Assessing the Desire to Change Personality across Methods

Abstract

Various methods have been used to describe individuals’ desires to change their personality traits including: trait change inventories, identifying personality change goals in open-ended responses, and asking participants for goals to change personality directly. The current study is the first to assess personality change desires with multiple methods in the same sample (N = 500 undergraduates). Findings with each method were compared to meta-analyses of other studies utilizing each respective method, and methods were then compared within-person to explore how the same person might provide different information about their desire to change their personality with each method. The findings of each method replicated the results of other studies using that method very closely. Some deviations from previous the studies in the prevalence of certain goals were likely due to goals being collected during a global pandemic. The three methods did not show a high degree of convergence. Only participants desiring to increase Extraversion in one method tended to express desires to increase Extraversion in the other two methods. The methodological differences between the methods impact the conclusions that can be drawn with each.