Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Neuroticism is one of the most consequential personality traits for individuals and society. Interventions that facilitate changes in this trait may thus have far-reaching benefits, with initial evidence supporting that interventions can foster lasting neuroticism change. Most personality theories posit that changes in broad, enduring traits are mediated via lower-level changes in momentary states and intermediary habits. However, there are few direct tests of this theorized bottom-up pathway, leaving the mechanisms, direction, and timing of effects unclear. Using data from the Changing How I Live Life Study (N = 444), which evaluated a digital intervention to reduce neuroticism, we examined 1) the shape and magnitude of intervention-induced neuroticism change across three timescales, 2) concurrent and lagged associations among these changes, and 3) whether these associations varied across treatment groups receiving strategies targeting different neuroticism levels. We found that neuroticism changed nonlinearly across the intervention; changes in momentary, daily, and weekly neuroticism measures reliably predicted one another, with bottom-up effects often being larger in magnitude; and mean-level changes and coupled changes in momentary, daily, and weekly neuroticism measures were larger in the intervention groups than in the active control group. These results support the conceptual and causal importance of both bottom-up and top-down (momentary, specific ⟷ long-term, broad) change processes. Together, this study tested key theoretical predictions about the process and directionality of intervention-induced personality change to help elucidate mechanisms underlying intentional personality changes and generate insights about how to enhance intervention efficacy.
Institutions: Washington University in St. Louis, University of Zurich
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4414007226