Volitional Change in Adult Attachment: Can People Who Want to Become Less Anxious and Avoidant Move Closer towards Realizing those Goals?

Volitional Change in Pathological Traits: Can People Change Their Maladaptive Traits?

Research suggests people want to change their normative personality traits-and they can volitionally do so. However, studies have not yet addressed volitional change in pathological personality. Consequently, the current study examined (a) people's desires to change pathological traits, (b) whether these change goals predict subsequent trait change, (c) whether this withstands controlling normative traits, and (d) the extent to which pathological trait change predicts relevant outcomes. College students (N = 463) self-reported their pathological traits weekly for up to 16 weeks. People with elevated pathological traits generally desired to decrease these traits. Furthermore, goals to change negative affectivity and disinhibition predicted corresponding trait change. Thus, people want to reduce their pathological traits-and they may be able to do so for some traits.

Assessing the Desire to Change Personality across Methods

Various methods have been used to describe individuals' desires to change their personality traits including: trait change inventories, identifying personality change goals in open-ended responses, and asking participants for goals to change personality directly. The current study is the first to assess personality change desires with multiple methods in the same sample (N = 500 undergraduates). Findings with each method were compared to meta-analyses of other studies utilizing each respective method, and methods were then compared within-person to explore how the same person might provide different information about their desire to change their personality with each method. The findings of each method replicated the results of other studies using that method very closely. Some deviations from previous the studies in the prevalence of certain goals were likely due to goals being collected during a global pandemic. The three methods did not show a high degree of convergence. Only participants desiring to increase Extraversion in one method tended to express desires to increase Extraversion in the other two methods. The methodological differences between the methods impact the conclusions that can be drawn with each.