The Unexpected Joys of Volitional Personality Change

As an expression from Alice in Wonderland, many people are familiar with the phrase “curious and curiouser.” In that context, it applies to an observation that something doesn’t seem quite right, but could be worth investigating. We all know that when Alice uttered these famous words, she was on her way down the rabbit hole, heading toward danger but also an exhilarating adventure. How many times in your daily life have you felt tempted to explore a scary but exciting unknown?

The trait of curiosity is often thought of as baked into your personality, part of what Five Factor Model (FFM) theorists consider the quality of Openness to Experience. However, as you reflect on your own life, even if you’re not feeling particularly curious now, can you remember a time when you were? Perhaps as a child or young adult you thought it would be fun to try something brand new and slightly outside your comfort zone. Now that you’ve matured, you’re a bit reluctant to put yourself out there either for fear of physical injury (no bungee jumping!) or embarrassment (no karaoke!). Could you be missing out, though, on an important source of potential pleasure and enlightenment?

Volitional Personality Change and the Quality of Curiosity

Personality researchers are beginning to rewrite the narrative that personality remains static throughout life. In the study of “volitional personality change,” investigators are seeking to document whether you can take deliberate steps to alter something you don’t like about yourself. According to a new study by University of California at Santa Barbara’s Madeleine Gross and Jonathan Schooler (2025), the quality of curiosity could be one of those features amenable to change.

Consider first the list of laudable aspects of creativity as described by the authors: “a psychological powerhouse that is predictive of an impressive host of character virtues, including intellectual humility, creativity, resilience, gratitude, critical discernment, as well as positive outcomes, including increased academic and professional success, satisfying relationships, and increased meaning in life." Who wouldn’t want that, and how would you get it?

As it turns out, the authors think that it is indeed possible to learn to be more curious by forming new habits. Through behavioral conditioning, you could theoretically learn to associate positive outcomes with actions representing curiosity that, in turn, would “update (your) mental models of the world.” Such a method would represent a “bottom-up” approach in which you start not by turning your psychological ship around but by engaging in small behaviors that accumulate in impact over time.

Putting Smartphones to Use in Building Curiosity

Two principles were at the heart of the Gross and Schooler study. The first is developing individualized behavioral goals. Not every person will be motivated to try to earn the same rewards, according to this principle. The second is behavioral activation, an approach central to cognitive behavior therapy, in which you engage in a new behavior that generates its own rewards—what the authors refer to as “daily challenges.”

The smartphone app itself operated not just by reinforcing new habits but by attempting to build an attitude of curiosity, referring to a general sense of wonder associated with asking questions, called a “just ask” technique. The app also was designed to stimulate mindfulness techniques in which users would engage in “continuous, open-ended, and non-judgmental inquiry” as they thought up and reflected on their questions. Finally, the app used self-reflection to help participants gain awareness of how they were doing, also allowing them to track their own progress.

The 91 participants (average age 20 years old) were members of the UCSB campus community. The initial study measures included scales assessing the desire for knowledge (“epistemic curiosity;” e.g. “I enjoy exploring new ideas”), perceptual curiosity (“I like exploring my surroundings”), boredom proneness (“I find it hard to entertain myself”), meaning in life (“My life has a clear sense of purpose”), creative behavior (e.g. drawing cartoons), and mindfulness (“I find it difficult to stay focused on what’s happening in the present”—reverse scored). Across the 21-day period of the study, half the participants used the app and the other half remained on a waiting list until it was their turn to use the app 21 days later.

The authors provided images of the app but since these can’t be reproduced here (although they do provide a link to their materials), this brief summary should help you imagine what it involved:

Set Your Custom Tasks: Set 6 goals related to creativity.

Fill in a goal and how to achieve it.

For the goal “eat something new,” the participant would type in a response to “When I ...” such as “go grocery shopping.” This is followed by “I will...” which could be filled with “find and buy ingredients for a new recipe.” The next blank—“And prove it by....”—would be completed with an upload of a photo.

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Next participants used the app to rate the difficulty level for their daily challenge:

• The “curiosity teaser” was the easiest, involving a simple break in routine.
• The “curiosity booster” was next, involving writing a Haiku about the activity.
• The most difficult level was the “curiosity launchpad,” involving thinking of an idea or fact and then checking out 3 online sources to investigate whether it is true.

Fifty-three of the 55 participants in the experimental group used the app effectively, recording nearly 13 separate tasks over the 21 days. Additional participants assigned to the mindfulness part of the study completed about 9 mindfulness sessions involving such activities as mindful eating, mindful walking, or mindful hand-washing.

The app had its largest effect on perceptual curiosity: actions such as finding hidden beauty in their surroundings, trying new foods, or listening to a new kind of music. The app also prompted increases in meaning in life and creative behaviors. Adding mindfulness to the daily activities, furthermore, increased both mindful awareness and meaning in life.

In addition to showing beneficial effects of the app on curiosity specifically, the authors also suggest that the study “provides evidence for the plasticity of human personality.” The character traits often thought of as fixed, they note, “may be cultivated through targeted interventions."

Putting Your Own Plasticity to Work

You may already be a curious person (hence your seeking information on the Psychology Today website). But if you feel that your curiosity could use some tweaking, it would be simple enough to assign yourself tasks such as those used in the app. Set a goal of trying something—anything—new, if not on a daily than a weekly basis. Allow yourself to generate your own questions and ideas as you go about your day, enjoying your surroundings and sensory experiences. The next time you catch yourself hesitating whether to sample a food you never tried before, take a sample bite just for fun.

The general principle that plasticity is possible through daily prods in your routine should be an inspiring thought. If you’ve come to believe that you’ll never be nicer (agreeableness) or calmer (emotional stability), see if there are small ways to tweak those qualities too.

To sum up, going down the rabbit hole could lead to unexpected experiences. Even if some of those experiences aren’t what you bargained for, the result of trying can be a surprising new path to fulfillment.