33 - Volitional personality change

Abstract

An emerging body of research has begun to examine volitional personality change—people’s desires and attempts to change their own personality traits. Studies have found that the vast majority of people want to change aspects of their personalities—usually in order to attain an external goal (e.g., wanting to increase in extraversion in order to achieve more satisfying social relationships). Moreover, several studies have found that people may actually be able to moderately and slowly change their personality traits in desired ways—at least over a short period of time. As the literature on volitional personality change is in its infancy, much future research is needed to understand which strategies for volitional change are most efficacious, and whether volitional trait changes can be maintained over extended periods of time.