The Possibilities of Personality Change
Incremental shifts count, and can affect one’s happiness.
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A few years ago, my colleague Olga Khazan conducted an experiment—“sample size: 1”—to see whether she could change her personality. “I’ve never really liked my personality, and other people don’t like it either,” she wrote. “In grad school, a partner and I were assigned to write fake obituaries for each other by interviewing our families and friends. The nicest thing my partner could shake out of my loved ones was that I ‘really enjoy grocery shopping.’”
Personally, I’d say enjoying grocery shopping is the mark of a curious and fun-loving person. (What’s better than a Sunday afternoon in the snack aisle?) But Olga believed that she could make herself happier by changing her personality, so she gave herself three months to become friendlier and more extroverted—and came to learn that incremental personality change counts as real change. “Being slightly different is still being different—the same you but with better armor,” she wrote.
Today’s newsletter explores why people are so drawn to measuring their personality, and what we can do with that information.
On Personality
I Gave Myself Three Months to Change My Personality
By Olga Khazan
The results were mixed.
What Your Favorite Personality Test Says About You
By Kelly Conaboy
Are you a Myers-Briggs person, an Enneagram person, or something else?
The Atlantic made a quiz to help you find out.
The Mystery of Partner ‘Convergence’
By Faith Hill
Couples’ personalities can become more similar over time—but the causes are still enigmatic.
Still Curious?
- The truth about people who have no personality: They actually just keep their opinions to themselves, Olga wrote in 2019.
- A profession is not a personality: Reducing yourself to any single characteristic, whether it be your title or your job performance, is a deeply damaging act, Arthur C. Brooks wrote in 2021.
Other Diversions
- Not everyone needs to go to therapy.
- The sad future of grocery shopping
- The new age of endless parenting
P.S.
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. Trudy S., 66, from Brighton, Massachusetts, shared this photo, taken at the Hydrangea Festival at Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich, Massachusetts. “The blooms have been spectacular this year,” she writes.
I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks. If you’d like to share, reply to this email with a photo and a short description so we can share your wonder with fellow readers in a future edition of this newsletter or on our website. Please include your name (initials are okay), age, and location. By doing so, you agree that The Atlantic has permission to publish your photo and publicly attribute the response to you, including your first name and last initial, age, and/or location that you share with your submission.
— Isabel