Let’s Talk: Does your personality change as you get older?

You’ve probably heard experts and research before say that your personality doesn’t change much from the time you’re a child right through to old age.

In fact, some studies in the past have found that our personalities stay relatively stable right through our lives – changing very little from birth.

But a long-running study has come to a different conclusion.

The results of the Scottish study, which compared people’s personalities at age 14 to their current age of 77, were published in Psychology and Aging.

So, what did the results show?

Well, according to the study, your personality can change to a point that’s almost unrecognisable between your teen years and old age.

The study used six personality traits in their survey.

In 1950, the study looked into six personality traits of more than 1400 students.

In 2012, the study followed up with 131 of those students at age 77 and got them to fill in a questionnaire on the six personality traits using the same ratings scale as they did in 1950.

The directors of the survey from the University of Edinburgh wrote that while your personality appears to remain stable over short intervals, it gradually changes throughout adulthood.

“The longer the interval between two assessments of personality, the weaker the relationship between the two tends to be,” the study states.

“Our results suggest that, when the interval is increased to as much as 63 years, there is hardly any relationship at all.

“If so, personality changes only gradually throughout life, but by older age it may be quite different from personality in childhood.”

So there you have it, apparently your personality is different to what it was in childhood.

What do you think? Do you think your personality is different? Or do you think that our personalities stay much the same?