Leveraging Personality Dynamics for Volitional Personality Change Interventions

Personality is highly consequential for important life outcomes, and many people are motivated to change aspects of their personality. This implies a high potential for volitional personality change interventions, which are on the rise. However, their effect sizes tend to be small and heterogeneous. A key reason may be that intervention designs remain largely disconnected from current work on dynamics relevant to personality change. We argue that personality interventions should be enriched by work on personality dynamics, which focuses on momentary states and their patterns (mean-level, variability, state-state associations, situational contingencies, temporal dynamics). We outline three opportunities for more effective personality interventions incorporating personality dynamics. First, dynamics can serve as novel targets of intervention, representing key mechanisms underlying personality change (e.g., decreasing stress reactivity in neuroticism interventions). Second, dynamics can be used to personalize interventions at a between-person level (e.g., promoting person-specific activities associated with desired states). Third, dynamics can be used as momentary within-person triggers of adaptive interventions (e.g., encouraging the planning of social activities following a day with little social contact). Key advantages of the proposed approach include potentially more effective, safer, and more inclusive interventions with stronger downstream effects on life outcomes. We provide guidance on the methodological implementation and discuss limitations and future directions. Ultimately, leveraging personality dynamics could enable a novel generation of personality interventions.