Does your personality change as you get older?
Between adolescence and adulthood, you go through a host of changes —jobs, regrettable haircuts and relationships that come and go.
在青春期和成年之间，你会经历一系列的变化——工作、令人遗憾的发型和人际关系的变化。
But what about who you are at your core? As you grow older, does your personality change?
但你本质上是什么样的人呢？随着年龄的增长，你的个性是否会发生变化呢？
Personality is the pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviors unique to a person. People tend to think of personality as fixed.
个性是一个人特有的思维、感觉和行为模式。人们往往认为个性是固定不变的。
But according to psychologists, that's not how it works. "Personality is a developmental phenomenon. It's not just a static thing that you're stuck with and can't get over."
但心理学家认为，事实并非如此。“个性是一个发展的现象。它并不是一个静态的东西，让你被困在那里，无法克服。”
That's not to say that you're a different person each day you wake up. In the short term, change can be very subtle, our personality is actually stable on shorter time.
这并不是说，你每天醒来都是一个不同的人。在短期内，变化是非常微妙的，我们的性格其实在较短的时间内是稳定的。
That pattern of consistency begins around age 3, and perhaps even earlier. When psychologists study children, they look at temperament —the intensity of a person's reactions to the world.
这种稳定的模式大约从3岁开始形成，甚至可能更早。心理学家在研究孩子的时候，会看性情——也就是一个人对世界作出反应的强烈程度。
Earlier temperament seems to affect later life experience. The researchers found, for instance, that children who were shyer and more withdrawn tended to grow into unhappier teenagers.
早期的性情似乎会影响以后的生活经历。例如，研究人员发现，那些比较害羞和孤僻的孩子往往会长成更不快乐的青少年。
Throughout all those years, our personality is still changing, but slowly. You don't notice it on that five-to-10-year time scale, but in the long term, it becomes obvious.
在这些年里，我们的个性还在变化，但很缓慢。在5到10年那样的一段时间里，你可能不会注意到它，但从长远来看，它就会变得很明显。
Personality tends to get "better" over time. Psychologists call it "the maturity principle." People become more extraverted, emotionally stable, agreeable and conscientious as they grow older.
个性往往会随着时间的推移而变得“更好”。心理学家称之为“成熟原则”。随着年龄的增长，人们会变得更加外向、情绪稳定、善于认同和勤勉认真。
Some individuals might change less than others, but in general, the maturity principle applies to everyone.
有些人的变化可能比其他人小，但一般来说，成熟原则适用于每个人。
That makes personality change even harder to recognize in ourselves — how your personality compares with that of your peers doesn't change as much as our overall change in personality, because everyone else is changing right along with you.
这就使得我们自己的个性变化更难识别，你的个性相比同龄人发生的改变没有大家整体的个性改变大，因为每个人的个性都和你一起发生着改变。
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