Can a company train an employee to become more conscientious even if the employee does not invest in improving that quality? A new study suggests yes.
But improving one's emotional stability without that person's commitment is unlikely to happen, says SMU psychology professor Nathan Hudson.
A growing body of research suggests that personality traits can be changed through intervention. As a recent study by Hudson notes, personality traits have been linked to a wide variety of life outcomes, such as the quality of relationships and job success.
The aim of his recent research was to test two theories; that successful personality intervention may require participants to choose which traits to change, and to be actively invested in changing the target traits.
He found that conscientiousness—the ability to be responsible, hardworking, and organized—can be improved even if participants were not motivated to change. It was found that completing a series of tasks over a regulated period of time changed habits and thereby improved conscientiousness.
But emotional stability was another matter:Study participants only got better at coping with difficult situations if they chose to work on their emotional stability. Otherwise, tasks they were given for four weeks turned out to be ineffective.
“This provides promising evidence that schools, businesses or other organizations can ask people to make relatively small changes that can help improve their lives by making them more organized and accountable over time,” Hudson said. “In contrast, it seems that emotional stability may require a little more investment from the people participating in an intervention.”
Hudson emphasized that this research is not about controlling people.
“The idea of personality trait change—especially other people trying to change an individual's personality—can sound scary. But whether we recognize it or not, society is full of interventions designed to try to change our personality traits," he said. “For example, primary school is a massive intervention designed to help children become more intelligent, yes, but also more friendly and sociable, more responsible and hardworking.”
Previous research by Hudson and other psychologists has shown that people who actively worked to change aspects of their personality were in many cases successful in achieving the desired results.
But until now, it was not clear whether a person could achieve successful results if they did not choose which personality trait they wanted to change and were not invested in making that change.
Hudson conducted two separate studies to answer that question. Each lasted four months.
In the first, 175 students were randomly assigned to change either conscientiousness or emotional stability. They were then given the tasks of their choice to improve that personality trait. For example, those selected to work conscientiously were given challenges like “organize and tidy your desk” or “make a list of tasks you would like to complete.”
The second trial had more than 400 students from different universities choose which property they wanted to work on. But unbeknownst to them, half of the participants were randomly assigned to receive challenges that focused on a trait they had not chosen.
In both studies, the students' personality traits were measured before and after tasks were assigned using the 44-item Big Five Inventory test that is standard among psychologists.
Hudson found that students who completed more tasks for conscientious tasks saw an improvement, even if they didn't know why they were assigned the tasks. But for those who chose not to work on emotional stability, the challenges were completely inert – or even made that trait worse.
Hudson suspects that the reason people need to be motivated to change emotional stability is that this trait has to do with negative emotions.
"For many people, it can be difficult to 'just stop being angry' or 'just stop being stressed,'" he said. “My suspicion is that indirect strategies to change one's emotions, such as writing in a journal or thinking about positive things, can only really work if people want to use those techniques to change their emotions.”
Conscientiousness, on the other hand, can be easily faked and magnified over time by mechanical actions, such as cleaning your house or using a calendar.
“Motivation is largely irrelevant to interventions that target conscientiousness, as long as participants adhere to the intervention,” Hudson said.
