Do you consider yourself grumpy and think you're going to become a cranky grandma who won't even want to bake cookies for your grandchildren? Or are you superfluous and sociable, and you think you're going to be one of those nice little ladies who love talking to everyone?
For know that this is not the way things happen. According to the longest study ever conducted of the human personality, most people's psychological traits change completely between adolescence and old age.
63 years later everyone had changed
Research that came to the conclusion that mute personality was done by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and lasted 63 years. The story began in the 1950s, when a group of researchers asked some teachers to evaluate the personality of 1,200 14-year-olds.
Adolescents were assessed for six psychological traits: self-confidence, perseverance, mood stability, awareness (sense of duty), originality and desire to learn. More than six decades later, the researchers managed to assemble 635 of these same teens, now 77, but only 174 agreed to repeat the test.
This time, participants evaluated themselves for psychological traits and were also assessed by a close person, such as a spouse or other family member. The surprise was that the researchers did not find a correlation between personality in adolescence and personality in old age, either in their own or their family's assessment.
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These results were astonishing because, in previous studies that considered participants from childhood to adulthood and from adulthood to old age, a stability of psychological traits was found.
Apparently, changes in personality are gradual during the life stages, but when you consider a long period of time, like the 63 years of the new research, they are quite noticeable.
Is there any explanation for this?
Late adolescence and early adulthood are times when personality development occurs, often accompanied by very significant changes. The passage from adulthood to old age is also a period of change and reflection that can modify one's psychological traits.
Due to the wide range of time covered by the study, participants had already gone through these periods of greatest change, and had experiences that could result in changes in their behavior.
Nevertheless, it must be borne in mind that from the 1950s to the present time, the concept of personality has also changed. According to personality trait theory, the factors considered today are five: extroversion / introversion, level of socialization, scrupulity (sense of duty), emotional stability, and openness to new experiences.
Read also: Science confirms: The longer you spend with your mother, the longer she will live.
Because of this, the assessment of students at 14 could be considered superficial and incomplete for today's parameters. Perhaps if modern personality theory had been used in the 1950s, psychological traits would have remained more stable over time.
Another possible flaw of the study is that the teachers 'assessment in 1950 may have been influenced by their knowledge of adolescents' academic performance.
Finally, it is also necessary to consider that the 174 participants who agreed to repeat the 77-year-old test excelled in intelligence in relation to others. This fact may indicate that this feature has some influence on personality change during life.
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