As time goes by, are you still the same person you used to be? Many of you would think you are. But according to a new study, your personality can change greatly. You could be a completely different person at 77, compared to when you were a 14-year-old, reported The Huffington Post.
Psychologists(心理学家) at the UK's University of Edinburgh did the study on a group of Scottish people. The research found that almost everyone's personality changed when they grow old. The findings are published in a journal called Psychology and Aging.
The research is based on a study that began in 1950. A group of teachers gave more than1, 200 14-year-old students personality tests. They tested six basic personality traits(个性特点): self-confidence, sense of responsibility, perseverance (耐性), strong wishes to win, creativity and moods.
In 2012, researchers successfully found 174 of those 1, 200 students, who were 77 years old on average at the time. They agreed to take a personality test similar to the one they had completed 63 years earlier.
Researchers then compared the then-and-now test results. They were surprised to find great changes to all six personality traits of these people. Moods and sense of responsibility had changed less. But there were still not too many similarities between the two results.
The younger and older self seemed to be totally different for each person. It was "as if the second tests had been given to different people," the study's authors noted.
In the past, personality was widely believed to be stable(稳定的). William James, the father of American psychology, said that personality is "set like plaster(石膏板) ." This new study may bring some fresh ideas to the theory(理论).
