Be Who You Want

Unlocking the Science of Personality Change

Christian Jarrett

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781501174704
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Personalidad en psicología

From cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Christian Jarrett, a fascinating book exploring the science of personality and how we can change ourselves for the better. What if you could exploit the plasticity of personality to change yourself in specific ways?Would you choose to become less neurotic? More self-disciplined? Less shy?Until now, we've been told that we're stuck with the personality we were born with: The introvert will never break out of their shell, the narcissist will be forever trapped gazing into the mirror. In Be Who You Want, Dr. Christian Jarrett takes us on a thrilling journey, as he not only explores the ways that life changes us, but shows how we can deliberately shape our personalities to influence the course of our lives. Dr. Jarrett draws on the latest research to provide evidence-based ways to change each of the main five personality traits, including how to become more emotionally stable, extraverted, and open-minded. Dr. Jarrett features compelling stories of people who have achieved profound personality change such as a gang-leader turned youth role model, a drug addict turned ultra-runner, and a cripplingly shy teenager turned Hollywood mega-star. He also delves into the upsides of the so-called Dark Triad of personality traits—narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy—and how we might exploit their advantages without ourselves going over to the dark side. Filled with quizzes and interactive exercises to help us better understand the various aspects of our personalities, life stories, and passions, Be Who You Want will appeal to anyone who has ever felt constrained by how they've been characterized and wants to pursue lasting change.

Chapter 1 THE WE WITHIN YOU

Like many other young men, twenty-one-year-old Femi had fallen in with the wrong crowd. In 2011, when police pulled him over for speeding through Northwest London in his Mercedes, they found 8 oz. of cannabis in his sports bag. He was charged with possession of drugs with the intent to supply.

If you’d encountered Femi back then, you might well have concluded that his was the kind of disagreeable personality you’d rather avoid. After all, the drug arrest wasn’t his first brush with the law; it was part of a pattern of behavior that led him to be ordered to wear an electronic tag. He was often in trouble in his younger years. “I got banned from the area I was growing up in because I was getting into too much trouble,” he recalls.¹

However, Femi, or to use his full name, Anthony Oluwafemi Olanseni Joshua OBE, became an Olympic gold medalist and a two-time heavyweight boxing champion of the world, heralded as an impeccable role model of clean living and good manners. “He really is one of the nicest, most down-to-earth young men whose acquaintance you’ll ever make,” wrote Michael Eboda, chief executive of Powerful Media, publisher of the Powerlist (an annual listing of the most influential Black people in Britain), in 2017.² “I could have gone the other way, but I choose to be respectful,” Joshua said in 2018 as he laid out his plans to help educate the next generation in “healthy living, discipline, hard work, respect for all races and religions.”³

People can change, often profoundly. They are one kind of person in one chapter in their lives, but fast-forward to later in their story and they’ve transformed into a different character altogether. Sadly, it’s sometimes a change for the worse. Tiger Woods was once praised for his wholesome and exemplary behavior. In personality, he was the epitome of conscientiousness and self-discipline. But in 2016, after years battling back-related health problems, he was arrested for driving under the influence, his speech slurred. Tests showed he had five drugs in his system, including traces of THC, found in cannabis. His disheveled mug shot stared out of newspapers around the world. It was just the latest scandal to follow the former champion golfer. Years earlier, his world had come crashing down amid tabloid tales of serial infidelity—a dark era of his life that began when he veered his car into a fire hydrant after a nocturnal domestic fight. Happily, negative change is reversible too. In 2019, having previously sunk to 1,199th golfer in the world, Woods won the Masters in Atlanta, Georgia, a feat described as the greatest comeback in sporting history.⁴

Evidence for change doesn’t just come from tales of redemption or disgrace. Look around and you’ll see examples of less sensational but still surprising change that are everywhere. As a child, Emily Stone was so anxious and prone to such frequent panic attacks that her parents sought the help of a psychotherapist. “My anxiety was constant,” she told Rolling Stone magazine.⁵ “At a certain point, I couldn’t go to friends’ houses anymore—I could barely get out the door to school.” It’s hard to believe that this girl would not only overcome her nervous disposition but that as Emma Stone (the name she chose when she joined the Screen Actors Guild), she would become the world’s highest-paid actress, decorated with an Oscar, Golden Globes, and a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award.

And consider Dan, an inmate at Ohio’s Marion Correctional Institution who was profiled in an episode of NPR’s Invisibilia podcast. He was serving time for a violent rape, but we hear how Dan, now a published poet, is helping to run a TEDx event at the prison (an offshoot of the famous TED Talks online). The show’s guest reporter, who has known and corresponded with him extensively for a year, describes him as “completely charming, playful, fast talking, fast thinking, very poetic, creative.” Dan’s prison warden says he is “articulate, humorous, kind, passionate.” Dan himself says his personality at the time he committed his crime “has truly ceased to exist” and that he now almost feels as though he is in prison for somebody else’s crime.⁶

Since researching this book I’ve been struck by how often people have stories like Dan’s and Emma Stone’s to tell and how their transformations are consistent with, and explained by, the findings coming out of the exciting new psychology of personality change. Radio phone-ins, online chat forums, and glossy magazine pages are filled regularly with stories of change, often for the better: lazy people finding purpose, shy people discovering their voice, criminal offenders turning good.

Learning these lessons from the science of personality change is arguably more important today than ever before. The pandemic has shaken all our lives, testing our adaptability. Sources of distraction, from social media to smartphone games and apps, are more ubiquitous, draining our focus and self-discipline. Outrage and political polarization are everywhere as people get sucked into Twitter pile-ons and political discourse plumbs new lows, draining civility. Sedentary lifestyles are also on the increase (the World Health Organization describes physical inactivity as a “global public health problem”), which research shows has damaging effects on personality traits, weakening determination and fermenting negative emotions.⁷ Yet the inspiring tales of positive personality change show you don’t have to submit to these harmful influences passively; it’s possible to take the initiative and shape your own character for the better.

PLENTY TO HOLD ON TO AND PLENTY WE CAN CHANGE

The fact that we are capable of change does not mean we should entirely dismiss the concept of personality. Far from it. According to decades of careful psychological research, there is such a thing as “personality”—a relatively stable inclination to act, think, and relate to others in a characteristic way. This includes whether we seek out social company and how much we like to spend time deep in thought. It reflects our motivations, such as how much we care about helping others or being successful; and it’s also related to our emotions, including whether we tend to be calm or prone to angst. In turn, our typical patterns of thought and emotion influence how we behave. Combined, this constellation of thoughts, emotion, and behavior forms your “me-ness”—essentially, the kind of person you are.

When it comes to defining and measuring personality, a problem for psychologists has been the vast number of possible character labels available, some more flattering than others: vain, chatty, boring, charming, narcissistic, shy, impulsive, nerdy, fussy, arty, to name just a handful. (In 1936, the grandfather of personality psychology, Gordon Allport, and his colleague Henry Odbert estimated there are no fewer than 4,504 English words pertaining to personality traits.)⁸ Thankfully, modern psychology has weeded out all the redundancy in these descriptions, distilling the variation in human character into five main traits.

For an example of this distillation process, consider that adventurous, thrill-seeking people also tend to be happier and more chatty, so much so that these characteristics seem to stem from the same underlying trait, known as extraversion. Following this logic, psychologists have identified five main traits:

• Extraversion refers to how receptive you are at a fundamental level to experiencing positive emotions, as well as how sociable, energetic, and active you are. In turn, this affects how much you enjoy seeking out excitement and company. If you like parties, extreme sports, and travel, you most likely score high on this trait.
• Neuroticism describes your sensitivity to negative emotion and your levels of emotional instability. If you worry a lot, if social slights hurt you, if you ruminate about past failures and fret about upcoming challenges, you probably score high on this trait.
• Conscientiousness is about your willpower—how organized and self-disciplined you are, as well as your industriousness. If you like your house to be tidy, you hate being late, and you’re ambitious, you’re probably a high scorer here.
• Agreeability refers to how warm and friendly you are. If you’re patient and forgiving and your first reflex is to like and trust new people you meet, you’re probably highly agreeable.
• Openness is about how receptive you are to new ideas, activities, cultures, and places. If you dislike opera, films with subtitles, and breaking your routine, you’re probably a low scorer.

The Main Personality Traits and Their Subtraits

Big Five Trait	Its Facets (or Subtraits)
Extraversion	Warm, gregarious, assertive, active, fun-seeking, happy, cheerful
Neuroticism	Anxious, prone to anger, prone to sadness and shame, self-conscious, impulsive, vulnerable
Conscientiousness	Competent, orderly, dutiful, ambitious, self-disciplined, cautious
Agreeability	Trusting, honest, altruistic, accommodating, compliant, modest, empathic
Openness	Imaginative, aesth...