Haehner Peter, Wright Amanda Jo, Bleidorn Wiebke
Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Commun Psychol. 2024 Nov 30;2(1):115. doi: 10.1038/s44271-024-00167-5.
Personality traits predict a broad range of life outcomes, including relationship success, educational attainment, and health. As many people have the desire to change some aspects of their personality, volitional personality change (VPC) - self-directed trait changes in the direction of personal change goals - has recently gained increasing attention. This preregistered review aimed to provide an integrative overview of the emerging literature on VPC ( https://osf.io/ns79m ). Based on a systematic literature search on PsycINFO (October 1, 2024), we identified 30 empirical, longitudinal studies on VPC (N = 7719). We summarized the findings from these studies in a narrative integration and using meta-analytic tools and distinguished two research strands in the VPC literature: studies examining VPC without interventions and studies examining intervention-induced VPC. Simply having a goal to change one's personality was only weakly related to actual personality changes. However, VPC interventions were successful in promoting desired personality changes (d = 0.22, 95% CI = [0.005, 0.433], 7 studies, 26 effect sizes). These personality changes seemed to last or even increase during follow-up periods (d = 0.37, 95% CI = [0.140, 0.591], 4 studies, 17 effect sizes) and were associated with changes in other variables such as well-being. Although the available evidence on VPC is still limited, the initial results on VPC are promising. Future research is needed to draw definitive conclusions on the generalizability, mechanisms, and practical implications of VPC. The authors received no funding to conduct this review.
人格特质能够预测广泛的生活结果，包括人际关系的成功、教育成就和健康状况。由于许多人希望改变自身人格的某些方面，意志性人格改变（VPC）——即朝着个人改变目标方向进行的自我导向特质改变——最近受到了越来越多的关注。本预先注册的综述旨在对有关VPC的新兴文献（https://osf.io/ns79m）提供综合性概述。基于对PsycINFO（2024年10月1日）的系统文献检索，我们确定了30项关于VPC的实证纵向研究（N = 7719）。我们通过叙述性整合和使用元分析工具总结了这些研究的结果，并区分了VPC文献中的两个研究方向：考察无干预情况下的VPC的研究和考察干预诱发的VPC的研究。仅仅有改变人格的目标与实际的人格改变之间的关联较弱。然而，VPC干预成功地促进了期望的人格改变（d = 0.22，95%置信区间 = [ 0.005, 0.433]，7项研究，26个效应量）。这些人格改变在随访期间似乎持续存在甚至有所增加（d = 0.37，95%置信区间 = [0.140, 0.591]，4项研究，17个效应量），并且与其他变量如幸福感的变化相关。尽管关于VPC的现有证据仍然有限，但VPC的初步结果很有前景。需要未来的研究来就VPC的普遍性、机制和实际意义得出明确结论。作者未获得进行本综述的资金。
