Scientists: A person’s personality can change from hour to hourFitness and health22:30 | 20 April 2023

In the last 20 years, hypotheses have been raised that neuroticism, extraversion, and anxiety can be measured regularly in humans using questionnaires. The problem is that changes in people’s behavior are not just frequent, but literally from day to day and hour to hour. That is, at noon someone can be more open and soft, and after two hours – moody and harsh. Such fluctuations in emotions and behaviors are called intra-individual variability. And these fluctuations are quite large.

Pennsylvania developmental psychologist David Almeida’s team discovered how much of what we usually think of as a black person is actually black and how much is just emotion. It turns out that half of a person’s moodiness is a character trait, and half is an emotion.

Also, people with positive qualities (openness, agreeableness) show a 30 percent change in anxiety or irritability.

Some psychologists have gone even further. For example, Neelam Ram, professor of psychology and communication at Stanford University, has learned that the emotional ups and downs experienced throughout the day can reflect the ups and downs of different aspects of a person’s personality or their immediate response to another person or event.

At the same time, a person may appear more conscientious at work than at home and more outgoing (open) than with friends.

Also, change in itself is a good thing. Moreover, there is no clear answer to the question of when it indicates pathology. Some studies associate high variability with neuroticism, while others do not.

Recent research shows that the more emotions people experience, the better they adapt to different situations throughout the day. Those with more negative emotions had better health outcomes.

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