Assessing the Desire to Change Personality across Methods

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Personality Science
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Understanding individuals' desires to change personality traits is crucial.
• Existing research employs diverse methods like inventories, open-ended responses, and direct questioning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To be the first study to assess personality change desires using multiple methods within the same sample.
• To compare findings from each method to meta-analyses of previous studies.
• To explore within-person convergence and divergence across methods.

Main Methods:

• Utilized three distinct methods to assess personality change desires in 500 undergraduates.
• Compared findings from each method against meta-analyses of similar studies.
• Analyzed within-person consistency of reported personality change goals across methods.

Main Results:

• Each method's findings closely replicated results from prior studies using that specific method.
• Some goal prevalence deviations may be attributed to data collection during a global pandemic.
• High convergence was not observed across the three methods; only desires to increase Extraversion showed some consistency.

Conclusions:

• Methodological differences significantly influence the conclusions drawn about personality change desires.
• The study underscores the importance of considering the assessment method when interpreting personality modification goals.
• Future research should account for these methodological variations to better understand personality change aspirations.