dynamics and processes in personality change interventions

C H A P T E R

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Dynamics and processes in personalitychange interventions

Nathan W. HudsonDepartment of Psychology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, United States

O U T L I N E

Dynamics and processes in personalitychange interventions 1274

What are personality traits? 1274

Can personality traits change? 1275The social investment hypothesis 1275Sociogenomic theory 1277

Interventions to change personality traits 1278Empirical evidence for personality change

via intervention 1282

Volitional personality change interventions 1283Do people want to change their personality

traits? 1284

Can people volitionally change? 1285Volitional change interventions 1287

Future directions 1290What is the nature of intervention-driven

personality change? 1290What factors promote successful

interventions? 1291Can nonvolitional interventions work? 1292

Conclusion 1292

References 1293

AbstractPersonality traits predict a wide array of criticallyimportant life outcomes. Moreover, a large body ofresearch suggests that personality traits can and dochange in response to psychological maturation andlife experiences. However, psychologists have onlyrecently taken interest in whether personality traitsmight also be able to be changed via intervention—and whether intervention-driven trait changes can

translate into improvements in relevant life outcomes.Although this is a fledgling area of research, initialempirical evidence provides a promising prognosisfor active attempts to change personality traits. Thischapter overviews modern theories and empiricaldata on (1) how and why personality is thought tonaturalistically change across time, and (2) whetherinterventions might be able to successfully changepeople’s traits. Future research directions arediscussed.

1273The Handbook of Personality Dynamics and Processes # 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813995-0.00050-9

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813995-0.00050-9

KeywordsAdult personality development, Volitional personal-ity change, Change goals, Personality change inter-ventions, Sociogenomic theory, Social investmenthypothesis

Dynamics and processes in personalitychange interventions

Personality traits predict a broad array of crit-ically important life outcomes, including health,well-being, the quality of one’s relationships,success in one’s career, and even mortality (foran overview, see Ozer & Benet-Martı́nez, 2006;Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg,2007). Given their importance in potentially con-tributing to such a wide variety of positive lifeoutcomes, researchers have naturally taken inter-est in whether and how personality traits change(e.g., Lucas & Donnellan, 2011; Soto, John,Gosling, & Potter, 2011). To that end, althoughmany studies over the course of several decadeshave found that personality traits naturalisticallychange as a function of circumstances or age(e.g., Hudson & Roberts, 2016; Hudson,Roberts, & Lodi-Smith, 2012; Lehnart, Neyer, &Eccles, 2010; Lucas & Donnellan, 2011; Sotoet al., 2011), researchers have only recently begunto study the extent to which active attempts todirectly change personality traits via interventionmight be plausible (e.g., Hennecke, Bleidorn,Denissen, & Wood, 2014; Hudson & Fraley,2015; Magidson, Roberts, Collado-Rodriguez, &Lejuez, 2012). The purpose of this chapter is tooverview theory and empirical findings fromthe emerging literature on interventions explic-itly designed to change personality traits.

What are personality traits?

On the broadest level, personality refers to themyriad of ways that individuals can differ fromone another—including in terms of their typical

patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors;abilities, preferences, motives, and goals; andeven personal style, such as distinctive manner-isms (e.g., “grandma always has a plate of fresh-baked cookies waitingwhenwe visit”) or typicalways of narrating their own life stories (e.g.,McAdams & Pals, 2006; Roberts & Wood,2006). Personality traits, in contrast, are one ofthe many narrower subcomponents of personal-ity and refer specifically to people’s abstractlyconstrued, relatively enduring patterns ofthoughts, feelings, and behaviors that areexpressed in functionally consistent ways acrossdifferent situations (Roberts, 2009). For example,the Big Five personality dimension of agreeable-ness represents the abstract propensity tobehave in a kind, tenderhearted, modest fashion(Goldberg, 1993). This basic tendency towardwarmth and relationship promotion, however,may manifest in dramatically different waysacross different situations. For example,Allport (1961) mused that an agreeableAmerican traveling across Europe would likelyquickly learn that belching after meals is a politeexpression of satisfaction in some cultures andan offensive gesture in others—and the agree-able traveler would most certainly adapt his/her behavior in different countries accordingly.Thus, traits such as agreeableness do not repre-sent patterns of concrete thoughts, feelings, andbehaviors (e.g., the concrete behavior of belch-ing after meals)—but they rather represent theabstract functions that dynamically guidethoughts, feelings, and behaviors, such asexpressing politeness, consideration, and kind-ness in whatever manner is appropriate in par-ticular situations.

From a research perspective, traits are a par-ticularly compelling component of personality.For one, traits appear to be the naturalisticway that even laypersons intuitively understandand talk about personality (Goldberg, 1993).Moreover, traits represent an extremely usefulmoderate level of abstraction—they are not toospecific and situationally constrained so as to

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represent minute “trivia” regarding a person’sthoughts, feelings, and behavior; but they arealso not so general as to lack predictive ability(Funder, 1991). Indeed, personality traits havebeen shown to predict important lifeoutcomes—such as occupational attainment,divorce, andmortality—equally as well as socio-economic status or even cognitive ability(Roberts et al., 2007).

Can personality traits change?

Given that personality traits predict a widearray of critical life outcomes, psychologistshave strived to understand the extent to whichtraits change across time—perhaps motivatedby the presumption that trait change mayprecipitate changes in relevant life outcomes.To that end, a large body of research has foundthat personality traits can and do change.For example, meta-analyses reveal that as peo-ple get older, they tend to become moreagreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable(Roberts & Mroczek, 2008; Roberts, Walton, &Viechtbauer, 2006). These normative patternsof personality trait development are thought tooccur for at least two reasons. First, personalitytraits are believed to mature in biologically pre-determined ways, analogous to physical matu-ration (McCrae et al., 1999; Roberts, Wood, &Caspi, 2008). Supporting this notion, twin stud-ies have found that the ways in which people’spersonality traits change across time are par-tially heritable (Bleidorn, Kandler, Riemann,Angleitner, & Spinath, 2009; Briley & Tucker-Drob, 2014). In other words, monozygotic (i.e.,identical) twins, who share 100% of their genes,tend to experience more similar changes in theirpersonality traits across time than do dizygotic(i.e., fraternal) twins, who share an average of50% of their genetic variation. This suggests thatgenetics partially shape the ways that personal-ity develops across time.

The social investment hypothesis

Beyond biological maturation, the normativedevelopmental patterns observed in personalitytraits (e.g.,most people becomemore emotionallystable with age) may also be attributable to com-monly shared life experiences (Roberts et al.,2008). Specifically, according to the social invest-ment hypothesis, most societies prescribe thatyoung adults should invest in a specific seriesof culturally predefined social roles as they pro-gress through life (Helson, Kwan, John, &Jones, 2002; Hutteman, Hennecke, Orth,Reitz, & Specht, 2014; Lodi-Smith & Roberts,2007). For example, as they age, most youngadults in Western cultures commit to careers,romantic relationships, and eventually generativeroles, such as parenthood or caring for aging par-ents. Acquisition of these roles is normative, andthose who do not commit to them frequently faceimmense pressure from family, peers, and societyto do so (e.g., Barber &Axinn, 1998). For instance,single adults often field probing questions andcommentary from family and friends regardingtheir plans and efforts (or lack thereof ) tomarry. Similarly, childless couples may experi-ence pressure from their parents to producegrandchildren.

Importantly, these culturally prescribed socialroles entail specific behavioral norms—and suc-cessfully committing to social roles requiresindividuals to accept and internalize those norms(Wood & Roberts, 2006). For instance, success-fully committing to a career requires one tobehave in conscientious manners—being punc-tual, producing high-quality work, and responsi-bly managing one’s duties (e.g., Judge, Higgins,Thoresen, & Barrick, 1999). The social investmenthypothesis states that, over time, the norms anddemands associated with one’s social rolesbecome internalized and coalesce into enduringpersonality trait change.

This internalization is thought to occur formultiple reasons. For one, individuals incorpo-rate important social roles into their identities

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(e.g., Lodi-Smith & Roberts, 2007). This shift inidentity may influence individuals’ internalbehavioral standards and lead them to striveto pull their thoughts, feelings, and behaviorin alignment with the ideals and norms associ-ated with their new roles (e.g., Burke, 2006).For example, someone who views his/her pro-fession as central to his/her identity may striveto be the “best employee possible”—whichwould entail engaging in more numerous con-scientious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors(e.g., being punctual, being thorough and dili-gent to excel in one’s work). Similarly, a manwhose identity is deeply embedded in his familymay focus his efforts on being a “good husband”and “good father,” which would naturallyrequire him to engage in agreeable (e.g., loving,sensitive, kind) and conscientious (e.g., respon-sible, dutiful) thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.In sum, accepting, internalizing, and striving toexcel in one’s social roles may create strongintrapsychic presses to change thoughts, feel-ings, and behaviors.

As a nonmutually exclusive alternative, fromamore behavioristic perspective, social roles canserve as strong, consistent external presses forcertain thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—andchanges to thoughts, feelings, and behaviorsmay be driven by basic reinforcement and pun-ishment processes. For instance, workplaces tendto reinforce conscientious behaviors (e.g., respon-sibility, producing high qualitywork)with praiseand promotions; and workplaces tend to punishnonconscientious behaviors (e.g., shoddy work-manship, tardiness) with stagnant salaries, repri-mands, and perhaps even termination. Similarly,in the domain of family roles, romantic partnersor children may reinforce kind, considerate, lov-ing, and responsible behaviors (e.g., with expres-sions of gratitude and reciprocity) and punishselfish, inconsiderate, irresponsible ones (e.g.,with conflict and discord). Thus, in addition tointrapsychic forces, social roles may providestrong external pressures that also shapethoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

In sum, social roles tend to shape people’sthoughts, feelings, and behaviors over time—which can eventually coalesce into personalitytrait change. Consequently, the fact that mostpeople become more conscientious with age,for example, may be partially driven by the factthat most people invest in careers during youngadulthood and investing in a career is associatedwith increases in conscientiousness. Empiricallysupporting these ideas, as can be seen in Fig. 1,studies have found that committing to one’scareer is, in fact, associated with growth inagreeableness and conscientiousness over thecourse of several years (Hudson et al., 2012;Hudson & Roberts, 2016). Conversely, deinvest-ing in (i.e., withdrawing from) one’s career isassociated with losses in conscientiousnessacross time (Hudson & Roberts, 2016; Roberts,Walton, Bogg, & Caspi, 2006). Similarly, com-mitting to romantic partnerships, one’s commu-nity, and generative roles such as caring forchildren or aging parentsmay also foster growthin traits such as agreeableness, conscientious-ness, and emotional stability (e.g., Lehnartet al., 2010; Lodi-Smith & Roberts, 2007).

Importantly, as these studies illustrate, thesocial investment hypothesis not only explainsnormative trends in personality (e.g.,most peoplebecome more conscientious with age)—it alsoprovides an explanation for why individual dif-ferences in personality development occur. It isthe people who invest most strongly in theircareers, for example, that experience the greatestgrowth in conscientiousness across time(Hudson et al., 2012; Hudson & Roberts, 2016).College students who smoke marijuanaregularly—and thus are presumablymore likelyto engage in stereotypical nonconscientiousbehaviors associated with marijuana culture—tend to experience relative declines in conscien-tiousness across time (Roberts & Bogg, 2004).Similarly, individuals who invest in romanticrelationships experience greater growth in emo-tional stability, as compared with their peerswho remain single—perhaps due to receiving


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social support from one’s partner, but alsopotentially due to pressures to provide supportand temper negative emotions while interactingwith one’s partner (Lehnart et al., 2010).

Sociogenomic theory

On the most basic level, the social investmenthypothesis stipulates that prolonged changes tothoughts, feelings, and behaviors associatedwith committing to new social roles can producecorresponding trait changes. For example, anindividual who is pressed by his/her social rolesto behave in a more agreeable and emotionallystable manner over an extended period of time(e.g., to effectively provide emotional supportto a spouse or children) will eventually experi-ence enduring growth in his or her trait levelsof agreeableness and emotional stability.

But why do extended changes to state-levelthoughts, feelings, and behaviors eventuallycoalesce into personality trait changes? Several

scholars have argued that chronic cognitive,affective, and behavioral changes may simplybecome learned, automatized, and habitual(e.g., Burke, 2006; Hennecke et al., 2014;Hudson & Fraley, 2015). Thus, in the sameway that children can be trained to habituallyengage in conscientious or agreeable behaviors,such as brushing their teeth each night or saying“please” and “thank you” when makingrequests, adults may also be able to add a varietyof new habits to their relatively automatedbehavioral repertoire.

In addition to these types of basic learningprocesses, sociogenemic theory (Roberts, 2018;Roberts & Jackson, 2008) postulates that bothenvironmental factors and changes to state-levelthoughts, feelings, and behaviors can also influ-ence the expression of the genome via epigeneticchanges. These changes to the epigenome, inturn, can produce enduring personality traitchange. In other words, people may be able tomodify the expression of their genes by

FIG. 1 Growth in conscientiousness over 3 years as a function of social investment in work. Participants who invested intheir workplaces (“High SI Growth”) tended to increase in conscientiousness over time. In contrast, participants who dein-vested in their careers tended (“Low SI Growth”) to decrease in conscientiousness over time. Adapted from Hudson, N. W., &

Roberts, B. W. (2016). Social investment in work reliably predicts change in conscientiousness and agreeableness: A direct replication andextension of Hudson, Roberts, and Lodi-Smith (2012). Journal of Research in Personality, 60, 12–23.

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changing their environments and behaviors.These epigenetic changes may produce endur-ing trait change.

Weaver et al. (2004) provided a compellingexample of this process. Rats’ reactivity tostressors (i.e., neuroticism) is partially deter-mined by genes that control sensitivity to stresshormones, such as cortisol. Weaver and col-leagues bred two groups of rat pups: one bredto be highly reactive to cortisol and stress, andthe other bred to be less sensitive to cortisoland stress. The pups were then crossfostered.Some pups were raised by relaxed, attentive,affectionate mothers who were responsive totheir needs—and others were raised by anxious,inattentive mothers.

Supporting the idea that life experiences canchange personality, Weaver et al. (2004) foundthat maternal care appeared to override theeffects of genetic programming. For example,irrespective of their genetic predispositions,pups raised by relaxed, attentive, affectionatemothers grew up to be relatively emotionallystable adults with low reactivity to stressors.Similarly, pups raised by anxious, inattentivemothers grew to become neurotic, stress-proneadults. But critically,Weaver et al. (2004) foundthat these personality changes were mediatedby epigenetic changes. The genes controllingsensitivity to stress hormones, and thus reac-tivity to stress, were activated or deactivatedvia epigenetic changes, depending on thepups’ experiences with their adoptive mothers.In other words, the rat pups’ social and behav-ioral experiences (e.g., interacting with anattentive mother) altered the expression oftheir genetic material—producing personalitychanges later in life. The sociogenomic modelproposes that similar processes can occur inhumans (Roberts, 2018; Roberts & Jackson,2008). And indeed, empirical evidence sup-ports the idea that people’s experiences canand do moderate the expression of theirgenetic code (e.g., Caspi, Sugden, Moffitt, &Taylor, 2003).

Importantly, it likely does not require exter-nal presses—such as an attentive mother orcommitment to a career—to shape biology.Indeed, studies suggest that internal states arealso powerful enough to alter biology. For exam-ple, research has found that chronic stress andanxiety predict changes in the physiologicalstructure of the brain—which can codifyincreased neuroticism into one’s biology(McEwen, Eiland, Hunter, & Miller, 2012). In asimilar vein, it is possible that prolongedchanges to other personality states—such asextraversion, conscientiousness, oragreeableness—may also alter the epigenomeor nervous system, etching enduring growth inthese traits into individuals’ biology.

In sum, one implication of the processesdescribed by the sociogenomic model is that pro-longed changes to thoughts, feelings, and behav-iors may eventually become encoded intoindividuals’ physiologies, leading to enduringtrait change. Thus, the social investment hypoth-esis represents a special case of sociogenomic the-ory: Social roles can serve as consistent pressesthat change people’s thoughts, feelings, andbehaviors over long periods. It is, however, theextended state-level changes to thoughts, feel-ings, and behaviors that lead to trait change—not the social roles per se. In other words, froma sociogenomic perspective, social roles only pre-cipitate trait change because they reinforcechronic state-level changes to thoughts, feelings,and behaviors. This is an important nuancebecause, if true, it indicates that any factor thatfacilitates prolonged changes to state-levelthoughts, feelings, and behaviors—potentiallyincluding psychological interventions—has thepotential to produce enduring trait change.

Interventions to change personality traits

Although a large body of research suggeststhat personality traits appear to passivelychange in response to psychological maturation,


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biological forces, and environmental influencessuch as social roles (e.g., Helson et al., 2002;Hudson & Roberts, 2016; Jackson, Hill, Payne,Roberts, & Stine-Morrow, 2012; Lehnart et al.,2010; Lucas & Donnellan, 2011; Roberts &Bogg, 2004; Soto et al., 2011; Weaver et al.,2004), researchers have only recently takenwidespread interest in whether it is possible toactively, intentionally, and directly alter person-ality traits via intervention. As a result, very fewstudies to date have attempted to directly mod-ify participants’ personality traits (cf. Hudson,Briley, Chopik, & Derringer, 2019; Hudson &Fraley, 2015). Part of the historical reluctanceto examine such interventions may have beendriven partially by theoretical expectations thatpersonality may be difficult to change; conse-quently, powerful, systemic interventions—such as deep psychological commitment tonew social roles—might be necessary tosufficiently alter thoughts, feelings, and

behaviors and create enduring trait change(e.g., Lodi-Smith & Roberts, 2007).

Within the past two decades, however, sev-eral theorists have questioned the presumptionthat personality change requires strong externalpresses—and have instead highlighted thepossibility that other factors, including intrapsy-chic forces (e.g., the self’s volition), might besufficient to catalyze enduing trait change(e.g., Baumeister, 1994; Hennecke et al., 2014;Hudson & Fraley, 2015, 2017; Kiecolt, 1994).Consequently, these scholars have outlinedmodels of how personality traits might be chan-ged through intervention (Allemand &Fl€uckiger, 2017; Hennecke et al., 2014;Hudson & Fraley, 2015; Magidson et al., 2012).Although these models all have slightly differ-ent names and foci—volitional change(Hudson & Fraley, 2015, 2017), self-regulatedchange (Hennecke et al., 2014), expectancyvalue/behavioral activation (Magidson et al.,

FIG. 2 Model of interventions to change personality traits.

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2012)—as depicted in Fig. 2, on the simplestlevel, they all share the basic premise that lastingpersonality trait change can be produced bymodifying participants’ state-level thoughts,feelings, and behaviors over extended periodsof time. For example, increasing an individual’strait level of extraversion merely requires suc-cessfully encouraging him or her to engage inhighly extraverted state-level thoughts, feelings,and behaviors until those thoughts, feelings, andbehaviors become learned, automatized, andhabitual; adopted into his or her identity; andperhaps even encoded into his or her biology(Burke, 2006; Hennecke et al., 2014; Hudson &Fraley, 2015; Roberts & Jackson, 2008). Put in idi-omatic terms, these theories suggest that partic-ipants in interventions to change personalitytraits must simply “fake it until they make it.”

Naturally, however, simply modifying one’sbehavior a fiat over extended periods of time isnot quite so simple in practice as it is in theory.Situational constraints, existing personalitytraits, and ingrained habits maymake it difficultfor people to consistently adopt new patterns ofthoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Indeed, ifpeople could easily and effortlessly modify theirpersonality traits through pure volition alone, itshould seem that everyone would be the ideal-ized version of themselves and precisely whothey want to be. This is clearly not the case, asthe vast majority of people wish to changeaspects of their personalities—which denotesthat those desired changes have not yet beenrealized (Baranski, Morse, & Dunlop, 2017;Hudson & Fraley, 2015, 2016b; Hudson &Roberts, 2014). Thus, the critical question is:How can interventions help participants success-fully implement new thoughts, feelings, andbehaviors over extended periods of time—leading to trait change? To this end, theoristshave argued that several factors may influencethe efficacy of interventions to change traits.As depicted in Fig. 2, these factors can bebroadly divided into (1) attributes of participantsand (2) attributes of the intervention.

With respect to participants, most modelssuggest that an intervention may be more or lesssuccessful for different individuals based ontheir pre-existing attributes. Namely, in orderto change their personality traits, participantsmust adhere to intervention instructions andmaintain chronic changes to state-levelthoughts, feelings, and behaviors (e.g.,Hudson & Fraley, 2015). Any characteristics ofthe participants that influence their ability todo so would be expected to affect the interven-tion’s efficacy. To this end, several scholars havetheorized that individuals must be motivated tochange their personality traits in ways that alignwith the intervention’s goals (Baumeister, 1994;Hennecke et al., 2014; Hudson & Fraley, 2015,2017; Kiecolt, 1994). In other words, it may besubstantially challenging to convince partici-pants to make enduring undesired changes totheir thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—especially if those changes are difficult orrequire effort to implement. For example, partic-ipants who do not wish to become moreconscientious may react against interventionsdesigned to increase their conscientiousnessand simply refuse to engage in highly conscien-tious behaviors prescribed by an interventionist.Even if participants do wish to comply with theintervention—perhaps because they feel apa-thetic toward its goals but nevertheless wish tocooperate with the researcher—they may lacksufficient motivation to adopt conscientiousbehaviors that require effort. For these reasons,some scholars have argued that interventionsto change personality traits will be most effec-tive if participants already desire those changes(Hudson et al., 2019; Hudson & Fraley, 2015,2017)—or, if not, that the interventionist mustwork to align participants’ goals with those ofthe intervention (Hudson & Fraley, 2015, 2017;Roberts, Hill, & Davis, 2017). And indeed, exist-ing empirical evidence does, in fact, suggest thatinterventions to change personality traits can beeffective if participants already desire thosechanges (Hudson et al., 2019; Hudson &


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Fraley, 2015, 2016a). It remains an open ques-tion, however, whether it is possible to convinceparticipants to change personality traits thatthey do not already desire to change.

Beyond motivation, participants must alsopossess adequate self-regulatory abilities toadhere to intervention instructions. Most theo-retical models suggest that merely wanting tochange is not sufficient to induce trait change(see Hudson et al., 2019). Rather, participantsmust actually change their state-level thoughts,feelings, and behaviors over extended periodsof time in order to effect trait-level changes(Hennecke et al., 2014; Hudson et al., 2019;Hudson & Fraley, 2015; Roberts & Jackson,2008). Thus, participants who are unable to suf-ficiently regulate their thoughts, feelings, andbehaviors may not be able to adhere to interven-tion instructions and may consequently experi-ence less success in changing their traits acrosstime. Of course, it may be possible to designinterventions that provide scaffolding for partic-ipants with lower self-regulatory abilities. Itremains an open question, however, to whatextent qualities of the intervention can overcomedeficits in motivation or self-regulation amongparticipants.

Finally, some scholars have proposed thatparticipants’ beliefs regarding the malleabilityof personality traits may influence their abilityto change (e.g., Allemand & Fl€uckiger, 2017;Dweck, 2008; Hennecke et al., 2014; Hudson &Fraley, 2015). Namely, participants who believepersonality traits can change may engage inbehaviors that promote trait change in a self-fulling fashion (e.g., Jussim, 1986). For example,a person who believes that it is possible tobecome more extraverted may put effort intoengaging in gregarious behavior; whereas a per-son who believes that extraversion cannotchange may refrain from engaging in sociablebehavior because s/he believes it will be a fruit-less and draining effort. Thus, personalitychange interventions may be most effective forindividualswho already believe that personality

is plastic. Alternatively, the efficacy of interven-tions may be improved by working to instillwithin participants the belief that personalityis malleable. These possibilities, however, areultimately speculative and need to be tested infuture research.

Beyond participant attributes, theorists havealso argued that several aspects of the interven-tion may influence its ability to facilitate traitchange. Namely, as depicted in Fig. 2, the inter-vention must present participants with specific,concrete, attainable steps to pursue on a regularbasis (Hudson et al., 2019; Hudson & Fraley,2015). For example, one type of intervention thathas been tested in several studies involves ask-ing participants to regularly generate concretegoals and implementation intentions to changetheir state-level thoughts, feelings, and behav-iors (Hudson & Fraley, 2015). The idea behindthis type of intervention is that, per socioge-nomic theory, small behavioral changes caneventually coalesce into trait change(Hudson & Fraley, 2015, 2017; Magidson et al.,2012; Roberts, 2018; Roberts, Hill, & Davis,2017; Roberts & Jackson, 2008). Thus, for exam-ple, encouraging participants to take small stepsto behave in an extravertedmanner may eventu-ally cause them to increase in trait-level extra-version (Hudson & Fraley, 2015).

However, research using this type of inter-vention has found that if the intervention istoo vague or unstructured, it may have thepotential to backfire. For example, in one study,Hudson and Fraley (2015) asked participants togenerate concrete steps that they could take eachweek that could help them change their person-ality traits in desired ways. However, partici-pants were provided with little coaching andrelatively vague instructions. Consequently,many participants generated diffuse, abstractgoals that entailed little concrete action and forwhich it was impossible to objectively quantifyattainment (e.g., “be more talkative,” “feel hap-pier”). This intervention did not producechanges in participants’ personalities—and in

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some cases may have backfired and producedchanges opposite of the desired outcome.Hudson and Fraley (2015) speculated that thisoccurred because (1) participants were not tak-ing action that would actually promote traitgrowth, and (2) merely committing to goals thatsuperficially might seem to move them towardtheir desired traits may have undermined theirmotivation to take other actions that otherwisewould have actually promoted trait growth(Fishbach, Dhar, & Zhang, 2006; Gollwitzer,Sheeran, Michalski, & Seifert, 2009). In otherwords, a vague goal such as “be more talkative”does not prescribe concrete action. Thus, it islikely that participants who authored such goalswere not changing their behaviors—a necessaryrequisite for trait change (Hudson et al., 2019;Hudson & Fraley, 2015). Supporting this possi-bility, subsequent interventions that more thor-oughly coached participants to generate small,specific, reasonable, attainable goals each week(e.g., “ask two friends to lunch on Tuesday”)—or that provided participants with prewrittenconcrete, feasible goals to accept andcomplete—did facilitate trait change (Hudsonet al., 2019; Hudson & Fraley, 2015). Thus, itappears that interventions must provide partic-ipants with adequate scaffolding and concreteactions to take—and these actions must be onesthat participants can feasibly and realisticallyperform on an intensive and ongoing basis.

Finally, the duration of the intervention likelymatters. Theoretically, changes to thoughts, feel-ings, and behaviors must be maintained over anextended period of time to facilitate trait change(Hennecke et al., 2014; Hudson & Fraley, 2015,2017; Roberts, 2018; Roberts & Jackson, 2008).There is, however, currently insufficient empir-ical evidence to conclude precisely how longinterventions must last to produce enduringtrait change. Preliminary evidence suggests thatmeaningful personality trait change can beobserved in periods as short as 4 months(Hudson et al., 2019; Hudson & Fraley, 2015,2016a). Moreover, one recent quantitative

review of more than 200 studies suggestedthat enduring personality change may havethe potential to occur in as little as 6 weeks(Roberts et al., 2017). Thus, it remains unclearhow quickly interventions may be able tochange traits—and whether short-term inter-ventions (e.g., 6 weeks) are sufficient to produc-ing enduring changes in personality traits,as opposed to temporary changes thatrevert with time after the cessation of theintervention.

Empirical evidence for personality changevia intervention

Although several theorists have articulatedmodels for actively changing personality traitsvia interventions, to date very few studies haveattempted to intervene directly upon partici-pants’ personality traits (cf. Hudson et al.,2019; Hudson & Fraley, 2015). That said, a largebody of studies in the clinical psychology litera-ture suggests that personality traits may changein response to interventions targeting other con-structs. For example, clinical interventions (e.g.,therapies) designed to treat conditions such asanxiety or depression frequently produce last-ing increases in participants’ emotional stabilityand extraversion (for an overview, see Roberts,Luo, et al., 2017; but cf. Chow, Wagner,L€udtke, Trautwein, & Roberts, 2017). One recentquantitative review of more than 200 studiesfound that clinical interventions (e.g., psycho-therapy) have the potential to change personal-ity traits quickly—within six to eight weeks—and that many people appear to retain thosechanges to their personality traits over thecourse of several years (Roberts, Luo, et al.,2017). Similarly, outside the clinical literature,studies have also found that personality traitsappear to change in response to interventionstargeting other constructs, such as mindfulness(Krasner et al., 2009), social skills (Oei &Jackson, 1980; Piedmont, 2001), and cognitivetraining ( Jackson et al., 2012).


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Although these clinical studies providepromising evidence that personality traits maybe able to change in response to interventions,they are not without interpretational ambigui-ties. Of course, it may be the case that clinicalinterventions (e.g., psychotherapy) do, in fact,have collateral effects on personality via socio-genomic processes. For example, encouragingclients to build meaningful relationships, seeksocial support, and engage in enjoyable activi-ties may essentially be encouraging them toengage in highly extraverted state-levelbehaviors—which should be expected to even-tually coalesce into trait-level gains in extraver-sion (e.g., Hudson et al., 2019; Hudson & Fraley,2015, 2017; Roberts, 2018; Roberts &Jackson, 2008).

However, it is also possible that psychother-apy does not necessarily directly change person-ality traits. Namely, it is possible that measuresused to assess personality traits do not possessperfect construct validity (see Cronbach &Meehl, 1955). In other words, a questionnairedesigned to measure extraversion, for example,may tap multiple constructs. In addition to mea-suring a participant’s true latent level of extra-version, such questionnaires may also partiallytap other irrelevant constructs, such as depres-sion. If this possibility is true, a therapeutic inter-vention that reduced participants’ latentdepression would also influence their manifestextraversion scores, even if the participants’“true,” latent levels of extraversion were unaf-fected. The change in manifest extraversion inthis case, however, would be an artifact of themeasure’s less-than-perfect construct validity,rather than reflecting true changes in latent per-sonality. Stated more succinctly, psychotherapymay have the potential to influence measures ofpersonality traits such as emotional stabilityand extraversion without truly affecting thelatent constructs.

Unfortunately, statistical techniques such ascontrolling measures of depression while exam-ining personality changes cannot fully rule out

this possibility (e.g., Westfall & Yarkoni, 2016).Rather, ruling out this possibility would requireextensive data on participants’ levels of eachpersonality trait prior to the onset of their depres-sion or anxiety (Roberts, Luo, et al., 2017). Onlythis type of methodological design could allowconfident inferences regarding whether psycho-therapy truly changes participants’ latent per-sonality traits or merely reverts them to theirpredepressive manifest personalities.

In sum, a large number of both clinical andnonclinical studies suggest that personalitytraits may change in response to psychotherapyor other interventions targeting nonpersonalityconstructs (e.g., cognitive ability). Althoughthese studies provide promising tentative evi-dence for the idea that personality can be chan-ged through intervention, methodologicallimitations and interpretational ambiguitiesmake it difficult to draw strong inferences thatthese interventions truly changed latent personal-ity traits.

Volitional personality changeinterventions

In contrast to the research described, whichhas examined how personality changes inresponse to interventions targeting other attri-butes (e.g., mood disorders), an emerging bodyof studies on volitional personality change hasbegun testing interventions explicitly intendedto directly change people’s personality traits.These interventions are designed to beparticipant-directed and to work with people’spre-existing desires to change their personalitytraits. Thus, rather than exploring whether peo-ple’s personalities can be changed to meet aninterventionist’s goals (e.g., to make the popula-tion more conscientious), studies on volitionalchange examine whether interventions can helppeople meet their own, self-directed goals. The fol-lowing sections provide an overview of the

1283Volitional personality change interventions

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volitional change literature and interventionscontained therein.

Do people want to change their personalitytraits?

Scholars have argued for several decades thatat least some individuals who are highly dissat-isfied with their lives—or aspects thereof—mayformulate desires to change their personalitytraits (Baumeister, 1994; Kiecolt, 1994). How-ever, personality psychologists have onlyrecently begun systematically studying theprevalence and correlates of these desires(Hudson & Roberts, 2014). This emerging bodyof research has revealed that the vast majorityof people wish to specifically increase in eachof the Big Five personality traits—extraversion,agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional sta-bility, and openness to experience. For example,in one online sample of nearly 8000 participants,a minimum of 85% of people indicated that theywanted to increase with respect to each Big Fivetrait—with as many as 94% of participantsexpressing desires to increase in conscientious-ness and emotional stability (Hudson & Fraley,2016b).

Most studies examining change goals—peo-ple’s desires to change their personalitytraits—have used structured questionnaires inwhich participants rate the extent to which theywish to change each item in a standard person-ality inventory (e.g., Hudson & Fraley, 2016b;Hudson & Roberts, 2014; Robinson, Noftle,Guo, Asadi, & Zhang, 2015). For instance, oneitem that measures extraversion in the widelyused Big Five Inventory (BFI) is, “I see myselfas someone who is talkative.” This item is ratedon a response scale ranging from “stronglyagree” to “strongly disagree” ( John &Srivastava, 1999). This item can be adapted tomeasure change goals, as in the Change GoalsBFI (C-BFI), by rewording it to read “I want tobe someone who is talkative,” rated on a

response scale ranging from “much more thanI currently am” to “I do not wish to change withrespect to this attribute,” to “much less thanI currently am” (The major benefit to structuredchange goals questionnaires, such as the C-BFI,is that they allow researchers to systematicallyassess participants’ goals to change each of theBig Five personality traits and to quantify indi-vidual differences in the extent to which partic-ipants desire to change those traits (e.g., someindividuals may desire greater changes in extra-version than do others). However, one limitationof structured change goals measures is that thequestions themselves may impose goals uponindividuals. For example, when directly asked,there may be considerable social pressure onparticipants to indicate that they would like tobecome more “considerate and kind.” Thus,structured change goals questionnaires mayhave poor ability to discriminate between true,pre-existing desires (e.g., someone with genu-ine, pre-existing, well-formulated desires tobecome a kinder person) versus ephemeraldesires that are evoked by the questions them-selves (e.g., someone with no pre-existing desireor intent to become a kinder person, but whowill intellectually cede, when asked, that beinga kinder person is desirable).

In contrast, it is possible to measure people’schange goals in amore open-ended fashion (e.g.,Baranski et al., 2017; Higgins, 1987). For exam-ple, in one study, participants were first askedif there was any part of their personality thattheywished to change—and if so, to write a briefessay describing the desired changes (Baranskiet al., 2017). Even using this type of open-endedquestionnaire, approximately 70% of partici-pants freely indicated that they wished tochange traits relevant to at least one of the BigFive personality domains. Although one signif-icant strength of these type of open-ended mea-sures is that they avoid suggesting or imposingspecific goals upon participants, such measuresmay be limited in their ability to systematicallyexplore both the prevalence and correlates of


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goals to change specific traits (Hudson &Roberts, 2014). Especially if asked to list a spe-cific number of traits they wish to change (e.g.,“please list two aspects of yourself you wish tochange”), participants may list only a subset oftheir desired changes. For example, someonemay truly want to become more extraverted,conscientious, and emotionally stable. Whenasked to list only one or two traits that s/hedesires to change, this individual must necessar-ily omit information regarding at least one traits/he wishes to change. Moreover, open-endedmeasures are not particularly well suited tomeasuring variance in the strength of partici-pants’ change goals. For example, if two partic-ipants both indicate desires to become moreextraverted, it may be difficult to ascertainwhether one of the participants desires moreextensive changes than does the other.

To summarize, change goals can bemeasuredin a variety of ways. Each measure has uniquestrengths and limitations. Nevertheless, irre-spective of how change goals are measured,the majority of people indicate that they wishto change aspects of their personality traits(Baranski et al., 2017; Hudson & Roberts, 2014;Robinson et al., 2015). Thus, it is not merely aselective group of highly dissatisfied peoplewho wish to change their personality traits(Baumeister, 1994; Kiecolt, 1994); rather, changegoals are normative (Hudson & Fraley, 2016b).

Why do people want to change their personal-ity traits? Most theorists have suggested thatchange goals are primarily extrinsically motivated(Baumeister, 1994; Hudson & Roberts, 2014;Kiecolt, 1994). In other words, most people likelywant to change aspects of their personalitytraits in order to solve specific problems in theirlives or to assuage sources of dissatisfaction.For example, people who are dissatisfied withtheir interpersonal relationships may desire toincrease in extraversion—perhaps driven bythe belief that they would have more satisfyingfriendships if they were more extraverted.Supporting this notion, research has found

that change goals are correlated in theoreticallysensible ways with satisfaction with specificlife domains (Hudson & Roberts, 2014). Forexample, people who are dissatisfied with theirfriendships empirically do tend to want toincrease in extraversion. Similarly, students thatare dissatisfied with their collegiate experiencetend to express desires to increase in agreeable-ness and conscientiousness—perhaps becausethey believe that greater agreeableness wouldimprove their social lives and higher conscien-tiousness might improve their academicoutcomes.

Beyond extrinsic motivation, some peoplemay also be intrinsically motivated to changetheir personality traits (for an overview of intrin-sic motivation, see Deci & Ryan, 1985). Namely,each of the Big Five dimensions possesses asocially desirable pole (e.g., Dunlop, Telford, &Morrison, 2012; Hudson & Roberts, 2014). Indi-viduals who are low with respect to the sociallydesirable pole of each trait may desire toincrease in that trait for the value of possessingthe trait in and of itself. Supporting this idea,trait levels of each of the Big Five personalitydomains are negatively correlated with goalsto change that trait (Hudson & Roberts, 2014).For example, introverted individuals are morelikely to want to increase in extraversion.

Can people volitionally change?

Empirically, the vast majority of people wantto change their personality traits. Moreover, itappears that at least some individuals naturalis-tically engage in attempts to do so. For example,one study found that college students whofeared becoming boring persons in the futurewere more likely to engage in binge-drinkingbehavior—ostensibly in attempt to incorporatethe “fun and interesting” stereotype associatedwith college-aged binge drinkers into their per-sonalities (Quinlan, Jaccard, & Blanton, 2006).Similarly, another study found that somestudents report strategically selecting


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extracurricular activities that they believedwould instill desired traits (e.g., leadership)within them (Stevenson & Clegg, 2011).

Thus, most people want to change their per-sonality traits—and at least some people appearto engage in strategies designed to do so. But arethese desires and efforts futile? Or can peopleactually potentially attain desired changes totheir personality traits? Initial research into thistopic has provided promising evidence that theanswer is likely that people can change their BigFive personality traits. Namely, several longitu-dinal studies have measured college students’change goals at the beginning of semester andsubsequently tracked their personality traitsover the course of the 15–16week semester(Hudson & Fraley, 2015, 2016a). These studieshave consistently found that change goals pre-dict corresponding subsequent trait growth. Inother words, people tend to change in ways thatalign with their desires. For example, as can beseen in Fig. 3, which depicts data from one ofHudson and Fraley’s (2015) studies, students

who indicated at the beginning of the semesterthat they wished to become more extravertedtended to actually experience increases in extra-version over the following months—amassingto an approximately one quarter standard devi-ation cumulative increase in extraversion. Incontrast, students who did not wish to changetheir levels of extraversion did not experiencestatistically significant growth in extraversionacross the semester. Subsequent studies haverepeatedly replicated this pattern of findings—at least for extraversion, conscientiousness,and emotional stability (with findings beingmore mixed for agreeableness and openness toexperience; Hudson et al., 2019; Hudson &Fraley, 2015, 2016a).

That said, there is not necessarily universalsupport for the idea that people tend to changein ways that align with their desires. Specifi-cally, Robinson et al. (2015) measuredgraduating college seniors’ change goals andpersonality traits, and then measured their per-sonality traits again 1 year later. In their study,

FIG. 3 Model-predicted growth in trait-extraversion for Hudson and Fraley’s (2015) participants who, at the beginning ofthe study, expressed goals to increase or stay the same with respect to extraversion. Reproduced from Hudson, N. W., &

Fraley, R. C. (2015). Volitional personality trait change: Can people choose to change their personality traits? Journal of Personalityand Social Psychology, 109, 490–507.


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change goals did not predict trait change acrossthe two time points. This discrepant finding issomewhat difficult to interpret. Namely,Robinson et al. (2015) used a much longer time-frame than any ofHudson and colleagues’ (2015,2016a, 2018) studies—but they also used fewermeasurement occasions (2 vs. 16) and a single-item measure of goals to change each trait (vs.Hudson and colleagues’ C-BFI, which has 8–10items per trait). Thus, it is unclear (1) whetherchange goals fail to predict trait change over lon-ger periods of time (e.g., 1 year) and/or in lifetransitions (e.g., graduating), or (2) whethermethodological limitations such as fewer mea-surement occasions or less sensitivity in thechange goals measure limited Robinson et al.’(2015) ability to detect effects. It is also possiblethat features of the samples (e.g., age, culture)might have influenced the findings. Thus, it iscritically important for future research to disam-biguate these possibilities and more thoroughlyexplore whether change goals predict traitchanges over multiple years and lifetransitions—as well as in more diverse samples.

Nevertheless, as a whole, the existing litera-ture largely suggests that people tend to changein ways that align with their desires. Given thatpersonality traits are linked to a wide array ofconsequential life outcomes—such as occupa-tional attainment, relationship satisfaction anddivorce, and health and mortality (Ozer &Benet-Martı́nez, 2006)–this raises the possibilitythat people may be able to improve their livesthrough volitional personality change. Support-ing this possibility, research suggests that attain-ing desired trait changes may have the potentialto improve people’s well-being. For example, inone study, college students’ change goals weremeasured at the beginning of the semester—

and their personality traits and life satisfactionwere tracked weekly across the following4months (Hudson & Fraley, 2016a). Participantswho attained desired changes to their personal-ity traits tended to report concurrent gains in lifesatisfaction. For example, students whoreported desires to become more extravertedand then actually increased in extraversionacross the course of the semester tended tosimultaneously increase in life satisfaction.a

Thus, successfully pursuing and attaining voli-tional personality changemay have the potentialto improve people’s lives—both by assuagingspecific sources of dissatisfaction (e.g., becom-ing more extraverted may improve people’ssocial relationships; Hudson & Fraley, 2016a;Hudson&Roberts, 2014) and by leading to gainsin important life outcomes (e.g., becoming moreconscientious may improve health outcomes;Ozer & Benet-Martı́nez, 2006).

Volitional change interventions

Collectively, the emerging volitional changeliterature suggests that people want to andmay be able to change their personality traitsin desired ways—and that doing so mayimprove their well-being. This naturally raisesquestions regarding whether it is possible todevelop interventions that catalyze the voli-tional change process. To date, three such inter-ventions have been tested—two of which haveappeared to produce favorable results. First,Hudson and Fraley (2015) tested two separategoal-setting interventions. In their first study,participants were randomly assigned to treat-ment and control groups. The treatment groupwas given relatively vague and open-endedinstructions to “list 3 ways that you can try to

a In this study, change goals moderated the within-person association between trait change and life satisfaction. People who

increased in any big five trait experienced concurrent gains in life satisfaction. However, the associationswere larger for people

who desired to increase in with respect to the traits. Thus, for example, people who wanted to become more extraverted and

actually increased in extraversion experienced greater gains in life satisfaction than did their peers who experienced equivalent

albeit undesired changes in extraversion.


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attain the changes you desire over the nextweek. Think of both general and specific stepsyou can take to try to change yourself.” Thisintervention relied on the assumption that lay-persons would be able to brainstorm reasonablestrategies to change their own personality traits(e.g., as in Quinlan et al., 2006; Stevenson &Clegg, 2011) andwould thus generate actionablegoals for behavioral change—leading to traitchange (e.g., Magidson et al., 2012; Roberts,2018; Roberts & Jackson, 2008). However, thisassumption may have been somewhat less thanaccurate.

Specifically, Hudson and Fraley’s initialintervention was ultimately inert—and it mayhave even backfired for some traits, producingnegative changes in desired traits. After observ-ing these results, Hudson and Fraley speculatedthat the intervention was too unstructured to beefficacious. Namely, many participants did notgenerate concrete, actionable goals. Instead,many wrote vague goals that often boiled downa fiat commands to simply possess desired traits(e.g., “be happier,” “bemore talkative”). In otherwords, this intervention may have failed toeffectively help participants organize their plansfor change, and thus may have failed to promoteany sort of cognitive, affective, or behavioralchanges that might have produced trait growth.Indeed, as depicted in Fig. 2, actually changingone’s state-level thoughts, feelings, and behav-iors may be a requisite for attaining true traitchange (Hudson et al., 2019).

In a second study, Hudson and Fraley (2015)attempted to improve their intervention bymak-ing the instructions more specific. Participantswere still instructed to generate three “smallsteps” they could take during the week tochange themselves in desired ways. However,in the improved intervention, participants werecoached to create small, specific, actionablegoals, and were given examples similar to,“One goal for increasing extraversion mightbe, ‘Invite Aaron and Megan to go to lunch onTuesday.’” Further, participants were taught

how to form implementation intentions—concrete behavior plans that take the form of“In situation X, I will perform behavior Y”(Gollwitzer & Brandst€atter, 1997). Students weregiven sample implementation intentions similarto, “One implementation intention for increas-ing extraversion might be, ‘If I have an opinionaboutwhat is being discussed in class, then Iwillraise my hand and give my opinion.’” Thisimproved intervention was designed to encour-age participants tomake actionable plans, ratherthan vague aspirations. And indeed, it appearedto be concrete and structured enough to be effec-tive: Participants in the treatment group experi-enced much larger changes to their personalitytraits than did participants in the control group.For example, participants who wanted tobecome more extraverted and participated inthe treatment were predicted to increase nearlyone half standard deviation in extraversionacross the course of the semester—whereas theirpeers with equivalent desires in the controlgroup were predicted to increase only one quar-ter standard deviation across the study’sduration.

AlthoughHudson and Fraley’s (2015) second,improved intervention provides promising evi-dence that interventions may be able to helpchange personality traits, it nevertheless suffersseveral limitations. First, it is necessary to notethat Hudson and Fraley (2015) tested two verysimilar interventions—only one of which wasefficacious. The fact that one “worked” and theother did not may simply represent samplingerror, such that the intervention’s true effectwas zero—appearing to backfire once andappearing to function as expected once. Second,assuming that the effects of the improved inter-vention were real, Hudson and Fraley (2015) didnot include unambiguousmeasures of the extentto which participants were actually achievingtheir weekly behavioral goals. Thus, their stud-ies do not provide clear evidence regardingwhether successfully changing one’s behavior isnecessary to produce trait change—or whether


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merely committing to changing one’s traits issufficient. For example, it may be the case thatpsychologically committing to change and for-mulating plans operates in a self-fulfilling fash-ion (see Jussim, 1986)—even sans intentionalbehavior change. In other words, someonewho wants to become more extraverted andcommits to change may quasiunconsciouslymodify their behaviors in subtle ways that pro-duce trait change—even without more explicitlyconscious attempts to implement extravertedthoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

To help overcome the limitations of priorstudies and more fully elucidate the “activeingredient” in volitional change interventions,Hudson et al. (2019) developed a new type ofintervention that provided participants witheven greater amounts of structure and direction.In their study, at the beginning of the semester,college students were asked to nominate whichof the Big Five personality traits they wanted tospecifically work on changing across the courseof the semester. Each subsequent week, partici-pants were presented with “challenges” for thetraits they had nominated. The challenges werebehavioral goals, written by the researchers, thatwere designed to pull participants’ thoughts,feelings, and behaviors in line with high levelsof desired traits. For example, prototypical chal-lenges for extraversion included, “Introduceyourself to someone new,” and “Invite friendsor acquaintances to participate in a hobby youenjoy.” Prototypical challenges for conscien-tiousness were, “Pick one specific class assign-ment, and do your absolute best on it—not justenough to get by,” and “Show up 5 minutesearly for every class, appointment, or activityon your daily schedule.” Each week, partici-pants were free to accept up to four challenges.The subsequent week, participants were pre-sented with each challenge they had acceptedand were asked to indicate whether they hadcompleted the challenge—and if so, how manytimes they had performed the prescribedbehavior.

One major innovation of this intervention isthat it was able to separate the respective effectsof mere exposure to an intervention/placeboeffects (as all participants were exposed to theintervention), intention/commitment to changeone’s behavior (accepting challenges), and actu-ally changing one’s behavior (completing chal-lenges) on trait growth. Moreover, it ensuredthat all participants were exposed to concrete,actionable goals—instead of relying on partici-pants to generate their own actionable goals(vs. abstract, vague ones).

Hudson et al.’ (2019) findings indicated that,for most of the Big Five personality traits, suc-cessfully completing greater numbers of chal-lenges did, in fact, predict greater trait growthover the course of the semester. For example,participants who completed just two extraver-sion challenges per week were predicted toincrease nearly a quarter standard deviation inextraversion across the course of the semester.In contrast, participants who completed zeroextraversion challenges were not expected toincrease in extraversion. Importantly, however,merely accepting challenges did not predict traitgrowth. In other words, merely participating inthe intervention and formulating plans did notfacilitate people’s abilities to attain desiredchanges to their personality traits. Rather, itwas only the participants that followed throughand implemented behavioral changes whoexperienced trait growth across time. Thesefindings support the basic premise of socioge-nomic theory: chronic state-level changes tothoughts, feelings, and behaviors can eventuallycoalesce into trait change. This conclusion, how-ever, should be tempered by the fact that allvariables in these studies were measured viaself-report. Different types of measures (e.g.,self-report, observer-report) have differingstrengths and weaknesses (e.g., Paulhus &Vazire, 2007). Future studies should collect mul-tiple measures of the focal variables to trianglethe findings and help compensate for the limita-tions of any one type of measure.


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Nonetheless, these studies collectively sug-gest that it may be possible to help peoplechange their personality traits with well-designed interventions. Specifically, though, asdepicted in Fig. 2, it appears that participantsmust be motivated to change—and the interven-tion must provide participants with concrete,actionable goals to pursue eachweek.Moreover,preliminary data suggests that participantsmustactually adhere to the intervention and success-fully implement cognitive, affective, and behav-ioral changes in order to experience trait change.Indeed, this aligns with theory regarding whytraits change, such as the sociogenomic model(Magidson et al., 2012; Roberts & Jackson,2008). The “active ingredient” in promoting traitgrowth truly appears to be chronically changingstate-level patterns of thoughts, feelings, andbehaviors.

Future directions

Ultimately, utilizing interventions to directlychange personality traits is a fledgling area ofresearch. Although several studies have pro-vided a promising prognosis for attempts tochange traits, a myriad of fundamental ques-tions remain entirely unexplored. The secionsthat follow describe what I believe to be themosturgent questions for future research to examine.

What is the nature of intervention-drivenpersonality change?

Two of the biggest questions that remain forfuture studies to answer are: (1) How muchchange can individuals attain in their personal-ity traits, and (2) how long do intervention-driven changes last? With respect to the former,it seems unlikely that individuals can changetheir personality traits ad infinitum (Hudson &Fraley, 2015). As with many pursuits in life, par-ticipants may reach a point of diminishingreturns, after which they experience

geometrically smaller gains in desired personal-ity traits across time. Speaking to this issue, onequantitative review examining the effects of psy-chotherapy on personality found that most per-sonality change occurred within 6 weeks of theonset of the psychotherapy—and trait growthseverely leveled off thereafter (Roberts, Luo,et al., 2017). Of course, psychotherapy is not pri-marily designed to target personality traits.Thus, it may be possible that psychotherapyhas a minimal “collateral” effect on personalitytraits that is maximizedwithin 6 weeks. It is pos-sible that stronger interventions designed todirectly target personality traits—or interven-tions designed to be “adaptive” and scale in dif-ficulty and intensity as participants’ traitsgrow—may be able to sustain trait growth forprolonged periods of time. Indeed, across four16-week longitudinal studies, Hudson andcolleagues’ (2015, 2016a, 2018) found thatgrowth in participants’ personality traits wasrelatively linear—there was no evidence of cur-vilinear effects, such as growth leveling off after6 weeks. Nevertheless, the basic idea is likelytrue—that biological and/or social constraintslikely exist such that participants will eventuallyexperience diminishing gains in desired person-ality traits, even given exposure to very stronginterventions. Thus, future research is neededto more thoroughly examine the extent to whichpeople can change their personality traits.

Relatedly, it remains unclear whether inter-ventions to change personality can produceenduring gains in traits. Namely, Hudson andcolleagues’ (2015, 2016a, 2018) have found that,with continued intervention, participants expe-rience and retain changes to their personalitytraits across a period of roughly 4 months. How-ever, little is known about what happens afterinterventions are discontinued. It is possible thatparticipants retain changes to their personalitytraits. For example, in their review, Robertsand colleagues (2017) argued that psychother-apy changes people’s personalities—and thosechanges appear to endure for years, even after


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cessation of treatment. However, as describedearlier, this finding is fundamentally ambiguousin nature. For example, to the extent that a mooddisorder influencesmeasures of extraversion andemotional stability, successfully treating themood disorder will produce apparently endur-ing growth in the personality measures—even ifthe underlying personality constructs have notbeen changed by therapy. In other words, it ispossible that depression may reduce people’sextraversion and emotional stability temporarily.Once the depression is successfully treated, indi-viduals maymerely revert to their baseline levelsof extraversion and emotional stability. Studiesthat only follow already depressed individualsthroughout treatment would not be able to dis-ambiguate this possibility from true, enduringchanges to participants’ personality traits. Theuse of multitrait multimethod analyses may alsobe able to further address this limitation.

Thus, it remains possible that intervention-driven changes to personality traits may revertgiven enough time after the intervention (e.g.,Robinson et al., 2015). For this reason, futureresearch is needed into the time course ofintervention-driven trait change and the extentto which such changes can be maintained. It maybe possible, for example, that intervention-driventrait change does wan with time; however, peri-odic “booster” intervention sessions may be ableto maintain changes over extended periods oftime.Theseandotherpossibilitiesshouldbe testedin future studies.

What factors promote successfulinterventions?

It is critical to ensure that interventions areeffective in helping people change their person-ality traits before recommending their wide-spread use. Namely, research suggests thatfruitlessly pursuing personality change mayhave deleterious effects on well-being(Hudson & Fraley, 2016a). In other words,unfilled change goals and failed attempts to

change oneself may reduce life satisfaction.Therefore, it is paramount that psychologistsunderstand what makes interventions success-ful so as to avoid encouraging adoption of onesthat backfire and undermine participants’ well-being.

Thus far, at least three interventions designedto directly change participants’ personality traitshave been tested (Hudson et al., 2019; Hudson &Fraley, 2015). As discussed, the findings fromthese studies have tentatively identified factorsthat may be important in promoting successfultrait growth. For example, the interventionslikely need to provide participants with suffi-cient structure and concrete, feasible behaviorsto pursue each week (Hudson et al., 2019;Hudson & Fraley, 2015). In contrast, interven-tions that provide too little structure may giveparticipants a false sense of progress and under-mine change (see Fishbach et al., 2006; Gollwitzeret al., 2009). Ultimately, however, very few inter-ventions have been tested—and the factorsbelieved to make them successful are largelybased on post hoc speculation. Thus, futurestudies should directly test aspects of variousinterventions to determine specifically whatcauses interventions to facilitate trait change—and what causes them to backfire.

Along these lines, all of the volitional changeinterventions to date have been based uponsociogenomic theory—and thus have simplyasked participants to change their state-levelthoughts, feelings, and behaviors in hopes ofevoking subsequent trait changes. Althoughthese interventions have had varying degreesof success—with some exhibiting quite largeeffects (e.g., Hudson & Fraley’s, 2015 secondintervention increased participants’ extraver-sion by a half standard deviation)—there maybe other more efficacious methods of interven-ing on participants’ personality traits. For exam-ple, interventions based upon the socialinvestment hypothesis—such as asking partici-pants to commit to social roles that may instilldesired traits—may be equally or even more

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successful than existing sociogenomic interven-tions. Moreover, there may be individual varia-tion in the extent to which any one interventionis successful. For example, interventions that askparticipants to merely modify their behaviorsmay fail to work for individuals with relativelylower levels of self-regulation. These individ-ualsmay benefit from interventions that provideeven greater structure—such as asking them tointerface with social roles that create strongexternal presses for desired traits, for example.Thus, future research should explore otherpotential interventions that might also changepersonality traits and test the extent to whichthese interventions work on various individualswith different qualities.

Can nonvolitional interventions work?

One final important future research directionis exploring the extent to which nonvolitionalchange interventions might be efficacious inchanging people’s personality traits. Namely,all of the interventions described in this chapterthat directly targeted personality traits weredesigned to help participants change themselvesin desired ways. Many interventionists, however,may be interested in systematically changingpeople’s personality traits irrespective of theparticipants’ will (e.g., Roberts, Hill, & Davis,2017). For example, policymakers might beinterested in implementing interventions toincrease consciousness in the general popula-tion. It remains an open question whether thesetype of researcher-directed interventions canproduce trait change.

On the one hand, it is certainly possible thatresearcher-directed interventions may be effica-cious. Namely, the vast majority of peoplealready want to increase with respect to eachBig Five personality trait (Hudson & Fraley,2016b). Thus, it may be trivially easy to alignparticipants’ will with the goals of the interven-tion. For example, if an interventionist wants toincrease participants’ agreeableness, it may

suffice to simply appeal to these widespreaddesires (e.g., “Research suggests that the vastmajority of people want to become more agree-able. We’d like to help you attain this goal”). Incontrast, interventionists attempting to dictatehow participants should change their personal-ity traits may encounter reactance. Similarly,even if participants are amenable to the inter-ventionists’ goals, they may lack the motivationto engage in behaviors that would produce traitchange. Thus, future research should explorewhether participants can be assigned traits tochange—or whether the self’s volition is criticalin predicting the success of trait change efforts.

To the extent that future studies find thatresearcher-directed personality change is plausi-ble, this would open a plethora of new questionsto explore. For example, do researcher-directedpersonality change and volitional personalitychange differ with respect to how much changecan be attained—or how long those changescan bemaintained after cessation of the interven-tion? Do different types of interventions workbetter for attaining volitional change versusresearcher-directed change? Do different partic-ipants benefit from researcher-directed interven-tions versus volitional ones? And so on.

Conclusion

Personality traits predict a wide array of criti-cally important life outcomes (Ozer & Benet-Martı́nez, 2006; Roberts et al., 2007). An emergingbody of research suggests that personality traitsmay be able to be changed via interventions(Hudson et al., 2019; Hudson & Fraley, 2015)—which may have important downstreamconsequences for participants’ well-being andlife outcomes (Hudson & Fraley, 2016a). How-ever, many critical questions in this promisingnew area of research remain unexplored. Futureresearch should continue to elucidate the precisemechanisms that facilitate personality traitchange, the extent to which these changes can


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be maintained over extended timeframes, andwhether intervention-driven personality changecan translate into improvements in importantlife outcomes.

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dynamics and processes in personality change interventions

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