An interview
We recently talked with Mirjam Stieger, about her paper titled, “Becoming More Conscientious or More Open to Experience? Effects of a Two‐Week Smartphone‐Based Intervention for Personality Change”, which appeared in the May/June issue of EJP. Mirjam is a post-doctoral fellow at Brandeis University in Boston, the United States.
Read on to learn more about Mirjam’s study on a smartphone-based intervention for personality change!
Q: Hi there Mirjam! Can you tell us a bit about who you are and what made you become interested in studying personality psychology?
I completed my PhD last fall at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and I am originally from Switzerland. I joined Margie Lachman’s Lifespan Developmental lab at Brandeis University in Boston as a post-doctoral fellow right after my PhD defense. During my PhD, my work mostly focused on the changeability of personality traits with the help of smartphone-based interventions. Here in Boston, I mostly work with data of large-scale longitudinal studies, like the MIDUS – the Midlife in the US study. The goal is to examine what factors promote good health and well-being across the entire lifespan. So the aim is to learn why some people age better than others, and how to prevent or slow down problems across the lifespan. We are also developing smartphone-based behavior change interventions here in the lab. For example, I received funding from the Boston Roybal Center for Active Lifestyle Interventions to conduct a digital intervention study to increase conscientiousness and physical activity.
I became interested in personality psychology during my master’s study (in Switzerland, the master’s and PhD are two separate parts). I was in an exchange semester in Sweden and after that I wanted to get involved in and learn more about the research labs and research projects back at the University of Zurich. So when I got back, I started working as a research assistant in two different labs. One of those was in the lab of Mathias Allemand, my later PhD advisor. At that time, Mathias was preparing a grant proposal for a large research project on digital personality change interventions, which luckily got funded. Mathias often told me about that personality change intervention project during coffee and lunch breaks, so he awakened my interest in that line of research. Right after I finished my master’s study, I had the luck to start as a PhD student in that project.
Q: What do you like to do outside of work?
I would say I’m an outdoorsy person; I like to be active during my free time. After work, I often go for a run. I have found that this is the best way to refresh my brain after a full day in front of a screen. My partner and I also brought our race bikes from Zurich to Boston, so we go for longer bike rides every other weekend – and actually found some pretty nice biking routes outside of Boston! We’ve also bought a van and are converting it into a camper. This enables us to go and explore the greater New England region and to go hiking in the Green and White Mountains on weekends. Even now during these very uncertain times, it helps us to go and explore the region here.
Q: Can you tell us what your study is about?
Our main goal of the study was to test if personality can be changed with the help of a smartphone-based intervention, because so far there is no established or proven technique on how to change personality traits. Previous research indicates that it might be possible to change personality traits with for example clinical interventions or psychotherapy, but these clinical interventions primarily focused on neuroticism. Our goal was to focus on the changeability of facets of two other personality traits: conscientiousness and openness to experience. Specifically, we examined the effects of a two-week smartphone-based intervention to either change one facet of conscientiousness, which was self-discipline, or one facet of openness to experience, which was openness to action. We conducted two personality change intervention studies, one with 70 participants and one with 185 participants. In both studies, participants could choose whether they wanted to change self-discipline or openness to action.
In both studies, participants received two text messages each day. In the morning, they received a reminder for the implementation intention they had generated at the beginning of the intervention. Implementation intentions are concrete If-Then plans. For example: “If I want to lie down on the sofa after work, then I will go for a short walk around the block.” Every other day they also received psychoeducational information. For example, participants in the self-discipline group received a message that read, “Did you know that research has shown that self-discipline is related to better grades in school and better work performance?” At other times they also received self-reflective tasks, so they could learn to better reflect their own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. In the evening, the text message included a short assessment of their daily experiences as well as individual progress feedback on how many days they showed their desired behaviors.
To assess personality change over time, we tested personality traits and facets right before and right after the intervention, and also 2 weeks after the end of the intervention to see whether changes were maintained even after the end of the intervention. The first study was a smaller study and the second study was basically a replication study of the first study, but we also included some add-ons. In the second study, we included observer reports by friends and family members, so we could see if close others can see whether the study participants became more self-disciplined or more open to action. We also included a longer follow-up assessment of 6 weeks after the end of the intervention, to see whether changes were maintained over an even longer time.
As expected, we found that those who wanted to become more self-disciplined, were initially lower in self-discipline not only in self-reports but also in observer-reports compared to the other group. Those who wanted to become more open to action were initially lower in openness to action in terms of self-reports and observer-reports compared to the other group. Second, we found that the group that wanted to increase in self-discipline increased more in self-discipline over time than the other intervention group. The same held for the openness to action group. We also found that even observers perceived significant increases in both groups, which was a really surprising finding because there is no previous study on personality change interventions that included observer-reports. It was really interesting so see that even the effects of a two-week intervention can be observed by close others. Finally, we found that changes could be maintained until the two follow-up assessments, after 2 and 6 weeks after the end of the intervention.
Q: What’s next?
I think there is still lots to do in terms of personality change interventions. It’s a very exciting finding that these two-week interventions lead to changes in personality up until six weeks after the intervention, but there is much more research needed to see if these changes can be maintained across longer time periods, or if they simply revert after some time. I think that’s definitely the next step that should be taken. When we find that changes can be maintained over a longer period of time, it would be interesting to see if these changes affect other life areas. So let’s say: if you become more conscientious, does this have a beneficial effect on your work life, relationship, or health? There’s much more research needed to figure that out. Also, from this study, we don’t know the active ingredients of the intervention that actually led to personality change. We don’t know that, because the intervention included self-reflection tasks, implementation intentions, daily reminders etc. There were many different interventional components that were delivered simultaneously and we don’t know what components were (most) effective, so that’s really what we need to examine in the future.
The authors of the EJP paper and I also conducted a larger personality change intervention study during my PhD with over 1,500 participants. For this larger project we developed a smartphone application that delivers a 3-month personality change intervention and targets all Big Five traits. We tested the effects of this intervention in a randomized controlled trial and included a longer follow-up assessment at 3 months after the end of the intervention. We are currently in the final stages of writing up the results of that intervention study. That’s coming soon and the findings are very exciting!
Q: Do you have any tips or advice for young researchers?
What really helped me – and still helps me – is to discuss my work with as many people as possible. I try to present my work as often as possible to receive feedback from other researchers in the field of personality psychology but also from other research fields – and even from people outside of academia. This has helped me to organize my thoughts many times.
This first tip also goes hand in hand with my second one, which is – if that is possible at all – to attend the two personality conferences, ECP and ARP. I think these two conferences are great opportunities to get to know other researchers personally and to hear about their most recent research projects.
My third tip is to not underestimate the positive effect of coffee breaks at work. The daily coffee breaks during my PhD with other PhDs in our department and also with other researchers back at the University of Zurich really helped me to stay motivated and to just discuss challenges. I’d say that my best ideas emerged from coffee break discussions.
Finally, if I could go back to the start of my PhD, I think a tip I would tell myself is to stay patient. I learned during my PhD that everything takes longer than expected and perseverance pays off. In my opinion, doing a PhD is like running a marathon in many respects!
Q: Who is your favorite young scholar?
That’s such a hard question. I don’t really have a single favorite scholar as there are so many excellent young scholars out there and honestly I don’t know too many of them personally. I’m probably the Swiss neutrality person – I don’t want to choose someone and don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. However, I admire researchers with certain personality characteristics, I’d say. Like people who are passionate about their research area but are still able to see the big picture, who think outside of the box and also collaborate with researchers from other research fields. I also admire researchers who are great team players and don’t consider research a one-man show. Then of course I also appreciate scholars who educate and promote Open Science practices, because I really think that’s the way to go in the future.