Understanding personality stability and change from McAdam's perspective - Implications for reserach and practice

Abstract

Whether personality changes over time has long been a central question in psychology. While most research has approached this issue through the lens of trait stability, such a perspective alone is insufficient to fully capture the dynamic and multifaceted nature of personality development. From a constructivist standpoint, personality is not a fixed set of attributes but an evolving process of self-organization, shaped by the continual interaction between individuals and their sociocultural contexts. In this work, we adopt McAdams's integrative three-layer model of personality—encompassing dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and narrative identity—to explore how stability and change coexist across the life span. Drawing on empirical evidence, we argue that although traits tend to relative stability, particularly from early adulthood onward, characteristic adaptations and life narratives are inherently more fluid and responsive to life experience, personal goals, and meaning-making processes. Personality change, therefore, is not merely a quantitative shift in traits but often reflects qualitative transformations in how individuals construct and reconstruct their sense of self. We discuss the implications of this perspective for psychological practice, emphasizing the importance of supporting narrative revision and tailoring interventions to individuals' unique developmental trajectories and personal meanings.