Hi Friends,
The sky is dark. Drones are shooting up into space and scattering their vengeful flames all over. Earth is sinking. Is it just me, is it the depression that clouds my senses every now and then or is this real? Is the world really coming to an end? Forget it. I am thinking aloud again. I am drowning my depressive mood all over the blank sheet. This depression, it should end here. It should end with me; this character, this pawn on a large chessboard, trying to squeeze in between kings, queens, bishops and knights. This should end with me...
I hate myself for always having to start on a sad, depressing note but if truly one's personality is usually interwoven with one's verbal or nonverbal voice, then I would say no less can be expected from me. This melancholy, it's definitive of my being, just as happiness and laughter lords the lives of some other earthlings. My point? We all have our distinctive personalities just as we have a set of behavioral traits that marks us differently from others which I believe cannot be changed by anything or anyone.
But some people don't think so. They hold the belief that, change being the only constant, can so provoke humans to shed their former characters and behavioral traits just so ywhy could take up a new one, something like what snails do with their shells or what snakes do to their skins. Most Shakespearean or classical plays, in general, are known to embrace this phenomenon. A character, who is a known villian or a supposed saint can suddenly change for the better or worse by the end of the play. Othello, Tempest, King Lear- these are a few of the plays that amplify this phenomenon. But beyond sitting on what is known in the literary space as dynamic characterisation, I would like to take a peep at what science says about this phenomenon.
Back in the 19th century, a pseudomedicine developed by German Franz Joseph Gall tried to explain the science of our personality by ascribing measurements to aspects of the human skull (brain), based on the belief that the brain is the seat of the mind. Because of the not too uncommon dabbling into empiricism, this science, phrenology as it was called, has long being abandoned. But our contemporary scientists haven't altogether forgotten about the need to detail our personalities just like every other thing else. Let's see what they have to say.
Our personalities remain the same right from childhood through to adulthood. This stance was what a particular group of researchers maintained in their study. After examining a group of adults, they found out that their individual personalities told a lot about their childhood. A research on first-graders also revealed that their personalities, however naive, told a lot about what growing up would be like for them. Christopher Nave, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, in denunciating the reason for this, made it clear that, "Life events still influence our behaviors, yet we must acknowledge the power of personality in understanding future behavior as well.” Hence, the assumption is our personalities are set in stone; and they can't shift grounds for any reason.
Even going forward, other scientists have denied the existence of personality traits and the likes. They think it's all in the head. You do what you do because you have to do what you have to do. Well, don't you think these guys went too far in their denunciation? I think they did. Gratefully, some other scientists do too. And by observing the repeated patterns of a person's actions, they discovered that not only do we have personality traits, these personality traits influence our behaviors as much as situational circumstances do. To tell if somebody is assertive or shy; artistic or non-artistic; emotionally sound or prone to worry, depression, low esteem, anger is to study a person, hand them a personality kit and have it delivered back to you subsequently. Once you open the kit and discover the content within, you can tag a name to the personality of a person.
Wikimedia by U3081508 CC BY SA 4.0 - Big five personality traits.
This realization of the possibility of tracking and bottling up one's personality traits has over time helped companies and individuals find the right kind of persons for a particular task based on deciding in what personality traits fit their description and going all out in search of someone or people with such traits.
But that's not the best part. Wait for it.
The scientists who are more into the theory of establishing the existence of personality traits have also given it a thought, and they have forewarned that, "oh well, upon giving a personality kit twice a year to a particular person, you might find different contents."
What this means is that although personalities can be stable for a long period of time, they are also susceptible to change. And most times, as we grow older, we change, a good kind of change. Due to the influence of the society on us, we become more tractable, more agreeable and less ruffled up by the darts life throws at us. And some people, in fact, are known to conscientiously change their personalities through a sheer change of routine. And by changing one's behavior or personality, it infinitely has a ripple effect on one's character or attitude. So, we can have ourselves served in whatever variety we want.
No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness... (We)know all the rules. But (we don't) know what goes on in a single human heart
-Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene.
This is my summation: the complexity of humans makes it quite to place a tag on them. It's hard to say someone is a quiet or happy person or a sad and melancholic soul, because personalities are not stamped on genes. Sadness or happiness, they happen to us, we don't happen to them. So, it is very difficult to put a peg on them, to know why and when they should happen. But being free thinking beings, I do believe that we have a choice to determine which personality we let on in our lives for more than the necessary time. If we notice a character trait that doesn't suit our goals or look good on us, we do have the choice to take it off. Of course, it won't be as easy as taking off a pair of shoes or pants, but look at it this way, if too much pepperoni or garlic or sauce makes my pizza taste downright gastric, I would just as well have the pizza dude take all those things down in my next order; anything just to have a good meal.
So as to the scientific explanation behind character formation and transformation, I would say, science is still trying to grapple with that course. Maybe one day, it will figure out the whole mess of algebra and finally get an A.
Personality Change
People never change
Personality can change for the better
