Resolving the Lifespan Personality Trait Stability–Plasticity Paradox through the Lens of Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamaka Philosophy

This paper examines the longstanding tension in personality psychology between the apparent stability of personality traits and the demonstrable capacity for personality development across the lifespan. Classical trait approaches, particularly Costa and McCrae’s Five-Factor Model, have emphasized relatively enduring, biologically anchored basic tendencies, while life-span, social-investment, situational, clinical, and volitional approaches demonstrate meaningful personality change. The apparent contradiction becomes more complex when personality is considered in relation to socioeconomic conditions, institutional power, behavioral epigenetics, cross-cultural measurement, language, and evolutionary dynamics. The paper brings these empirical perspectives into dialogue with Nāgārjuna’s Mādhyamaka philosophy, particularly Śūnyavāda, Pratītyasamutpāda, and Satya-dvaya. Rather than treating personality traits as intrinsically existing entities, the Mādhyamaka interpretation understands them as dependently co-arisen patterns that are empty of svabhāva, or independent and unchanging essence. The Big Five can therefore remain useful at the conventional level as prajñapti—functional conceptual designations—without being solidified as permanent psychological substances. High rank-order stability can be understood as continuity in the biological, social, environmental, and cognitive conditions that repeatedly reproduce similar behavioral patterns, while change occurs when those sustaining conditions change. The paper further distinguishes this philosophical position from Western dynamic personality theories. Both reject rigid personality essentialism, but they differ in ontology, causality, epistemology, the interpretation of self, and ultimate purpose. Western dynamic approaches generally retain a real psychological system that changes over time, whereas Mādhyamaka uses dependent origination and emptiness to question the independent existence of the system itself. The resulting synthesis proposes that personality is best understood as a dynamic process stream conventionally measurable and practically useful, yet ultimately non-essential and open to transformation. In this interpretation, śūnyatā is not nihilism but the condition that makes development, adaptation, therapeutic change, and lifelong growth possible. Keywords: Śūnyavāda (Emptiness); Pratītyasamutpāda (Dependent Origination); Satya-dvaya (Two Truths); Svabhāva (Intrinsic Essence); Prajñapti (Conventional Designation); Personality Stability; Personality Plasticity; Mādhyamaka; Lifespan Development.