Big life events can shape personality, but their impact varies greatly depending on who experiences them and how they interpret them. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Nature. personality journal. The study found that factors such as age, gender, a person’s perceptions, and even who is assessing their personality influence whether an event is associated with lasting change.
Although personality traits are often viewed as relatively stable traits, research has shown that people can change over time. Events such as entering into a romantic relationship, becoming a parent, experiencing illness, and changing jobs have all been proposed as potential triggers for personality development. However, studies examining these associations often yield contradictory results, prompting researchers to examine individual differences in more detail.
Lara Erchen of the University of Bremen and Christian Kandler of the University of Bielefeld analyzed data from 623 participants who completed three assessments over four years. In addition to self-report, up to three informants rated each participant’s personality. Researchers looked at 21 categories of life events spanning work, finances, relationships, housing, health, and personal accomplishments.
Using a new modeling approach, they found that life events are associated with changes in several personality traits, but that the patterns vary widely depending on the type of event. Social and personal events showed the most associations with personality change, while housing-related events tended to have a weaker effect.
Relationship events seem to be particularly influential, although sometimes in unexpected ways. In some analyses, forming new relationships was associated with lower conscientiousness, whereas dissolving relationships was associated with lower agreeableness. Although having children was associated with decreased openness, experiencing setbacks and adversity had a more mixed effect.
The study also found that age matters. In general, older participants showed stronger personality changes after certain life events than younger adults. Gender differences emerged as well, with some events resulting in personality changes among women but not men, and vice versa. For example, women had a steeper decline in trait variance following gain-based occupational events.
In addition, people’s subjective interpretations of events also played an important role. People who viewed an event more positively often exhibited different personality trajectories than those who viewed the same event more negatively. For example, when we experience a change in the domestic situation, our emotions decrease when we perceive the event in a positive light.
One of the most striking findings was the inconsistency between measurement methods. Some effects of life events emerge only in participants’ ratings of their own personality, while others emerge only in ratings provided by friends, family, and partners. This suggests that changes in personality after major life experiences may be salient from some perspectives but not from others.
Oeltjen and Kandler conclude that “this high variability in the effects of life events may serve as an explanation for the inconclusive status of research on this topic, as studies that differ in one or more of these factors are unlikely to yield similar results.”
This study also identified several important limitations. Life events were assessed retrospectively. In other words, participants had to recall an experience that occurred over the past two years. The researchers also did not collect precise information about when exactly the event occurred during the observation period.
The study, “Individual Differences in the Impact of Life Events on Changes in Personality Traits,” was authored by Lara Erchen and Christian Kandler. Published in 2026.
