You Can Change Your Personality • Hacker News Board

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#71

Post by throwanem » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 1:03 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #59

jacobolus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isolation often gets a person stuck into positive feedback loops of negative feelings (loneliness, anxiety, sadness, guilt, shame, cynicism, paranoia, listlessness, self loathing, despair, etc.), disrupted circadian rhythms from poor sleep and lack of sunshine, lack of routines and loss of time sense, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, poor personal hygiene and cleanliness, substance abuse, financial problems, and so…

As a counterpoint to this, see the many excellent articles on The Hermitary .[1] Also see Anthony Storr's Solitude: A Return to the Self .[2] Many people have historically chosen solitude for religious or spiritual reasons, to focus on something they wanted to achieve, because they just preferred being alone, or for many other reasons. Many societies have stigmatized solitude and those who choose it, but on the other…

I don't think GP is saying solitude or isolation is necessarily harmful. But for a member of a pack-ape species whose default mode for the individual is some varying degree of gregarity, isolation isn't something to be considered lightly, because it carries significant risk along with potential benefit.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#72

Post by dan00 » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 1:06 PM UTC

albertTJames wrote: post #33

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 woul…

> 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.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#73

Post by throwanem » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 1:30 PM UTC

quickben wrote: post #56

atis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why is choosing isolation "worst of all"?

We did not evolve in isolation, or cope well with it. Find your tribe, whatever it may be, and you'll be happier.

Or find a way to fit well enough into the tribe at hand that your pack-ape instincts are satisfied.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#74

Post by jusq2 » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 2:03 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #43

atis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why is choosing isolation "worst of all"?

Isolation often gets a person stuck into positive feedback loops of negative feelings (loneliness, anxiety, sadness, guilt, shame, cynicism, paranoia, listlessness, self loathing, despair, etc.), disrupted circadian rhythms from poor sleep and lack of sunshine, lack of routines and loss of time sense, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, poor personal hygiene and cleanliness, substance abuse, financial problems, and so…

Please note the second word of this summary is "often".

If you want to know why its "often" and not "always" visit your nearest library and take a look at the size of books on the subject.

And here lies the problem with the internet today and the comment boards such as these. People will actually walk away reading these kind of 2 minute summaries thinking they know something about the subject at hand. And on top of that you can get yourself a great rep "educating" and "informing" the public without ever actually "educating" and "informing" the public.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#75

Post by huxley » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 2:11 PM UTC

bjterry wrote: post #53

albertTJames wrote: post #33

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 woul…

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. 1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-...

I get a bit antsy when I see big unexpected flips in numbers like that and think Johann Hari oversimplifies the case.

That was the initial study, a followup with 943 Vietnam vets by the original researcher Lee Robins found that:

"In the 8- to 12-month period since their return, about 10% had some experience with opiates, but less than 1% had shown signs of opiate dependence. In the “drug positive” sample, three-quarters felt they had been addicted to narcotics in Vietnam. After return, one-third had some experience with opiates, but only 7% showed signs of dependence. Rather than giving up drugs altogether, many had shifted from heroin to amphetamines or barbiturates. Nevertheless, almost none expressed a desire for treatment." [1]

So the point still stands that environmental factors affect patterns of drug abuse, but it is complicated by two things, the numbers are less dramatic than "95% simply stopped" and also would raise one concern that addiction was clinically tested on return but was self-reported in the interviews.

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/99/4/235/13845...

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#76

Post by mjmasn » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 2:25 PM UTC

dan00 wrote: post #72

albertTJames wrote: post #33

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 woul…

> 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 artif…

I agree, this is confusing actual personality changes with stress behaviour. Obviously if you reduce stress you can remove unproductive behaviours such as neuroticism but the persons fundamental view of the world hasn't necessarily changed, even if it seems that way if you didn't know the person before the stress behaviours began to dominate.

Look into the Birkman Method, it's a psychometric personality assessment that, unlike other pop-quiz type tools (MBTI et al), distinguishes between your usual behaviour, your fundamental expectation of the world (needs) and your reactions (stress) when those expectations aren't met. It's unlikely that your usual behaviour changes, although it's quite possible that your stress behaviour could mask that (even for years on end) if you're in an environment you can't cope with.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#77

Post by agumonkey » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 2:49 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #43

atis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why is choosing isolation "worst of all"?

Isolation often gets a person stuck into positive feedback loops of negative feelings (loneliness, anxiety, sadness, guilt, shame, cynicism, paranoia, listlessness, self loathing, despair, etc.), disrupted circadian rhythms from poor sleep and lack of sunshine, lack of routines and loss of time sense, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, poor personal hygiene and cleanliness, substance abuse, financial problems, and so…

I experienced a traumatic first love. I was mostly a recluse (or a fake social person, relying on protocols or emotional hurdles among people). I was way happier alone minding my own business before, because the relational part of my brain wasn't really active (to the best of my own introspection that's how I describe it). And now that this other person is gone; it made me into a paradox:

I now know the physical and emotional values of interpersonal relationship, my mean of getting it isn't there anymore, I can't grieve because few people can understand, but I can't go back to the recluse old me after the memory of bonding as set root and left a mark.

The mind is a fascinating thing.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#78

Post by unusximmortalis » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 4:54 PM UTC

We are programable and self programable of course.

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#79

Post by tbirdz » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #43

atis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why is choosing isolation "worst of all"?

Isolation often gets a person stuck into positive feedback loops of negative feelings (loneliness, anxiety, sadness, guilt, shame, cynicism, paranoia, listlessness, self loathing, despair, etc.), disrupted circadian rhythms from poor sleep and lack of sunshine, lack of routines and loss of time sense, lack of exercise, unhealthy diet, poor personal hygiene and cleanliness, substance abuse, financial problems, and so…

Does anyone have any resources on how to break out of this "isolation cycle" if one is currently already in it?

Re: You Can Change Your Personality

#80

Post by aoeu345 » Sun, Jan 22, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #60

aoeu345 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to say that you're happier alone. It's much more difficult to admit to yourself that you have social anxiety that keeps you from making relationships. A human that does the first will decay over time. A human that does the second can be anything he/she wants to be. There is enormous supporting evidence that quantity and quality of relationships are directly correlated to happiness

There's enormous evidence for a lot of things, but that doesn't mean it's equally applicable to every individual. I see no reason to think that some small percentage of people truly are happier alone even if the opposite is true for the large majority.

But the human brain is mostly dedicated to socializing and interpreting social signals. If you don't even stretch out those parts of your brain, you're not even satisfying intrinsic human needs.