As a few thousand vaguely patronising Instagram posts will tell you – every new day is an opportunity to turn over a new leaf. Start afresh, be better. But where to start?
Well, you could adopt a new hobby or set yourself a small challenge. Or maybe you could get much more radical and change your personality.
In scientific terms, personality is simply a set of traits that reflect how you tend to think, feel and behave. It might sound harsh or confronting to suggest changing your personality, but many surveys suggest that most people wish to alter at least some of their traits.
Psychologists largely recognise there are five key personality traits: openness to experience (your willingness to try new things); conscientiousness (your self-discipline, ambition and orderliness); extroversion (how you're drawn to fun); agreeableness (how warm, friendly and trusting you are); and neuroticism (how much you experience negative emotions, such as worry and doubt).
Unlike moods or emotions, personality traits are relatively stable. If you don’t see your friend for a few years, you still recognise them as essentially the same person when you finally do meet up.
It might sound far-fetched, then, to change such a fundamental aspect of ourselves. But psychologists have been stress-testing personality, and their findings suggest that not only is personality change possible, it’s actually a jolly sensible idea.
For instance, through a series of studies published in 2023 and 2024, a research team based across various European universities showed that an app was able to help people change their personalities in the ways they wanted.
Because of its international inception, PEACH (PErsonality coACH) was only available to download in German – but an English version will soon be on its way.
Participants had to choose a trait to focus on and then the app gave them self-help tips, prompting them to adopt activities in line with that trait – such as nudging them to do an important task rather than procrastinating (to boost their conscientiousness), or taking a photo of something beautiful every day (to boost their openness).
PEACH not only shifted the desired traits, but the changes lasted even after a year. What’s more, the changes were associated with increases in overall life satisfaction.
Getting started
If you're interested in changing your traits, a great place to start is a personality test that taps into the previously mentioned 'Big Five'. There are various free options online. Have a look at your scores and think about how – and more importantly, why – you’d like to change.
Rather than thinking of your traits in abstract terms, consider your hopes and ambitions in life. What could you change to address those aims? Do you want to increase your extroversion to make more friends? Or boost your conscientiousness to succeed more in your career?
Another approach is to consider how the different traits have been linked with various outcomes in life.
For instance, extroverts tend to be happier, while neurotic types tend to suffer more from depression and anxiety. Conscientious people generally tend to be more successful in their chosen career paths.
Meanwhile, having greater openness has been found to help protect against dementia and agreeable people tend to experience less stress.
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A blueprint for change
Psychologists have identified several key ingredients for successful personality change. First, you need to want to change. Second, you need to commit to doing things differently – that includes changing how you think and behave.
Consider your personality as being grounded in various habits of thought and behaviour. To change it, you need to change those habits – that takes dedication, repetition and perseverance.
The PEACH app helped users in this respect by prompting them to think in terms of ‘if-then’ principles. These are small rules, such as: “If I’m waiting in a line, then I’ll make an effort to talk to the person next to me” (as a method of boosting your extroversion).
Finally, you need to check in, to see how your efforts are paying off and make tweaks. It's helpful to think of ways to change both from the inside-out (adopting new habits of thought, for instance), and the outside-in (recognising that your environment and the people you interact with also shape you).
If you’re serious about changing one or more of your traits, it’s worth not only learning new skills and habits, but also taking a look at things like your work culture or your friendship group, to consider whether they’re conducive to your personal development goals.
Neuroticism
Surveys show that lowering neuroticism is the most popular change to make. If you succeed, you’ll likely benefit – one study from 2013 estimated that a small reduction in neuroticism would boost your wellbeing by the equivalent of an extra $314,000 income per year (that’s over $400,000 in today’s money, or approximately £312,000).
If you’re a high scorer in neuroticism, it’s likely that you experience many negative thoughts, such as self-criticism and worry. Schools of psychotherapy abound with tips and tricks for getting these thoughts under control.
One of my favourites is the so-called ‘mind-bus’ technique.
Imagine that you’re the driver of a bus and your difficult thoughts are the passengers. You can then have fun, for example, getting them to sing what they’re nagging you with, or telling them you’re in charge.
The idea is to help create a distance between yourself and your thoughts so that they’ll trouble you less.
Conscientiousness
After lowering neuroticism, the next most sought-after personality change is to become more conscientious. It’s a good choice because more conscientiousness is associated with receiving more work promotions and living longer.
One way to get started is to realise that the secret to higher conscientiousness is not having ironclad willpower. It’s about avoiding temptations in the first place.
Psychologists talk about a ‘temptation generation cycle’ and you can get into the habit of disrupting it at different stages.
First of all, you can remove temptations (don’t leave the cookie jar out; don’t take your phone to bed). Secondly, you can influence your appraisal of temptations – tell yourself that the cookies look old and your phone makes you stressed.
The next step is to make the alternatives sparkle. Remind yourself of how good you’ll feel after you’ve eaten some fruit, or how rewarding it’ll be to read a book.
Extroversion
Surveys show the next most sought-after trait change is to become more of an extrovert. This could be a shrewd move – many recent studies have shown that when introverts act more extroverted, they enjoy it much more than they think they will.
They’ve even reported that it makes them feel more authentic.
One fun way to boost your extroversion is to learn a different language that makes you feel less inhibited (research suggests Spanish might be a good choice, but find what works for you).
A completely different approach could be to hone your flirtation skills – yes, really. A study from 2022 found that just three hours of training was sufficient to help make gains in extroversion.
Ultimately, these are just some initial ideas for how you can influence your traits. To achieve any meaningful change, you’ll need to stick at it and make a habit of your new ways of living.
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