At What Point In Your Life Did Your Personality Get "Set" (If Indeed, It Ever Did)

Also, I don't think this is necessarily true. For people with a certain character, some ideas will simply not even dawn on them, let alone the idea of acting on them. (We may call this character trait innocence, "goodness" or "willfull navite" depending on the act in question.)

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I think **behaviour** does not equal **personality**. I can walk into a room of strangers and appear to be confident, friendly and at ease. I'm acting. Essentially I'm a loner - self-contained and happier on my own or with people that I know v.well. That's the way that I'll always be.

I know John Lilly did some research with floatation tanks - but thoughts didn't disappear in that isolated environment.

So THAT'S what happened in Altered States!

However, I've noticed that some people feel this sort of conscious changing yourself is somehow worse than just changing non-deliberately, and I can't see the reason for that.

No, I don't think so. So long as the change is internally-directed from your own desires and expectations, rather than an external pressure. Even if the external pressure may have "your best interests" at heart, change can only really come from inside. [/Dr. Cuddles, psychotherapist]

Was is Saussure who said that language structures identity? I forget (undergrad study is a long time ago now!) but nevertheless it's an idea I agree with largely. I think, for instance, that it's vastly significant psychologically that English is the only major world language that I know of which priviliges the self-singular pronoun by capitalising it - making "I" more important than "you", "we", "them" or "us" at a very basic, learn-it-at-school way. It stands to reason that if you learn this as an infant, and obey it, then it becomes a part of your socio-cultural make-up, your personality.

I agree with Tuomas re; deliberate and chosen character change. I've done it myself on occasion, and I find the idea that it's frowned upon by so many interesting.

There are schools of thought/psychology that disagree. (I don't necessarily agree, but there are.) That if you act a certain way on a regular basis (happy, self confident, etc.) you will eventually become that way.

Also, the "going native" experience - if you act a role for long enough and deep enough, you will become what you are acting.

But I don't necessarily agree - there are some things (intraversion/extroversion) which are hardwired into you, and may be from birth.

I just don't get this. It seems to me that for all meaningful purposes, you are what you do. Or rather I don't see why your self-image should be any truer than the way you behave.

But I'm going to be boring and say that there's no such thing as a stable identity, anyway.

I don't believe that; you can learn or train yourself out of these and other traits. Human nature is wonderfully malleable.

How do you separate between external pressures and your own desires? The desire to change is always a result of some external impulse, if nothing in the outside world made us reconsider our thinking and behaviour, change would never happen.

I also think though, and this is something I say to my girlfriend a lot when she says she doens't understand how some people can be naturally confident, that the people one might perceive as "confident" probably don't think of themselves in any defined and emphatic way as being "a confident person" - they're just doing stuff ina certain way. Obv. you get a certain type of person (EXETER GRADUATES!!!!) who say "I'm a confident go-getter" but again, I imagine that's either hollow bragadoccio or deliberate obfuscation / self-help in many, many occasions.

Though going along with what I was saying above, Acting is an ability. By Acting, I mean, being able to convincingly feign actions that may be other than what you actually feel/are.

Abilities can be just as much a part of a personality as anything else - I would certainly say that my mathematical and musical abilities are integral to my personality.

Maybe it is that Abilities can become more honed and appear more natural and comfortable as you exercise them. If you act a part long enough, you may not become it, but you will appear to be it so thoroughly that a casual or even non-casual observer may no longer know the difference.

I don't believe that; you can learn or train yourself out of these and other traits.

No, I don't think so. They've done studies (sorry, cannot quote chapter and verse) that intraversion/extroversion manifests itself as early as infancy.

You can learn to *act* in ways other to your nature. But I think that's one of those things that doesn't change.

Over time - I think I have become more tolerant. I have developed more empathy and really don't bear grudges any more. Most people try to do their best in life.

Actually I'm going to stop...thinking through this stuff is good. But maybe not today. Too much stuff crowding in.

I don't think there's a definite psychological knowledge regarding this. I myself have most certainly turned from an introvert to an extrovert, and it's been at least partly deliberate.

Introversion/Extraversion is the scale of whether you draw strength (or relaxation) from being alone, and expend that energy in being with others (intraversion) or whether you draw strength or energy from being with others, and expend energy being alone (extroversion).

Things that have stuck out for me
- a house settling on it's foundations
- the distinction between behavior and personality
and this:
Specifically, as you get older you notice how less energy you have, and how less you will have in the future, and it becomes a goal to just get things - housing, companionship, a career - to a state where it's off the "to worry about" list, to stop them being a drain on what you have left to live your life.

As I've gotten older things I used to care about greatly - going out, meeting people, being stylish and "cool" - just aren't important anymore. I tend to believe this is a natural part of growing older but many of my acquaintences, many older than me, still seem to have the same values and same lifestyle I did 6 or 7 years ago. So perhaps these are personality elements for these people?

I've found myself becoming happier as I've learned to drop my more shallow ideas about what's important in life. Instead I've learned to just focus on what makes me happy, a simple goal that often leads to the most simple and basic things.

Maybe from the outside this would seem like a change of personality but I think it's just a deepening of self-awareness. I know people who know me best, like my family, would say I've never changed through out all the phases and periods of my life. I've been probably the same core person since I was 13. (I would say the same about them)

Something that perplexes me on this thread is the constant bringing in of romantic relationships. how does this influence who you are anymore than other relationships?

Well, I think such scale would be almost impossible to measure in any objective way, so you can't claim science proves introversion/extroversion manifests at an early age and doesn't change after that. All we have is people's interpretations of themselves.

learning to be patient and nice with other people is part of my quotidian behavior now, but that took a lot (A LOT) of breaking in

A relationship I was in a few years ago did change me for the worse for awhile. It took awhile to heal those wounds and feel whole again. It's amazing how much damage abusive, fucked-up people can inflict on you - esp. when you think you're not suseptible to that anymore.

I've been in therapy since I was 19 and even though sometiems it's a drag I feel it's been absolutely essential to my happiness and stability. But therapy is often like a relationship and you have to find the right person for it work best. I'm grateful I've been seeing the same woman since the beginning. More like a long deep friendship really.

This is very true, and I'm probably walking proof of that. But also, I've been affected more - good and bad - on a personality-shaping level by close friends than by lovers. So I place more importance on them.

My observation is that people - especially women, but also men - feel more pressure to change their personalities in order to attract mates. Do people feel the same pressure to change to attract friends? Maybe they do. I've always been fairly blind to peer pressure and don't really understand its mechanics. But I do feel and am overly aware of the pressures to act, look, *be* a certain way in order to attract males.

The disdaining of changing one's core personality for a lover is part of mine own growth (?) / changing, trying not to put SO MUCH PRESSURE on myself to have a lover, (which I did to myself, for much of my life) and accepting that a single state is a valid lifestyle.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I do understand its mechanics, I just seem utterly powerless to follow the principles, and wouldn't even want to in most cases.

The trick, I suppose, is to cultivate friends who embody your ideals and hope that the peer pressure will be positive. I think I am a more positive person for being in the influence of people like Ed and Emsk, for example.

it isn't! Ever heard of Jungian tests? I-E S-N F-T J-P and all that?

There have been whole threads about these tests, and although they may not be "objective" the results that they provide are certainly meaningful as descriptive tools.

Are actions always true to inward thoughts though? You can alter your behaviour to be contrary to your personality. (though maybe that tendency is a personality trait itself.)

Yeah, but not meaningful in this discussion, because they're based on the assumption of a relatively stable self rather than self-in-a-flux, and therefore are biased towards proving the former.

I think we all do really, and you're right about all the other stuff too (obv. we care more than anyone else does about ourselves).

My take on it, is that behaviour *may* be an outward manifestation of personality, but it may also be influenced by external influences that are nothing to do with personality.

You see Behaviour as foremost, I see Personality as foremost. That's a difference of gestalt or worldview or whatever the word is.

Yeah, but not meaningful in this discussion, because they're based on the assumption of a relatively stable self rather than self-in-a-flux, and therefore are biased towards proving the former.

Well, I've been taking these tests on and off for twenty years, and they have stayed fairly stable in their results! I'm not sure what you want to read into that.

Yeah, but there's always a reason (an inward thought, that is) for you behaving against what you/others perceive as your personality. One can't truly act against one's "inner self", only against some fixed idea of it.

I'm not saying some, or even most people don't stay stable throughout their lives. All I'm saying is that deliberate change is not impossible.

how much is 'deliberate change' cheating on the tests?

1) it would be funny if I'd been taking these psychological tests longer than you've been alive
2) I am curious to see if your fairly behaviourist view on personality as a thing in constant flux is due to your still being in the intense flux-period

Allow me:

As Ailsa implies, this doesn't mean a codependency or a feeling of 'if I just had *somebody* my life would be happier,'

Is such an important lesson. Disengagement. Recognising when someone does exacerbate your worst qualities, and not letting them rile you up.

But it's really difficult when those people who do exacerbate your worst behaviour view such disengagement as being "la la, I can't hear you."

But it's really difficult when those people who do exacerbate your worst behaviour view such disengagement as being "la la, I can't hear you."

Right, so when you want to hear it, it's useful and you can learn from it. When it's something you *don't* want to hear, you can go "lalala not listening" and then claim you're disengaging for your own good when what you are actually doing is not wanting to hear something or deal with something because it's confronting your own personal insecurities and you're too egocentric to notice.

There's a marvellous little phrase you might want to bear in mind sometime. Namely "the truth hurts".

If you are going to continue to set out your personal bugbears for all to see, some people are going to react in ways you don't like. It won't do you a bit of harm to wonder if they actually have a point, rather than blithely "disengaging" (I'd call it ignoring, but, hey ho).

This is general advice, btw. I take criticism on board a lot - I've become a better and stronger person for it in some ways.

Stumbled over this thread doing a Search that was so remotely tangential to it that the connection was pure accident. There's a lot of fascinating discussion up thread, so I am reviving it.

As for me, I have a hard time grasping just what my personality consists of. My turn of mind is often quite literal-minded and simplistic, and so it is generally tethered very directly to whatever is under my nose.

Intellectually speaking, I instinctively submit to the wisdom of the Fool in King Lear, who said "Nothing comes of nothing, nuncle." Whatever my self is at this moment, it connects to what it was a few moments ago, and so on and on, following that thread down into the increasing dimness of the remote past. It all connects, right back to some unknown beginning. But what that amounts to in terms of my 'personality', it baffles me to say.

Taking another tack toward an answer to this conundrum, I once wrote a book. I was the only character in this book. When I wrote it, I had a good grip on what I was doing, but as other people read this book and I had a chance to talk to them about it, I discovered each reader had a different idea of what the book amounted to, which parts stood out, and which caught their interest. Their version was as valid as mine was. I suspect whatever my 'personality' is, it is much the same as what my book is - a complex thing that has no definitive version.

13

have you lost your tiller?