. Based on prior research (Baranski et al., 2020, Baranski et al., 2017, Haslam et al., 2007), we predicted that greater perceived personality change would be associated with a greater degree of endorsement that volitional and situational causes were involved in their own retrospective personality change.

What differentiates people who believe their personality has changed from people who believe their personality has remained relatively stable? Explicit measures of implicit theories demonstrate systematic variability in how changeable people think personality traits are in general (Dweck, 2008), but do not specifically represent how people construe their own histories (i.e., retrospective perspective) of personality change and development. One construct that may be associated with beliefs about retrospective perceived personality change is a person’s current level on a socially desirable personality trait. In particular, based on temporal self-appraisal theory (Ross and Wilson, 2000, Wilson and Ross, 2001), people may bolster their confidence about their current relatively high standing on a socially desirable trait by constructing a personal history that they have grown with respect to their past selves. This theory is consistent with evidence that when people report changes to their personality, it tends to be in the socially desirable direction (Robins et al., 2005), and that people report having changed more in the past than they predict will change in the future (Quoidbach et al., 2013).

People may tend to construe that they have grown in a positive direction because of the positive allure associated with life stories involving redemption and tales about rags-to-riches experiences (Guo et al., 2016, McAdams, 2013). People may construe their high standing on a socially desirable trait as being the result of growing from a previously low position. This process may be linked to ideas about meritocracy (merit-based resource distributions). Specifically, high standing on a socially desirable trait may be paired with the belief that the trait in question is changeable (i.e., attainable by anyone), and that the reason why one has reached a socially desirable standing is the work and growth that they have put in to get there. Conversely, a person low on a socially desirable trait may be relatively more cognizant of the obstacles that exist in order to change in a socially desirable direction. This theory is, in part, supported by evidence that greater pride (often a socially desirable trait) is associated with greater notions of meritocracy (Horberg, Kraus, & Keltner, 2013).

There also likely exists systematic individual differences in the belief that specific causes are involved in one’s retrospective personality change. Considerable evidence shows that in certain contexts people can act volitionally to change their personality (Hudson et al., 2019, Hudson and Fraley, 2015, Hudson et al., 2020). However for retrospective accounts, very little is currently known regarding what differentiates people who believe they have acted volitionally to change their personality from those who believe they have not. One individual difference metric that may be linked to the belief that one has acted volitionally to change their own personality is the sense of agency. Sense of agency represents the belief that one is the initiator of their own actions (Synofzik et al., 2013, Tapal et al., 2017). People higher in the sense of agency tend to score higher in general self-efficacy, internal locus of control, and beliefs in free will (Tapal et al., 2017). Based on evidence that agency is generally linked to beliefs that one acts volitionally, we predicted that higher agency would be associated with greater perceived retrospective personality change and beliefs that volitional causes were involved in their personality change.

This study was designed to investigate individual differences in perceived retrospective personality trait change. We tested the four following specific hypotheses.

H1

Incremental theories of personality would be positively associated with perceived personality change.

H2

Personality trait change would be associated with the endorsement of volitional and situational causes of change.

H3

Current standing on self-reported personality traits (in a socially desirable direction) would be positively associated with perceived personality change.

H4

Individual differences in agency would be positively associated with the endorsement of volitional causes of change.

In a pilot study (N = 32), we collected open-ended narrative data on how people think about changes to their own personality, similar to the approach used by Baranski et al. (2017 & 2020). A qualitative analysis of the narrative data served to guide the development of items used in Study 1. In Study 1 (N = 318), participants provided current and retrospective (~2 years) accounts of their Big-5 personality traits, implicit theories of personality, and sense of agency. In Study 1, participants also responded to items designed to measure the level of endorsement of volitional and situational causes being involved in their retrospective personality change. In Study 2, we sourced publicly available data (N = 3432) from a large-scale study (Quoidbach et al., 2013), to further test the link between current self-reported personality and perceived retrospective (~10 years) personality change.

Section snippets

Pilot study

We carried out a pilot study to better understand people’s beliefs about changes to their own personality. 32 Participants were recruited from the university’s undergraduate participant pool to complete an online survey on how people view and describe changes to their own personality. Participants provided narrative responses to 7 open-ended questions about their past, current, and future characteristics (Supplementary Materials). We used the term “characteristics,” and not “personality” in

Overview

Based on the findings from the pilot study and other research (Baranski et al., 2017, Haslam et al., 2007), we developed an empirical approach to investigate individual differences in perceived personality change. In Study 1, participants provided current and retrospective (~2 years) accounts of their Big-5 personality traits, implicit theories of personality, and sense of agency. Participants also responded to items designed to measure the level of endorsement of volitional and situational

Overview

One of the main findings of Study 1 was that higher (i.e., socially desirable) scores of current self-reported Big-5 personality traits were associated with greater perceived directional change. This finding is consistent with prior research demonstrating that people tend to construct personal narrative histories that they have grown and blossomed into the way they currently are (Wilson & Ross, 2001). In Study 2, we sought to further investigate the link between current Big-5 personality traits

General discussion

We investigated the way people think about past changes to their personality. In our pilot study, we found that people describe changes to their own personality traits using Big-5 terminology and believe that a variety of different types of specific causes (including volitional and situational) are involved in their personality change. In Study 1, we found that incremental theories of personality were positively associated with greater perceived personality change and that greater directional

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