People change over time. It's weird that someone will stay content with life for 80 years because they didn't want a toy when they were 8. Experiences and changes in environment can change a person. It would also give more strategy and roleplay opportunity. There already is a handful of events that give personality traits (that one "explore a castle" event that can give brave, and the learning events that can give zealous or cynical) but it's strange this is not more widespread and "codified"
#More ways to change personality traits
hardy wren
robust sand
Could you name some of those learning events that give zealous or cynical, by any chance?
Any event that changes a player's personality is directly against the design philosophy of CK3. There should be very very few non-childhood events that do so, if any at all. CK3's approach to personality is much more fixed and treated as somewhat inherent, with the flavour being provided by other traits being layered on top. As such, the lack of events to change your personality is deliberate.
hardy wren
Some theology/scholarship events have the "may lead down a path of cynicism/zealousness" that gives (or remove) a personality trait if enough has done. The theology event about the age of the world for example.
hardy wren
Also design philosophy is a complex thing, but I really don't see the advantages of having personality be so rigid. It wasn't like that in CK2, and as I said, it robs people of interesting roleplay opportunities. It's also inconsistent with coping mechanisms that often have ties with specific personality traits (rakish with lustful for example) which makes it very weird from a thematic/roleplay point of view.
grand osprey
Yeah, people change over time, and so do their personalities. I get the idea of your "base personality" being established in childhood and never being subjected to change, but people just don't work like that.
For example, lets take a Trusting character that, due to their blind trust in another person, inadvertently allowed something really really bad to happen, like murder of a friend or family member. That character, more likely than not, isn't going to stay trusting. They'd either becoming vengeful in order to avenge the murder and prevent anything like it from happening again, paranoid that another person could and would break their trust in such a dramatic way, or cynical after they lose their faith in humanity.
And sometimes its not tied to a specific event. People just gain new perspectives when they get older and have experienced more of life, which can change their personality and what they believe. Maybe nothing traumatic happens to a trusting character, but they could just realize that not everybody is trustworthy and blind trust is a really bad idea.
I mean, do you still have the same personality and hold the same beliefs as you did when you were a kid? I'd wager the answer is probably in some aspects yes, some aspects no, but overall you've changed since you turned 16.
At the very least, coping traits should be more tied to personality traits. Lustful and Chaste are more and less likely to get rakish respectively. Wrathful, Sadistic and Calm, Compassionate are more and less likely to get irritable respectively. Etc.
woeful flame
Maybe an interesting mid-ground could be for your last childhood trait to have opportunities to change over time, as it would be the least ingrained into you.
halcyon saffron
It's possible some of traits of friends can change our character personality, like good friends or "friends who lead you astray"