学进去

If you look across the entire lifespan, what you see is an average increase in desirable personality traits（特点）.Psychologists call this the “maturity principle” and it’s comforting to know that, assuming your personality follows a typical course, then the older you get, the maturer you will become. However, it’s not such good news for young adolescents, because at this point, something known as the “disruption hypothesis” kicks in.

Consider a study of Dutch teenagers who completed personality tests each year for six or seven years from 2005. The boys showed a temporary dip in   conscientiousness—orderliness and self-discilpline in early adolescence, and the girls showed a temporary increase in neuroticism—emotional instability. This seems to back up some of the stereotypes we have of messy teen bedrooms and mood swings. Thankfully, this decline in personality is short-lived, with the Dutch data showing that the teenagers’ previous positive traits rebound（反弹）in later adolescence.

Both parents and their teenage children agree that changes occur, but surprisingly, the perceived change can depend on who is measuring, according to a 2017 study of over 2,700 German teenagers. They rated their own personalities twice, at age 11 and age 14, and their parents also rated their personalities at these times. Some differences emerged: for instance, while the teenagers rated themselves as declining in agreeability, their parents saw this decline as much shaper. Also, the teens saw themselves as increasingly extroverted（外向的）, but their parents saw them as increasingly introverted.

This mismatch can perhaps be explained by the big changes underway in the parent-child relationship brought on by teenagers’ growing desire for autonomy and privacy. The researchers point out that parents and teens might also be using different reference points—parents are measuring their teenagers’ traits against a typical adult, while the teenagers are comparing their own traits against those displayed by their peers.

This is in line with several further studies, which also reveal a pattern of a temporary reduction in advantageous traits in early adolescence. The general picture of the teenage years as a temporary personality “disruption” therefore seems accurate. In fact, we’re only just beginning to understand the complex mix of genetic and environmental factors that contribute to individual patterns of personality change.

Studies also offer some clues for how we might create more nurturing environments for teenagers to aid their personality development. This is an approach worth pushing further given that teenage personality traits are predictive of experiences in later life. For instance, one British study of over 4,000 teenagers showed that those who scores lower in conscientiousness were twice as likely to be unemployed later in life, in comparison with those who scored higher.

People focus so much on teaching teenagers facts and getting them to pass exams, but perhaps they ought to pay at least as much attention to helping nurture their personalities.