SHOCK STUDY: YOU ARE NOT THE SAME PERSON AT 70 THAN YOU WERE AT 14

(February, 2017) You really do become a completely different person as you get older. In a study, published in Psychology and Aging, scientists at Edinburgh University carried out personality tests on people at the age of 14, and then again more than sixty years later when they were 77 years old. Six key character traits were taken into consideration: self-confidence, perseverance, stability of moods, conscientiousness, originality, and desire to excel (* They forgot the compulsion to talk about your medical problems). The team found hardly any relationship between personality traits people had as adolescents and those in their golden years. Here are some of the SHOCK findings from the study:
– Adolescents are less conscientious, more impulsive, more willing to take risks and seek adventure, more moody and irritable, and more social for a few years, then reverse those trends as they move into adulthood.
– In older age, people tend to become more accepting of themselves (* Yeah, ’cause it’s too late fix anything).
This research suggests that, as the decades go by, your own younger self could be unrecognizable.
* Just like Cher, or Mickey Rourke.
* So, if you’re in middle school right now, and if you feel like a dork, don’t despair. In only 60 years, you won’t be a dork.
* Also, you can become the person you’ll be at 70 when you’re only 14, if you smoke crystal meth.
* I want to know what it is that makes men in their 70s, no matter what year it is, wear pastel-colored pants. Usually with white shoes.
* And at what age does driving with the left blinker on kick in?
* Do you suppose researchers ever say to themselves, “You know, this study really didn’t find anything. Let’s not release it.”
* Talk about taking it easy. How many studies include a little 60-year break along the way?
* “Good work, team. Before I adjourn this meeting I’d like to remind you that we will reconvene in around 60 years to continue our work.”
* Maybe you’re exactly the same but you just forget what that was like.
* I edited down that description of adolescents for them and here’s what I came up with: Adolescents are horny. Next.