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Abstract
This research advances the way that we understand how people go about changing who they are. One unanswered question is how do lay people perceive and think about changes to their personality? In this study, we compared participant’s perceptions of who they are with their perceptions of who they used to be. We aimed to elucidate individual differences in people’s perception of past change and were interested in understanding if people tended to perceive past changes in terms of either volitional or situational factors. We also investigated individual differences in the capability to change one’s personality by investigating the sense of agency as a key concept that should affect one’s ability to change. Perceived personality change was calculated in the socially desirable direction (directional change) and for overall change (absolute) which does not consider the direction of change. We found that implicit belief systems around changeability or stability were associated with whether people believe they have changed over time. Incremental theorists reported more directional and absolute change. People’s beliefs in their personality change were also associated with whether or not they endorsed strategies that should help them change their personality. Participants who endorsed strategies for change also believed that they changed more over time. Lastly, we demonstrated that there are individual differences that predict someone’s ability to change their perceived personality. Agency plays a role in the relationship between strategy endorsement and perceived change and this role is different when considering directional and absolute change. This research increases our understanding of how people change their personalities. We demonstrated that people perceive past personality change and report said change as occurring because of volitional and/or situational strategies. Lastly, we demonstrated that beliefs about implicit theories and sense of agency play an important role in the perception of change over time.