How a year abroad shapes student personality

Spending a year studying abroad makes college students more agreeable, more curious, and less anxious, but it does not lead to a complete personality overhaul. By tracking daily behaviors alongside long-term changes, researchers discovered that how students act in the moment helps shape their broader psychological development over time. These findings were published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

Psychologists generally view personality through three different layers. Broad traits, often called the Big Five, represent general dispositions like extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Narrow traits focus on specific tendencies that fall under those broad categories, such as resilience or curiosity. Finally, personality states are the momentary thoughts, feelings, and behaviors a person experiences on a given day.

Researchers want to understand how life events shift these different layers of personality. Moving to a different country is a major life transition that requires individuals to adapt to new cultures, languages, and social norms. British university programs often mandate a year abroad for language students, providing a natural environment to observe human adaptability in young adults.

Psychology researchers Ian Moore, Akansha Singh, and Nadin Beckmann of Durham University partnered with Damian P. Birney of The University of Sydney to track these developmental changes. They designed a study to see if living abroad altered personality more than staying home. They also structured their project to test whether fleeting, everyday behaviors eventually add up to permanent personality changes.

The team recruited 180 undergraduate students from 12 universities in the United Kingdom. Within this group, 110 students moved abroad for an academic year, while 70 remained at their home institutions. The traveling students went to 32 different countries, with a majority staying in European nations like France, Spain, and Germany. While abroad, the students engaged in various activities, including attending classes, working at internships, or teaching.

The researchers assessed the students’ broad Big Five traits four times over the 14-month study period using standardized questionnaires. They also measured narrow traits, specifically anxiety, curiosity, and resilience, 11 times to capture monthly development. This schedule allowed the team to track steady psychological maturation across the entire academic cycle.

The results did not show a widespread personality transformation among the traveling students. Four of the Big Five traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism) remained relatively stable regardless of where the students lived. The students’ broad personality rankings stayed mostly the same from the beginning of the year to the end, contradicting popular ideas about the completely life-altering nature of travel.

The new environment did appear to influence specific areas of psychological growth. As the year progressed, students living abroad became more agreeable and more curious than their peers at home. The traveling students also reported a steady decrease in overall anxiety, suggesting the international experience helped them manage stress and approach novel situations more effectively over time.

To capture daily personality states, the researchers used a technique called experience sampling. During three separate weeks scattered throughout the academic year, the students received phone prompts four times a day. Each prompt asked them to rate how they were feeling, thinking, and behaving in that exact moment, as well as how they perceived their immediate situation.

This intense measurement schedule allowed the researchers to compare how much personality varies across different timeframes. They calculated the ratio of within-person variability compared to between-person variability. Within-person variability refers to how much a single individual’s behavior fluctuates, while between-person variability describes how much people differ from one another.

The analysis revealed a distinct pattern across the personality hierarchy. Broad traits were the most rigid, showing high between-person variability but very little within-person change. Narrow traits showed a more balanced ratio of flexibility. Daily states fluctuated the most, meaning that students varied more in their own day-to-day behaviors than they differed from the rest of the study participants.

Finally, the team used statistical models to link these daily fluctuations to the students’ long-term trait changes. They analyzed the average of each student’s daily states and compared it to their broad personality scores at the end of the year. The researchers wanted to test the idea that repeated momentary experiences accumulate into permanent psychological shifts.

The data supported this bottom-up theory of personality development. A student’s average daily state consistently predicted their long-term growth. For example, students who repeatedly acted conscientious in their daily tasks saw their overall trait conscientiousness increase by the end of the academic year. The daily repetition of a behavior appeared to solidify it into a lasting trait.

The researchers also checked to see if extreme daily behavioral fluctuations influenced long-term traits, but the results were not statistically significant in most categories. Average daily behavior proved to be a much stronger indicator of future personality than unpredictable behavioral spikes.

The researchers also analyzed situation contingencies, which describe how a person’s behavior changes in response to a specific environmental trigger. They looked at whether reacting to a specific situation predicted long-term personality changes. In most cases, these momentary reactions did not translate into broad trait development.

There was one exception regarding the trait of openness. The researchers found that students generally acted more open when they felt familiar with their physical location. Students who showed a very strong momentary spike in openness when they felt familiar with their surroundings also experienced the greatest long-term growth in broad trait openness over the year.

Because the students chose whether to go abroad or stay home, the two groups differed before the study even began. The students who decided to travel already displayed lower levels of anxiety and neuroticism at the start of the academic year. This indicates a selection effect, meaning that certain types of people are more likely to pursue an international education.

The psychological growth seen in the traveling group might not be entirely caused by the foreign environment. These students might have been on a natural developmental path toward higher agreeableness and lower anxiety regardless of their location. Because the traveling students started with lower neuroticism, they might have been better equipped to handle the stress of moving, allowing them to focus on exploring their new environments.

The study also relied entirely on self-reported data. The results reflect how the students viewed themselves rather than how their friends, family, or teachers perceived them. Measuring personality through self-reflection can introduce bias, as individuals might not notice subtle changes in their own dispositions over an extended period.

Future research will need to track students before they leave for their trips to establish a more accurate baseline of their daily behaviors. Scientists can also use these findings to design psychological interventions that focus on small, manageable behavioral changes. By targeting daily actions, psychologists might help people slowly cultivate lasting improvements in their broader personalities.

The study, “Personality dynamics and trait change on the year abroad,” was authored by Ian Moore, Damian P. Birney, Akansha Singh, and Nadin Beckmann.