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CONCEPTUAL ISSUES IN ASSESSING WHETHER PERSONALITY CAN CHANGE

Can personality change? This question has absorbed psychologists since William James first proposed that personality was set “in plaster” by early adulthood (James, 1890; see also McCrae & Costa, 1990). Not all psychologists have agreed with James’s assertion of stability. For instance, Erikson (1950) cogently argued that adults, just like children, mature and change as they go through life’s stages (see also Vaillant, 1977). Likewise, one of the basic assumptions of clinical psychology is that individuals are able to make important changes in many aspects of their lives. At the extreme, some have even proposed that personality may be so malleable that it changes from situation to situation (Mischel, 1968). More recently, personality psychologists have argued both that basic personality traits tend to be relatively stable over the life course (Caspi & Herbener, 1990; Costa & McCrae, 1980) and that personality goes through maturational changes and adaptations (Helson & Moane, 1987; Ozer & Gjerde, 1989). This volume explores multiple perspectives on the issue of whether personality can change.