This is a stale and old debate, personality is extremely flexible and heavily depends on environmental and social constraints, as were demonstrated by seminal social experiment studies such as those of Milgram or Zimbardo. The argument that the changes seen there are short lived can be contradicted by the fact that subjects always go back to their normal environment after the experiment. What I believe Ed Boyden would call the illusion of isolation. That is why important changes usually occur at key breaking moments in a life: change of school, leaving home, changing city/country. The social environment has far more power on the psyche than any therapy. But the social environment of an individual usually do not change, and the only real power he has on it is to willingly chose isolation, which is worst of all. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/174569161456835...
Personality disorders, on the other hand, are characterised by fixed traits of personality, rigid in time in spite of detrimental effects on the life of the subject or the life of others.
This reminds me of an article I read which said that 95% of the soldiers in Vietnam who had become addicted to heroin simply stopped when they came back to America.
> This is a stale and old debate, personality is extremely flexible and heavily depends on environmental and social constraints, as were demonstrated by seminal social experiment studies such as those of Milgram or Zimbardo.
These experiments first of all show how people react in highly stressful situations. To equalize this with changes in their personalities doesn't seem right to me.
The hardest part of these artificial and mostly extreme experiments - because you want to see reactions in a short amount of time - is what kind of conclusions you can take out of them.
People often use "its just my personality" as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality.
There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or working with other people. Maybe research will help address that perception; awkward is ok, but we shouldn't accept that techies will be dicks to people all the time.
It is a really counter productive meme. My theory is that engineers are so comfortable using logic to solve problems, and viewing solutions as right or wrong that they fail to adapt when there are shades of grey.
Get a bunch engineers in a room and they'll argue forever about a solution because they don't understand their own biases or how emotion is clouding people's judgement. Bringing a bit of empathy can resolve these impasses so much more quickly.
The most effective technical people I've met have combined intelligence with an ability to get people on board with their vision.
I've always wondered, given this "stereotype" if there isn't more to it. Is it possible that because, in general, people who were "nerds" were likely more of a social outcast growing up, that they have essentially become "hardened", if you will, to social graces. They spent so much of their developmental years being teased/ridiculed/whatever that what is "normal" treatment of others has essentially become foreign to them? Sure, you can form a relationship with your family, but that really doesn't extend to how you interact with people outside of your inner circle.
There seems to be such a strong correlation, curious if anyone has ever studied it. It seems we've gotten to the point that so very much of our adult behavior can be traced to childhood events/upbringing that this can't be an outlier.
There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or working with other people.
This is purely anecdotal, but at one particularly memorable company, the head of HR would regularly make casual comments that cast the engineers as socially incapable and childish. Meanwhile, she was constantly offending people and her life was a chaotic mess.
At the same company, they always talked about team this and team that, but efforts to actually incorporate the team (e.g. clear communication, collaboration) were obviously seen as weak, and the "arrogant know it all" persona was rewarded.
I don't know how many of these things are simply cognitive dissonance, or poor communication, and which are deliberate efforts to gain power over others. Seems like a little of all three to me. I also think it's a convenient way for technically incompetent management to lord something over you. They may not understand your technical contributions, but they can finish the review by mentioning how you need to work on some undefined and arbitrary social aspect.
I'm not familiar with that meme, and I wonder how it came to be. Maybe from people who got on the nerves of others who do not suffer fools or lazy people gladly?
Personally, I work in a environment where most of my colleagues are also engineering professionals, and most everyone is friendly and helpful. And while probably being the most stereotypical tech nerd in my department, I still get occasional commendations for my good team play.
BUT...
even I will not for long put a good face for lazy whiners who would have me do their job for them, and hold their hand through every trivial aspect of things they should either already know, or be able to figure out for themselves with a bare minimum of brains and effort. And, unfortunately, those people are not quite unheard of.
My thought is that 'nerds' collaborate better despite poorer than average understanding of fellow humans. It's because their work and its success or failure are more objectively defined which makes organising and delegation of tasks relatively straightforward. So we can have thousands of scientists and engineers building the Large Super Hadron Collider while a Liberal Arts Department may be beset by bickering and feuds.
Over time, it seemed to me there was a strong correlation between the technical expertise of my co-workers and their ability to neuter anti-social behavior.
To be fair, I went from poorly funded startups and contracting work to BigCo.
Did I just miss something or did the article offer no evidence for it's position that personality can changer other than presenting some writing exercises by high schoolers that asked them if personality can change. It didn't seem to elaborate about how these exercises affected or changed their personality or present any other evidence or examples of changing personality.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that personality can change, just this article didn't seem to present a good basis for that thinking.
They named the the journal and the issue but not the title of the meta-analysis itself.
"In an analysis of 207 studies, published this month in the journal Psychological Bulletin, a team of six researchers found that personality can and does change, and by a lot, and fairly quickly. But only with a therapist’s help. (Imagine that.)"
I don't think personality actually changes much, it just has some latent and some manifested aspects, depending on circumstance. In different circumstances it can manifest different aspects. It doesn't mean it changes, just that it can variate depending on context.
It's often possible that trying to change your personality would lead to much suffering, because it's inherently difficult. I read some time ago a psychological study that applied MBTI to cult members. They were asked how they viewed their personality before, in the present and in the future. The trend was to attempt to emulate the personality type of the cult leader. Their happiness was inversely correlated to how much off-base they were attempting to be.
I think that's because the authors are pro psychologists, all of whom long ago accepted as dogma that clinical psychology CAN make a difference in thinking/behavior, especially in reducing neuroses. While this change for the better usually isn't described as "changing your personality", to most non-pro-psychologists, it could be.
I suspect it's just a matter of how much change, and how the change manifests. If one of the classic attributes of personality is sustainably reset to a different level, like trust or sharing or kindness, I'd certainly consider that personality to be changed. I haven't read the article, but that may be what it proposes.
I believe that we have control over our personality.
Like exercise (to change your body), changing your personality takes time and conscious effort. You need to dedicate time every day for honest self-reflection, self-awareness, meditation, reading and education in the topic, etc.
There are two ways you can lose weight. Accidentally, by getting sick or stressed, for instance; and on purpose, through concerted diet and exercise. The same can happen with personality changes. It can happen accidentally, through change of environment or mental illness like depression.
But doing it on purpose seems more wholesome. Losing weight on purpose is better than losing it accidentally, even though the result is the same, because those people are healthy and the others aren't. Put another way: you shouldn't have to get sick to lose weight.
Everybody should spend some time daily on those mental health items above. It's exercise. Through it you can point your personality and mind in the direction you'd like it to go, and with hard work and patience you'll get there. As your mind gets healthier the less likely you are to become mentally ill. You'll avoid common issues like depression, substance abuse, anxiety and eating disorders.
I think mental illness is starting to become a public health crisis. I know so few people that aren't constantly stressed due to work or school, I've seen many people fall into legitimate depression and only recover after changing their environment (ie quitting their job).
It's said that half of adults experience depression at least once in their life. I bet it's more like 90%. It's like the flu. Pervasive, transmissible and contagious, with most victims recovering quickly, but a small percentage experiencing fatal cases. Now we have flu shots at every Walgreens.
Overly cynical comment. Article author isn't a psychologist, so has no reason to be a 'salesman'. Additionally, the question of how changeable an individual's personality is, is a perfectly valid and interesting topic to research. (Unfortunately the article does not mention the title, or provide a link to the research).
If one is seeking therapy they usually do so because they are experiencing some sort of distress in their lives, thus they don't need to be convinced there is something wrong with them - they already know and presumably want to fix it.
Having had a short period of therapy myself, as well as having separately dated a therapist, I would say there is huge real value to that kind of work. It's not a con job. I feel your comment is a little insulting to people who undergo and benefit from therapy sessions.
And unlike the Woodie Allen analyst cliche, it is not something that has no end; a short series of sessions can often be enough to help a patient make huge personal changes that improve the quality of their lives.
When social context matters so much I wonder how they measure things like this. Just the act of getting to know a therapist will reduce anxiety and in the situation you'll be comfortable so there is little value measuring improvements under those circumstances.
As soon as you step out into the real world again fears resurface.
I'd say there's a market for trained therapists who will also coach people through real world stressful situations rather than just talking about them.
Given the expense of doing that it would have to be in a group and the incentives right so you can trust coaches not to exploit the vulnerable. Solve that and you could have a nice franchise.
It may be only me but I won't read any "scientific" article hiding behind pay wall and between two unserious ads like "best flashlight ever selling like crazy" and "10 fans who look like celebrities". It would be like reading life advices on the back of toilet paper.
I think there are limitations to how much someone can change. The analogy I would use is physical traits, you can loose weight, or you can exercise and increase strength and so on but there are limitations. I am 59 and no matter how hard I train I am not going to be able to run a 4 minute mile but I am sure if I worked at it a little harder I could improve my running skills. Similarly, I think one can, through therapy, meditation or other types of mental fitness activities, can make improvements if they have the sufficient desire to do so, but within limits.
The problem with this perspective is you can't know your true limit until you actually reach it by trying to improve. So you might as well keep aiming a little higher.
Ironically I saw a presentation from the phycologist mentioned in the article, Dr. Brian Little, a couple of weeks back where he said that being introverted or extroverted was fixed, which was surprising to me.
People can and do engage with others more or less, so I don't think intro- or extroverted in that sense is fixed. But the understanding of introversion and extroversion these days tends to be more whether you gain or lose energy in general from dealing with people. I doubt that feeling drained from (not) talking to people would change very quickly in someone.
I feel compelled to link to this[1] bit of writing by Yudkowsky.
Science! It's not a real explanation, so much as a curiosity-stopper. You don't actually know anything more than you knew before I said the magic word. But you turn away, satisfied that nothing unusual is going on.
[+] [-] albertTJames|9 years ago|reply
Personality disorders, on the other hand, are characterised by fixed traits of personality, rigid in time in spite of detrimental effects on the life of the subject or the life of others.
[+] [-] bjterry|9 years ago|reply
1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-...
[+] [-] atis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dan00|9 years ago|reply
These experiments first of all show how people react in highly stressful situations. To equalize this with changes in their personalities doesn't seem right to me.
The hardest part of these artificial and mostly extreme experiments - because you want to see reactions in a short amount of time - is what kind of conclusions you can take out of them.
[+] [-] nxc18|9 years ago|reply
There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or working with other people. Maybe research will help address that perception; awkward is ok, but we shouldn't accept that techies will be dicks to people all the time.
[+] [-] underwater|9 years ago|reply
Get a bunch engineers in a room and they'll argue forever about a solution because they don't understand their own biases or how emotion is clouding people's judgement. Bringing a bit of empathy can resolve these impasses so much more quickly.
The most effective technical people I've met have combined intelligence with an ability to get people on board with their vision.
[+] [-] tw04|9 years ago|reply
There seems to be such a strong correlation, curious if anyone has ever studied it. It seems we've gotten to the point that so very much of our adult behavior can be traced to childhood events/upbringing that this can't be an outlier.
[+] [-] awfgylbcxhrey|9 years ago|reply
This is purely anecdotal, but at one particularly memorable company, the head of HR would regularly make casual comments that cast the engineers as socially incapable and childish. Meanwhile, she was constantly offending people and her life was a chaotic mess.
At the same company, they always talked about team this and team that, but efforts to actually incorporate the team (e.g. clear communication, collaboration) were obviously seen as weak, and the "arrogant know it all" persona was rewarded.
I don't know how many of these things are simply cognitive dissonance, or poor communication, and which are deliberate efforts to gain power over others. Seems like a little of all three to me. I also think it's a convenient way for technically incompetent management to lord something over you. They may not understand your technical contributions, but they can finish the review by mentioning how you need to work on some undefined and arbitrary social aspect.
[+] [-] _0ffh|9 years ago|reply
Personally, I work in a environment where most of my colleagues are also engineering professionals, and most everyone is friendly and helpful. And while probably being the most stereotypical tech nerd in my department, I still get occasional commendations for my good team play.
BUT...
even I will not for long put a good face for lazy whiners who would have me do their job for them, and hold their hand through every trivial aspect of things they should either already know, or be able to figure out for themselves with a bare minimum of brains and effort. And, unfortunately, those people are not quite unheard of.
[+] [-] umberway|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bambax|9 years ago|reply
In a great text written in 1880, Émile Littré, author of a great French dictionary that took him over 15 years to write, says this:
> je suis corrigible, ayant de bonne heure compris qu’il était peu sage de répondre aux suggestions d’amendement «Je suis comme cela» [1]
> I can change, having grasped early that it's not very clever to answer "that's just how I am" to people giving you life advice [my translation]
[1] https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AEmile_Littre_-_Etudes_...
[+] [-] ArkyBeagle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] refulgentis|9 years ago|reply
To be fair, I went from poorly funded startups and contracting work to BigCo.
[+] [-] vivekd|9 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that personality can change, just this article didn't seem to present a good basis for that thinking.
[+] [-] nommm-nommm|9 years ago|reply
"In an analysis of 207 studies, published this month in the journal Psychological Bulletin, a team of six researchers found that personality can and does change, and by a lot, and fairly quickly. But only with a therapist’s help. (Imagine that.)"
Edit: someone tracked down the original. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13452075
[+] [-] visarga|9 years ago|reply
I don't think personality actually changes much, it just has some latent and some manifested aspects, depending on circumstance. In different circumstances it can manifest different aspects. It doesn't mean it changes, just that it can variate depending on context.
It's often possible that trying to change your personality would lead to much suffering, because it's inherently difficult. I read some time ago a psychological study that applied MBTI to cult members. They were asked how they viewed their personality before, in the present and in the future. The trend was to attempt to emulate the personality type of the cult leader. Their happiness was inversely correlated to how much off-base they were attempting to be.
[+] [-] randcraw|9 years ago|reply
I suspect it's just a matter of how much change, and how the change manifests. If one of the classic attributes of personality is sustainably reset to a different level, like trust or sharing or kindness, I'd certainly consider that personality to be changed. I haven't read the article, but that may be what it proposes.
[+] [-] ajb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bkanber|9 years ago|reply
Like exercise (to change your body), changing your personality takes time and conscious effort. You need to dedicate time every day for honest self-reflection, self-awareness, meditation, reading and education in the topic, etc.
There are two ways you can lose weight. Accidentally, by getting sick or stressed, for instance; and on purpose, through concerted diet and exercise. The same can happen with personality changes. It can happen accidentally, through change of environment or mental illness like depression.
But doing it on purpose seems more wholesome. Losing weight on purpose is better than losing it accidentally, even though the result is the same, because those people are healthy and the others aren't. Put another way: you shouldn't have to get sick to lose weight.
Everybody should spend some time daily on those mental health items above. It's exercise. Through it you can point your personality and mind in the direction you'd like it to go, and with hard work and patience you'll get there. As your mind gets healthier the less likely you are to become mentally ill. You'll avoid common issues like depression, substance abuse, anxiety and eating disorders.
I think mental illness is starting to become a public health crisis. I know so few people that aren't constantly stressed due to work or school, I've seen many people fall into legitimate depression and only recover after changing their environment (ie quitting their job).
It's said that half of adults experience depression at least once in their life. I bet it's more like 90%. It's like the flu. Pervasive, transmissible and contagious, with most victims recovering quickly, but a small percentage experiencing fatal cases. Now we have flu shots at every Walgreens.
It's time to do the same for mental health.
[+] [-] steanne|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] idiot74|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nommm-nommm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paublyrne|9 years ago|reply
And unlike the Woodie Allen analyst cliche, it is not something that has no end; a short series of sessions can often be enough to help a patient make huge personal changes that improve the quality of their lives.
[+] [-] codingmyway|9 years ago|reply
As soon as you step out into the real world again fears resurface.
I'd say there's a market for trained therapists who will also coach people through real world stressful situations rather than just talking about them.
Given the expense of doing that it would have to be in a group and the incentives right so you can trust coaches not to exploit the vulnerable. Solve that and you could have a nice franchise.
[+] [-] NumberCruncher|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samblr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw8888|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zw123456|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RileyKyeden|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usloth_wandows|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] underwater|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Programmatic|9 years ago|reply
There are plenty of outgoing introverts.
[+] [-] unusximmortalis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruminasean|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheSpiceIsLife|9 years ago|reply
Science! It's not a real explanation, so much as a curiosity-stopper. You don't actually know anything more than you knew before I said the magic word. But you turn away, satisfied that nothing unusual is going on.
1. http://lesswrong.com/lw/j3/science_as_curiositystopper/
[+] [-] cel1ne|9 years ago|reply
Written by a neuroscientist, it gives a thorough, scientifically tested framework for classifying traits of personality and changing them.