If you think your personality is fixed, we have some good news. Recent research found a “striking and unexpected result” among over-60s who’d completed tasks to help them change parts of their personality – they saw about as much transformation as their younger peers.
So which traits might be worth pursuing?
Well, if you’re hoping to become more creative, psychologist Dr Gosia Goclowska said: “Creativity is not limited to geniuses or prodigies. In the right circumstances and with the right mindset, most people can be very creative regardless of what personality they have”.
Here’s the trait her research linked to greater creativity, as well as how to foster it.
“Novelty seeking” could boost creativity
In a paper published in the Journal of Personality, Dr Goclowska’s research tasked 798 participants with completing “brick tests”.
These involved asking people to think of as many imaginative uses for a brick as possible in three minutes. Then, the researchers scored the answers by originality, fluency, and flexibility; this was a “divergent thinking” test.
Participants were also tested on traits like extraversion, openness to experience, novelty seeking, and divergent thinking.
In the first two studies, the researchers noted a consistent, and pretty considerable, link between creativity and “novelty seeking”, or openness to new experiences, challenges, and change.
How can I boost “novelty seeking”?
The third study, meanwhile, sought to find out whether people could up their novelty-seeking capacity – regardless of their personality type.
To do this, they asked some people to consider how having new experiences could benefit them, while others weren’t given the prompt.
Those who’d mused over the possible advantages of the trait seemed to grow more creative afterwards, while the others didn’t.
Dr Goclowska said: “Our study suggests that using the right set of instructions, one that encourages people to embrace novelty and challenge, can lead to increased creativity in nearly everyone.”
One way to boost your novelty-seeking, she added, is to “cultivate a greater openness towards novelty – for instance, by thinking of the benefits that novelty can bring to our life”.
She ended by saying that “the application of this research really depends on the person and what they need in a given situation” – some people might be too busy to seek out many new experiences, for instance, while others might have no issue coming up with ideas, but need help executing them.
“But there are of course some new situations which we can’t avoid. For instance, sometimes people have to move to a different city or country, learn a new skill, or adapt to changes in their environment.
“In those circumstances, seeking support from others and taking care of our psychological health can increase our ability to cope with change and can help cultivate a greater openness. In those instances, if we succeed at being open and positive about new experiences, they are likely to be a win-win when it comes to creativity.”
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