Can counselling change your personality? What the meta-analysis found

What did the meta-analysis on counselling and personality find?

The largest single answer comes from a systematic review pooling 207 studies that tracked personality trait measures before and after an intervention (Roberts et al., 2017). Averaged across all of them, traits moved by about a third of a standard deviation over roughly six months. Emotional Stability showed the most change of any trait, and most of the studies feeding that average were therapy and counselling trials rather than self-help programmes or workshops. The kind of therapy or counselling used did not matter much to the size of the change, and the movement was still visible when researchers checked back in after the sessions had ended, which points to structured, repeated attention over months as the active ingredient rather than one technique.

Emotional Stability leading the field fits what a counselling conversation typically spends its time on: naming a difficult feeling, tracing what triggered it, and practising a steadier response, close to what that trait summarises. A trait such as Openness to Experience is rarely the direct target of a counselling hour, so it makes sense that it moved less. That is a plausible reading rather than a separate finding, since the meta-analysis itself does not explain why Emotional Stability leads (Roberts et al., 2017).

What does a third of a standard deviation actually look like?

A standard deviation is the unit researchers use to describe how spread out a trait is across a population, and a third of one is a modest, real move, easiest to picture as a shift in where you would rank against other people.

Take someone who starts at the 30th percentile on Emotional Stability, meaning about 70 people out of 100 report handling pressure and difficult feelings more steadily than they do. A move of about a third of a standard deviation, the average found across those 207 studies, would carry that person to roughly the mid forties on the same scale. They have not become a different kind of person, but they have moved from clearly below the midpoint to sitting close to it, the sort of change a person and the people around them can plausibly notice.

Does the change from counselling last?

The meta-analysis followed people beyond the end of their sessions, and the changes it found were still present at those later check-ins rather than fading back to where people started (Roberts et al., 2017). That is a meaningfully different claim from a mood lift on the last day of a course of sessions.

A separate line of work asks whether traits are even a sensible target for deliberate change, given how stable they otherwise are. A review of the policy case for personality argues that traits are not fixed the way they were once assumed, and that they can serve both as predictors of how someone is doing and as a genuine target for intervention, while noting that trait change is a harder target to hit than most things an intervention sets out to move (Bleidorn et al., 2019). Counselling moving Emotional Stability is one demonstration of that harder target being reachable.

Can you change your personality without counselling?

Two other routes have direct evidence behind them, and neither involves a counsellor. In a randomised trial of a three-month, app-based programme with 1,523 people, those working toward a chosen trait changed in the direction they wanted by about half a standard deviation on their own reports, friends and family noticed the change too for people trying to increase a trait, and the change was still present three months after the programme ended (Stieger et al., 2021). More on this route in Can an app change your personality?

The other route starts with wanting the change itself. Across two 16-week studies, people who said at the outset that they wanted to move a trait tended to actually show that movement by the end, in self-reports and in daily behaviour. Wanting to change was followed by measured change, and specific plans naming a behaviour, a time and a place helped more than general intentions (Hudson & Fraley, 2015). The pattern across all three routes is the same: structure, repetition and a stated goal move traits, whatever the source of the structure. More on the wider evidence in Can personality change?

What stays the same, even after counselling?

Your position relative to other people is one of the steadier facts about you, and it gets steadier with age. Pooling 152 longitudinal studies, rank-order consistency, meaning how well people keep their relative standing on a trait over time, was around .31 in childhood, rose to about .54 through the college years, reached roughly .64 at 30, and settled near .74 between 50 and 70 (Roberts & DelVecchio, 2000). That is high but imperfect, and it means most people keep roughly the same rank as their peers while still having room to move within it, which is the room counselling, an app or a written plan can use. The table below sets the routes side by side.

For the fuller picture of how traits move across a lifetime, see Personality development.

How does Wellington measure this?

Wellington is a science-based personality assessment from Therabot Labs LLC. It measures personality as continuous traits, built on the Big Five and HEXACO models, and writes the results back as a personal report rather than a type.

The free Snapshot asks 60 questions and scores 6 broad dimensions, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, Openness to Experience and Honesty-Humility, including Emotional Stability, the trait this article is about. Every trait is reported as a percentile against the reference sample. The three bands, Quiet below the 30th percentile, Balanced to the 70th, High above, and the Portrait names exist to make the result easier to talk about; the percentile is the measurement, and it is always shown alongside. Our reference norms are provisional while the norming sample is completed.

A Wellington report is a useful marker of where you sit today, whether taken before, during or without any counselling at all. It is not counselling itself and does not replace a conversation with someone trained to help. Wellington is a wellness tool for reflection, not a medical or psychological diagnosis, and it does not replace care from a qualified professional.

Questions people ask

How long does counselling take to change a personality trait?

Months rather than weeks. The meta-analysis behind this figure pooled studies averaging about six months of structured work, mostly therapy and counselling, and found roughly a third of a standard deviation of trait change by the end, still present at later check-ins (Roberts et al., 2017).

Which personality trait changes most through counselling?

Emotional Stability, by a clear margin over the other traits measured across the 207 studies in the meta-analysis (Roberts et al., 2017), fitting what a counselling conversation typically works on: naming difficult feelings, tracing what triggers them, and practising a steadier response.

Can you change your personality with an app instead of counselling?

To a real but smaller degree. A three-month, app-based programme produced roughly half a standard deviation of change on self-reports, with friends and family noticing it too, and the change was still present three months later (Stieger et al., 2021).

Does a Wellington score prove counselling has changed my personality?

It can show a real shift if you compare sittings taken months apart, since the free Snapshot can be retaken from your dashboard at any time and older sittings are kept for comparison. A small move between two close sittings is more likely noise, particularly near a band boundary.