Between adolescence and adulthood,

Between adolescence and adulthood, you go through a host of changes —jobs, regrettable haircuts and relationships that come and go.But what about who you are at your core? As you grow older, does your personality change?Personality is the pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviors unique to a person. People tend to think of personality as fixed.But according to psychologists, that's not how it works. "Personality is a developmental phenomenon. It's not just a static thing that you're stuck with and can't get over."That's not to say that you're a different person each day you wake up. In the short term, change can be very subtle, our personality is actually stable on shorter time.That pattern of consistency begins around age 3, and perhaps even earlier. When psychologists study children, they look at temperament —the intensity of a person's reactions to the world.Earlier temperament seems to affect later life experience. The researchers found, for instance, that children who were shyer and more withdrawn tended to grow into unhappier teenagers.Throughout all those years, our personality is still changing, but slowly. You don't notice it on that five-to-10-year time scale, but in the long term, it becomes obvious.Personality tends to get "better" over time. Psychologists call it "the maturity principle." People become more extraverted, emotionally stable, agreeable and conscientious as they grow older.Some individuals might change less than others, but in general, the maturity principle applies to everyone.That makes personality change even harder to recognize 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.