After more than sixty years of study, a group of scientists from the University of Edinburgh concluded that your personality can shift dramatically over the years. Six key character traits were taken into consideration: self-confidence, perseverance, stability of moods, conscientiousness, originality, and desire to excel.

The study, which tested people at the age of 14 then again over sixty years later when they were 77 years old, found hardly any relationship between traits people had as adolescents and those in their golden years.

The main conclusion: there was no significant stability in any of the six characteristics.

On the flip side, they did discover, some specific trends:

As teenagers many were become less conscientious, impulsive, moody and irritable.
Then become more social for a few years, then reverse those trends as we move into adulthood.
While researchers expected to see some evidence of personality stability over 63 years.

‘There were no positive correlations strong enough to achieve significance between adolescent and older-age characteristic ratings or dependability,’ the team concluded in their paper, published in Psychology and Aging.