Do people want to change antagonistic personality traits-and can interventions help them do so?

Abstract

A recent survey of clinical doctoral students found that emerging clinicians feel ill-equipped to treat antagonism-related disorders and that they perceive inferior treatment outcomes (as compared to those with neuroticism-based disorders). That said, the clinician is only one half of the therapeutic relationship-and client qualities, such as motivation, are also important predictors of treatment success. The present article integrates insights from the personality development literature regarding whether nonclinical populations want to change with respect to agreeableness/antagonism, and whether interventions can help them do so. To that end, although people express goals to change all Big Five personality traits, the research literature consistently indicates that these desires are weakest for agreeableness (and openness) as compared to extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. Moreover, interventions that have successfully increased extraversion, conscientiousness, and emotional stability have struggled to help individuals become more agreeable. These findings are discussed, and future research directions are outlined. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).