Quote:
Originally Posted by klokkasju  Hi everybody,
I recently met a person, who stated that one can not change his character after the age of 20. When I heard this sentence, I was shocked. And don't know why (and after several hours of thinking, I still don't know why) I always assumed that people can change everything about their character regardless how old they are (it may take some effort of course). So this person's thesis caught me off guard and up til now I can't put my mind off this.
I did some basic internet research and first of all found that character may be the wrong term (at least in my mother tongue, which is not English). The attributes I am concerned with are, for instance, being introvert/extrovert, risk appetite, curiosity. They are (in English) referred to as personality traits or just traits. And due to the so called five factor model there are five basic traits which are sufficient to describe a persons personality. And again I was shocked to read, that most researchers believe that the value of this traits doesn't change after the age of 30. As I said before, it was only a basic internet research, so I may have missed the few theories which believe in "unlimited" change of personality. But all the theories I found, stated in one way or another that the major "action" appears in the first 20 or maybe 30 years.
I can't help myself. This idea of "there will come an certain age after which I won't (be able to) change (myself)" scares me. Whatever I read from Steve, I had never the impression that he thinks we can't change. So I hope to find here some ideas about all this "personality change business" which help me figure out why I am so unsure about the "static theories". What do you think about personality changes? Do they occur in every age? Can we deliberately initiate them?
So far, thanks for listening/reading
klokkasju
PS: I am not sure if my usage of "character" and "personality" is totally right. I hope my questions are clear nevertheless. |
I don't know these studies and frankly I don't care about them either.
From personal experience I know I can change after the age of 20 (I'm nearly 22 and most of my changes happened in the last year
) and I know a guy who changed completely in his late 30's.
My basic proposition is that these studies are aimed at the average group, the individuals who never seriously get into Personal Development. The guys and girls who scratch the service and never go deep, they greatly outnumber the people that are determined to go for it. So if you take a sample from the population and do tests to determine if they have changed personality wise then yeah the number of people that change is tiny. Not because its not possible but because most people are just to comfortable in there own little shells to change who they are.
Neuro plasticity is also interesting, check it out:
Neuroplasticity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia