The Truth About Aging and Personality

Some researchers view key personality traits as plaster that largely “sets” when you reach adulthood. But studies have found that your character can continue to change into your middle age and beyond.

On the whole, women undergo a bigger transformation than men in their middle age. Females tend to gain self-confidence as they get older, especially from 30 to 60. Men change relatively little on that score. On the other hand, they grow a bit more friendly and social in their middle years, while women become less outgoing.

Your genes and how you grew up both help shape your personality. Studies on twins found that roughly half of your personal traits may be inherited. If both of your parents are prone to anxiety, you might be more likely to be that way, too.

Over the decades, different researchers distilled personality into different groups of stable traits. Today, a theory popular worldwide  is called the ”Big Five” dimensions:

• Extraversion (outgoing, sociable)
• Agreeableness (trusting, giving)
• Openness (curious, imaginative)
• Conscientiousness (organized, thorough)
• Neuroticism (anxious, moody)

All other things being equal, having certain personality traits can lengthen your life span by several years or more. Specifically, you may live longer the higher you score on extraversion and conscientiousness. It also helps the more you’re open to experiences and ideas and emotionally stable (low neuroticism). 

Compared to women, men on the whole are more open to new experiences and intellectual stimulation. For both sexes, imagination and curiosity drop off more quickly after age 30.

Lots of people would like to change something about themselves. With effort and time, some do succeed. One study found that it may be easier to train yourself to become more outgoing or emotionally stable than it is to turn yourself into a more artistic, imaginative person or to change your natural level of stubbornness, trust, or modesty.

The older people get, the better their emotional stability. Calmness is a facet of that. Seniors also tend to become more sensitive to other people and, well, more mature. On the other hand, leadership and impulsiveness seem to be more hardwired. One study found that in about 3 out of 4 people, those traits stayed unchanged over 5 decades.

Among the Big Five personality traits, this is the biggest area of growth between the ages of 21 and 30 for both sexes. People continue to become more conscientious as they get older, but never as markedly as they did during their 20s.

Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia can change your personality by killing cells in parts of your brain. Damage to your frontal lobe, for example, can turn you more passive or rude. Using MRI images, researchers have found possible links between volumes of different regions of the brain and four of the Big Five personality traits (openness was the one exception).

Where you fall in your family order barely has any impact on the Big Five personality traits like agreeableness and extraversion. Researchers also haven’t found any meaningful link to more specific characteristics like patience, trusting nature, or political orientation. The one exception? Firstborn children as a group score higher on intelligence than their younger siblings. And they tend to view themselves as smarter, too.