But what about events that happen later in life? Does our personality become set after a certain amount of time or do events continue change us? To find out, researchers looked in detail at what happens to people’s personality when they go through a divorce.
The new study looked at married individuals in Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom for 4-6 years, covering before and after divorce and found that martial separation did not change people’s personalities. The Belgium researchers used data from Understanding Society for UK couples, along with European longitudinal datasets, to see if divorce was associated with permanent personality change. They measured personality changes based on the Big Five traits, neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness.
Key findings
- Divorce did not seem to result in any permanent personality change.
- The only trait that showed some increase was agreeableness, but this was only slight and only represented two countries.
- There were no notable differences between the personalities of men and women post-divorce.
- People are more likely to marry someone with similar personality traits and married couples grow even more alike with time.
Although this research didn’t find evidence for consistent personality change, there were a few isolated effects that were mostly positive changes – people became more outgoing and agreeable for a while. These changes are probably because divorce leads to people rebuilding their social networks and making new or renewed friendships.
The researchers said, “These traits are mostly beneficial with regard to building social networks and are therefore less needed in marriage, as the number of a married person’s friends tends to shrink. However, when marriage ends, these traits become highly rewarding again. The results of this study partially support this reasoning, as we found some evidence for increases in agreeableness.”
Family and households
