From childhood to adulthood, you go through a lot of changes — jobs, regrettable haircuts and relationships that come and go. But what about who you are? As you grow older, does your personality change?

Personality is the pattern(模式) of thoughts, feelings and behaviors unique to a person. People always think of personality as fixed(固定的). But according to psychologists, that’s not how it works. “Personality is developing. It’s not just something that you’re stuck with and can’t get over,” said Brent Roberts, a psychologist at the University of Illinois.

That’s not to say that you’re a different person each day you wake up. In the short term, change can be nearly impossible to see, Roberts told Live Science. Longitudinal studies, in which researchers survey(调查) the personalities of participants(参与者) regularly over many years, suggest that our personality is actually stable in the short term.

But those years add up, throughout which our personality is still changing, but slowly, Roberts said. “It’s something that’s unnoticeable,” he added. You don’t feel it on that five-to-10-year time period, but in the long term, it becomes obvious. In 1960, psychologists surveyed over 440,000 high school students — around 5% of all students in the country at that time. The students answered questions about everything from how they behaved in emotional(情绪的) situations to how well and effectively they got work done. Fifty years later, researchers tracked down(追踪到) 1,952 of these former students and gave them the same survey. The results found that in their 60s, participants scored much higher than they had as teenagers.

Some people might change less than others, but in general, the maturity principle(成熟原则) goes for everyone. That makes personality change even harder to realize in ourselves — how your personality compares with that of your peers doesn’t change as much as our overall change in personality, because everyone else is changing right along with you. “It has been proved that the self-control of a 30-year-old is higher than a 20-year-old,” Donnellan said. “At the same time, people who are more self-controlled at 18 are also possibly more self-controlled at age 30.”

【小题1】What does the writer think of personality?

A．It is what makes you different from others.

B．It is fixed since you were born.

C．It works when we meet difficulties.

D．It changes obviously from day to day.

【小题2】What does the underlined word “stable” in paragraph 3 mean?

A．not easily upset.	B．easy to change.
C．not likely to change.	D．difficult to destroy.

【小题3】How does the writer support his idea?

A．By giving examples.	B．By stating arguments.
C．By explaining causes.	D．By providing research results.

【小题4】Which of the following can be a suitable title for the text?

A．Everyone Has a Unique Personality.

B．Our Personality Changes as We Get Older.

C．Self-control Makes All the Difference.

D．We Grow Older but Change Less.