By covering a period of 63 years, this in a sense is the longest ever personality study. But contrary to what we might expect based on previous findings, Matthew Harris and his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh failed to find any correlation between their participants’ personality scores at age 14 and their scores on the same items at the age of 77. “Personality in older age may be quite different from personality in childhood,” they said.
Longest ever personality study finds no correlation between measures taken at age 14 and age 77
Comparing the personality test scores of the same participants taken twice, 63 years apart, the researchers found no correlations at all. By Christian Jarrett
This post has been reshared 2 times on Google+
View this post on Google+
Well, duh. People change with experience. It's inevitable.
I actually find that somewhat relieving: I can't imagine how infuriating it would have been like if I'd been like this when I was in school.
+Jason ON I don't think changing with experience is the same thing as changing your personality.
An alternate reality where people have the same personality but act differently in response to different situations based upon their experiences seems perfectly plausible to me.
In other words, if I'm 16 years old and haven't ever encountered the tricky Blosnarf Beast that looks like a cute kitty cat but after you take it in it steals your wallet, I'm going to know from experience not to take in the next Blosnarf Beast I encounter. I'm not sure its fair to say my personality has changed.
Your personality changes because as you learn new things your physical brain changes. As you age, as you have new experiences, eat new things, drink water from different areas and eat food grown in different soil your physiology changes. That means the mind changes as well.