In the first research of its kind, a new University of California, Davis, project indicates that for the most part, individuals devise goals consistent with their personality traits — and a person’s goals are related to how their personality then changes over time.
The study analyzed more than 500 students when they started college, annually throughout college, and two decades later on their goals associated with being creative, with a successful career, having a family, being wealthy, or becoming active in religion or politics. The goals of these UC Berkeley students — roughly half were still responding after two decades — stayed relatively steady over time, although there were several notable changes.
“This study was a unique opportunity to examine how individuals’ personalities and major life goals were related to each other across two decades of life,” said Olivia E. Atherton, the lead author of the study and former doctoral student in psychology at UC Davis. “We found that, in many ways, one’s personality shapes the types of life goals that are valued, and as a result of pursuing those goals, personality changes.”
Successful people stress goals
Various enormously successful individuals, such as Albert Einstein, have noted the importance of targets, researchers said. Einstein once said, for example: “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” The personality characteristics he possessed were likely the driving force supporting the types of goals he aimed to achieve, researchers stated.
“Einstein’s tendency to be creative, curious, and intellectual likely fueled his scientific goals, as well as his more aesthetic goals, such as his passion for playing the violin,” the study authors wrote.
The personality traits examined in the present study are termed the “Big Five” in psychology. They are neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. These five traits broadly capture most of the ways in which people differ from one another, and they are related to a wide range of important life outcomes.
Researchers examined these traits, Together with aesthetic goals (wanting to be creative); economic goals (wanting to have a successful career and be wealthy); family/relationship targets (wanting to be married and have kids); hedonistic goals (desiring to have fun and experience enjoyment ); political goals (wanting to have influence in public affairs); spiritual goals (desiring to take part in religious institutions); and social aims (wanting to help others in need).
“… We found that, on average, individuals increased in agreeableness and conscientiousness, decreased in neuroticism, and showed little change in openness to experience and extraversion from age 18 to 40,” researchers stated.
Some targets become less applicable
They also discovered that people place less significance on most goals over time, suggesting that people winnow the targets they value with age, presumably as they’re achieving milestones associated with these goals and thus, the targets become less significant as a result.
“By identifying their own personal strengths and limitations, middle-aged adults may place less importance on certain major life goals because some goals may no longer be viewed as self-relevant,” researchers said.
The authors did find that character traits are related to major life goal development over time. By way of example, individuals who become more agreeable, kind and compassionate, also tend to place more emphasis on social and family/relationship goals with time. And, individuals who become more responsible, organized and self-controlled often value more economic and family goals.
Related Journal Article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167220949362