[INFJ] - Personality Changes Across the Lifespan | INFJ Forum

[INFJ] Personality Changes Across the Lifespan

passionista

Regular Poster
Nov 20, 2011
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6: The Loyalist
In your opinion and experience(s), is personality (the way your process your experiences as well as others, temperament, the way you approach day to day challenges and interact with others) malleable or constant across your lifespan?
 
Personality and temperament are separate concepts: the first is dynamic and the second is static. Temperament traits like those on the Big Five test (conscientiousness, openness, neuroticism, agreeableness, and extraversion) are generally considered innate and immutable - subtle psychological underpinnings that bias us towards (and away from) certain styles of behavior. Personality, on the other hand, can be summarized as the synthesis of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive responses of a person to their environment. It evolves over time from a base, unadorned platform into (hopefully) a towering spire of individuality and actualized self-hood. Jung's personality theory revolving around eight discrete yet inter-related cognitive functions is an example of this; biology provides the raw form of personality (one's "stack" of cognitive functions; Ni-Fe-Ti-Se for INFJs) whose content is colored and expanded through experience.