Personality change may improve happiness: study

A good way to become a happier person is to change your personality, a new study shows. The problem is that it’s not yet clear if people can control their personalities. The research, led by psychological experts at England’s University of Manchester, found that changes in personality were more strongly linked to how people’s sense of well-being changed over a four-year period than factors such as marital status, employment and income. What’s more, it found people’s personalities were more subject to change than previously believed.

“Before, personality was seen as quite a fixed, stable thing,” said lead author Chris Boyce, a researcher at Manchester’s school of psychological sciences.

Asked if people can consciously change their personalities to improve happiness, Boyce said: “Whether people can actively change their personalities is an ongoing debate at the moment. The point is that (per- sonality) does change and this feeds through to important changes in our well-being. So, we need to look more carefully at this as a potential source of improving people’s well-being.”

The study, published in the journal Social Indicators Research, assessed 8,625 subjects in Australia two times, four years apart. It measured their satisfaction with life, personality traits and changes to things such as income, employment and marital status.

Changes in personality were found to be twice as much of a predictor to fluctuations in well-being than the other factors considered.

Neuroticism, the degree to which people have negative emotional responses to various situations, was the biggest factor in how much a person’s sense of well-being changed; the more neurotic a person was, the worse they felt about life.

Extroversion was strongly correlated with having a positive view of personal well-being. Becoming more conscientious, agreeable and open to experience also had positive correlations with becoming happier.