This article was first published in the December 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
We often talk about personality as if it were an ingrained feature of a person, like fingerprints or height. And much as we categorise people as tall or short, we readily apply labels to ourselves and others based on supposedly fixed personalities. Consider the way lifestyle magazines and websites tout the latest quiz to tell you if you're an extrovert or introvert.
But this pigeonholing flies in the face of some empowering facts that challenge the myth of the fixed personality. Your traits do not stay the same through your life, nor even from one situation to the next. And if you want to change your personality, you can.
Let's look first at the influence of different situations. Many of us know instinctively that, in a way, we are not always the same person. Someone watching you with your mother-in-law or boss would likely make strikingly different inferences about your character than someone observing you on a Friday night at a bar with your mates. Mistakenly assuming that aspects of a person's behaviour are permanent is known as the "fundamental attribution error".
The US psychologist Walter Mischel (most famous for the "marshmallow test") conducted seminal work in this area. In one study, he and his colleagues observed the behaviour of children on a summer camp. They found that rather than some children being conscientious and others aggressive, these traits were often situation-specific. For example, one boy might show a hot temper when admonished by adults, but be cool in the face of peer teasing; his friend, vice versa. It would be misleading to label either child as aggressive or laid-back.
One of the reasons our personality traits can vary in different situations is because of the effects of mood on our behaviour and outlook, especially sadness. This was demonstrated in a study published last year, when researchers at Bielefeld University played participants a sad video with sad music.
This put the participants in a sad frame of mind. When they answered questions about their personality in this state, they scored much higher on neuroticism, and lower on extraversion and agreeableness (associated with friendliness) as compared with when they completed the questionnaire in a neutral mood.
Even if we accept that it's fair to ascribe to someone a personality type based on their averaged behaviour across a range of situations, other research is showing how our traits gradually shift. Generally speaking, as people get older they tend to score more highly in agreeableness and conscientiousness and lower in neuroticism. But these shifts don't happen at the same speed through life. For most traits except agreeableness (which tends to increase gradually) there's a U-shaped pattern, with peak stability achieved in mid-life and change picking up again after.
Perhaps the most exciting development is the idea we can change at will. Earlier this year, psychologists at Illinois had students take two personality tests, 16 weeks apart. They asked how they would like their personalities to change and gave them tips on how to do so (one was to use "if-then plans": if x happens, I will do y). The preliminary finding was that their personalities shifted in the desired directions.
When it comes to personality, even small shifts can have dramatic consequences. Someone behaving more like an extrovert than usual would be likelier to decide to apply for a prestigious job or ring a date -- taking their life in new, exciting directions. Of course, these opportunities shape personality, and so the cycle continues.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
