Life Events Nudge Big Five Traits

A new analysis pooling seven panel studies (~200,000 participants) finds major life events modestly shift personality: starting a job raises conscientiousness and lowers neuroticism, marriage lowers openness, and separation/divorce increases agreeableness. Effects are small but real—about the size of changes in self‑esteem and smaller than shifts in life satisfaction. Personality is plastic at the margins, not fixed or easily remolded. — This informs debates about selection versus treatment in life outcomes by showing marriage, work, and divorce have measurable, direction‑specific personality effects rather than being pure screens for preexisting traits.