Personality Over Time

What the research shows: 

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Personality has a stable core, but most of us grow up — slowly, unevenly and well into later life.

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Source: Damian, R. I., Spengler, M., Sutu, A., & Roberts, B. W. (2019). Sixteen going on sixty-six: A longitudinal study of personality stability and change across 50 years. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(3), 674–695.

In 1960, nearly 1,800 American 16-year-olds took a personality test. Fifty years later, researchers tested them again. It’s one of the longest looks we have at a simple question: how much do people really change?

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Key findings

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• Some of who you are sticks. Teenagers who ranked high on a trait compared with their peers tended to still rank higher at 66 — but the link was modest. A tendency, not a destiny.
• Almost everyone adapted. On average, people became calmer, more self-confident, more organised, more considerate of others and more willing to lead.
• The biggest shift was in dependability. The trait capturing responsibility and getting things done grew more than any other — a large change by any standard.
• Change is personal. On any given trait, around 40% of people changed meaningfully. The other 60% didn’t.

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^{“You are not who you were at 16 — but you’re not a stranger to them either.”}

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What we found interesting

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Traits are real and fairly durable, but they’re not a life sentence — and the ones that grew most are exactly what teams rely on: dependability, composure and consideration for others.

The authors point to earlier research suggesting this growth is driven partly by the roles people take on — work, relationships, responsibility. For managers, that shifts the question from “what type is this person?” to “what is this team asking them to practise and how do we get the best from them?”

Disclaimer

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Summary prepared by our research team with AI support; video generated using AI based on published research.