How to Change Traits in The Sims 4

I’ve read enough dime-store fanfiction to know that humanity probably shouldn’t have the ability to freely manipulate each other’s personalities. That said, The Sims has always been something of a living behavioral psychology experiment, so if you want to rewire your Sims’ brains a bit, that’s perfectly fine. Here’s how to change traits in The Sims 4.

Your Sims’ traits are, well, their personality traits; the little quirks that inform their actions and decisions. Lone Sims prefer being by themselves, Slob Sims don’t like to clean up after themselves, Mean Sims are rude jerks, and so on. You select your Sims’ traits when you’re first creating them, but if you end up with a cocktail of traits that don’t mesh with your playstyle, you’re gonna have a bad time. Luckily, there are ways to reset their traits, though they don’t exactly come easily.

How to Change Traits in The Sims 4

There are two ways to change a Sims’ traits: the proper way, and the cheating way. If you want to do this the proper way, you’ll need to save up a lot of Satisfaction Points, earned by collecting Whims and generally aiding your Sim in their pursuit of their goals in life. When you’ve got 5,000 Satisfaction Points, you can use them to purchase a Re-Traiting Potion from the Rewards Store. Have your Sim chug it down, and then you can alter their traits freely.

If you don’t have the time or gumption for the proper way, then do it the fast way: cheating! It’s like trying, but easier. To use cheats, type Ctrl+Shift+C on your keyboard to open the command prompt. Enter the command “testingcheats” to enable cheats, then enter “cas.fulleditmode.” Close the command prompt by pressing Esc, then hold Shift and click on the Sim you want to alter. Among their available options, you should see “Modify in CAS.” Click that, and you’ll get the Create A Sim menu, where you can switch up their traits. 

You can also do this in the PS4 and Xbox versions of the game; just hold R1/RB, R2/RT, L1/LB, and L2/LT for a few seconds to bring up the command prompt, enter “testingcheats,” select the Sim you want to edit, press those same buttons again, and enter “cas.fulleditmode.” You should get the option to open the CAS menu.