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You Can Change Your Personality

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Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#31

Post by guftagu »

visarga wrote: post #27
vivekd wrote: post #13

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 persona…

> I do believe that personality can change 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 inherentl…

I used to be a very overconfident, arrogant, extroverted asshole but after a while in depression I started to look inwards and recovered a totally different person. I am now more empathetic, more emotional, introverted and hopefully not an asshole anymore. I do really believe that strong stimuli like depression can trigger lasting changes in your personality.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#33

Post by albertTJames »

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.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#34

Post by mseebach »

sametmax wrote: post #10
tw04 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

+1. Most asocial persons I know have been raised that way by society. Now you want them to undo what took years of training. This is hard. And unfair.

That is true, but irrelevant. "He had a hard time in school, so we should tolerate him being an asshole" won't really fly.

Many racists were probably raised that way by society, too, and undoing that is probably both hard and unfair - but necessary and a reasonable prerequisite for being a part of polite society.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#35

Post by mseebach »

dpark wrote: post #25
_0ffh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

The meme is that tech people are generally just assholes. It is a pretty common meme, but I don't think it's actually true. Very few of the tech people I know are actually assholes. Most are quite pleasant, even the ones that are socially awkward.

It's rare now, but probably less so in the 80s/90s. The BOFH meme didn't come from nowhere, and there's also the quite strikingly sudden exodus of women from the field to consider.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#36

Post by NumberCruncher »

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.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#37

Post by samblr »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #36

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.

Good you pointed out - people with adblocker wouldn't notice it otherwise :)

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#38

Post by Programmatic »

underwater wrote: post #32

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.

There are plenty of outgoing introverts.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#39

Post by throw8888 »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #36

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.

You can try sci-hub.cc if it's a scientific paper. Works most of time.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#40

Post by NumberCruncher »

throw8888 wrote: post #39
NumberCruncher wrote: post #36

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.

You can try sci-hub.cc if it's a scientific paper. Works most of time.

Thanks, I will check the site out.
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