It feels like the personality we have is the one we're stuck with, regardless of how much we wish we were different...but is that really the case? In today's episode we are joined by writer and author Olga Khazan who ran a year long experiment to see how much she could change her personality to be more outgoing, less anxious and hopefully, happier. We discuss: The root of all personalities What does science say is the best kind of personality When does personality become stable Is it possible to change? How could we change our personality? The results of her experiment then & now + much more Listen now! Olga's book here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Me-But-Better/Olga-Khazan/9781668012543 PREORDER MY BOOK: https://www.psychologyofyour20s.com/general-clean Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [email protected] The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is the psychology of our 20s?
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s. Today, let's talk about destiny or something that feels strangely attached to it.
Chapter 2: Can we really change our personality?
Let's talk about personality, whether it's fixed or it can be changed, how it shapes our future, our beliefs, maybe even how happy we are. And personality is like a little bit of a black box. Like we know it's shaped by nature and nurture. We know that genetics are involved, how we were raised is kind of involved.
But I think as we get older, we become more aware of the parts of ourselves that are holding us back and that, you know, we really would wish for something different. Well, today I have the honor of interviewing someone who has investigated that very possibility. What if we could be ourselves but better by rewiring our personality? I want to welcome on author and journalist Olga Hazan.
Thank you for joining us.
Chapter 3: Who is Olga Khazan and what was her experiment?
Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
I'm very, very excited for this episode and this topic in general. But before we kind of jump into it, can you briefly introduce yourself to the audience and your work?
Sure. My name is Olga Hazan, and I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic magazine. And I'm also an author of books. This is my second book. And it is actually kind of stems from a cover story I did for The Atlantic a few years ago. So that's that's my backstory.
And you're not going to give us any spoilers. I feel like the the cover story, like you go into it kind of in the book, right?
Yeah, I can give you a spoiler. So the cover story, I kind of experimented very lightly with changing my personality. But then I kind of realized that I needed to do more. And kind of letting up on the experiment, I backtracked. I noticed that I was sort of falling back into old patterns. So the book is really an overview of the five traits of personality
My personal attempts to change on three of them and because the other two, I actually don't need to change. They're fine. They're very high in me as it is. But I do interview other people who increased on those traits through various methods.
We're going to get to that because I feel like it's such an interesting premise. But I do also want to talk about how you became a journalist, how you became a writer.
I think as much as I love interviewing people about the very amazing niche things that they're doing and they're like, whether it's psychology or neuroscience or anything like that, this podcast is for people in their 20s and a lot of people probably aspire to do what you do. Can you kind of talk us through how you got from maybe graduating high school to where you are now?
Sure. Yeah. Wow. That's a long time ago. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What are the happiest personality traits?
Why didn't you like speak spiritual enlightenment? Why didn't you like say to yourself, Oh, I need to change something about my lifestyle. Like, did you feel, yeah. What was like the focus on changing what I'm guessing is like neuroticism, right? Like as a building block.
Yeah, so neuroticism was one of the things I wanted to change. So neuroticism is one of the five traits and it's just anxiety and depression, right? And I had a lot of that. I had a lot of anxiety and a lot of kind of negativity, as I mentioned. But there are other elements of personality and they sort of encompass those other things that you mentioned.
So actually, as far as like improving my neuroticism, a big thing I actually looked to was Buddhism and a lot of Buddhist teachings. Because a lot of neuroticism, it's not about like – reducing the number of things that happen to you that are bad. I mean, although if you're addicted to drugs and that's why bad things keep happening to you, that's something to look to.
But let's say you're a functional person who's living a basically normal life, it's going to be a lot easier to change your reactions to the things that happen to you than it is to make every single thing in the world go your way. That's why I looked inward. Personality does encompass a lot of those things that you mentioned. Um, Buddhism has a lot to say about depression and anxiety.
Um, uh, and you know, as far as like lifestyle, that was really more extroversion. Like I, I wanted to become more extroverted. Um, and that was a big part. Uh, lifestyle was a big part of that is, is sort of, uh, how often do you go out to socialize and do you make an effort to do that?
You know, not just like, do you sit, sit by the phone and wait for people to contact you, but do you make connections? Do you try to get out there? Um, so those, those are things that I did. Um, but I called it personality change because personality includes all that.
okay that makes that makes a lot more sense um so in this like endeavor to change your personality did you figure out like who the happiest kinds of people were like was there an assumption that like the happiest kinds of people are extroverted and are lower neuroticism and like high in openness to experiences like thinking about like the big five what did you come across in your research
yeah so people are not going to be thrilled to hear this but the happiest people are like high in all the traits except for neuroticism um so so there's five traits um i will just briefly say what they are it's so openness to experience happy people are high in that because that's like
yeah spiritual but not religious like creative imaginative um uh conscientiousness which is like getting stuff done um so it's like uh being places on time and being like healthy and exercising happy people tend to be high in that um extroversion extroverts are happier that's like a really consistent finding in psychology unfortunately i i was i'm an introvert and i was not thrilled to hear that
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Chapter 5: At what age does personality become stable?
You're going to be a different person, you know, when you have kids and like a job than you were in college, than you were in high school, you know, and that is like freeing and it's kind of scary, but it's also kind of nice that like, you're not going to be like, if you're not crazy about something, you know, about yourself or about your life, you're not stuck with it forever.
That is very, very freeing. And even like as we get into like older age as well, something that I like a statistic that I really like to talk about is how by the time people reach like 60 and 70, symptoms of mental illness really decline, which I don't know. I've always like thought about that and been like, oh, that sounds great.
Can't wait for that.
Yeah, can't wait for that. Like maybe I'll have 10 years of just like bliss. But it is like a really beautiful thing that you mentioned this. I hear this a lot, like another myth about personality change slash personality stuckness is by the time you reach 25, like your frontal lobe is fully developed. And I think we kind of think like, okay, so like that's it.
Like this is who I'm always going to be. What evidence did you find like on the contrary? Before I like really dive into your personal experiment.
Yeah. So there's two kind of branches of evidence to the contrary. So first, your frontal lobe being fully formed doesn't really mean anything about your personality because we don't have like a lobe in our brain that is where the personality lives. So like even if they study like brain changes or, you know, like those like fMRI studies where it's like brains lighting up
Those don't necessarily correlate perfectly with personality necessarily. So there's kind of two elements to this. The first is that when researchers have followed people, you know, and given them personality tests over and over across the years, they do find that people change. You know, they tend to change in certain ways. ways over time.
So like you mentioned that people become kind of mentally healthier in old age. Neuroticism does go down naturally across your life. So if you feel like you're very anxious and depressed, usually in older age, people become less so. So that sort of just naturally happens. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to like take any Lexapro. That naturally happens for most people.
The other element of this is that if you actually try to change, it can happen even faster. So there's been studies that show that people who get therapy, for example, become less neurotic. And in a short period of time, they become a lot less neurotic than you would expect them to having just like naturally, you know, decline in neuroticism.
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Chapter 6: How can we actively change our personality traits?
Yeah. So it's both. So genetics is responsible for about 40 to 60% of our personality. And even then it's not like direct. Like if you think about either of your parents, you're probably not exactly like either of them, right? You're probably like you have like elements of them, but you're not like they're twin.
Like you kind of, most people are, I mean, usually people are relieved to hear this, like not exactly like either parent, right? So you get a little bit, like you get some ingredients. So I have like a natural proclivity toward anxiety because both my parents are very anxious, right?
But at the same time, there's other, there's like this, you know, 40 to 60 other percent of personality that we don't really know where specifically it comes from. It's not necessarily like the way your parents raised you. It's like, it's like kind of that, but it's also like your friends. It's like, did you go to college? What kind of job do you have?
You know, do you make an effort to like read self-help books? It's kind of like the stuff that you do and absorb into yourself. that creates that other part of personality. So that's the kind of element that I'm talking about is that like, yeah, if you have two parents who are totally bookish and hate talking to people, you're going to naturally be kind of like, I feel really introverted.
But if you, you know, go into a job in sales and you talk to people, you know, all day and everyone around you is extroverted and you get like high fives and promotions for being extroverted like you're gonna be a little bit more extroverted than you naturally would be if that makes sense so it's kind of like at some point reinforcement does kind of work like
yeah yeah absolutely rewarded see I find this really interesting because like my parents are so totally opposite each other like they are the perfect definition of like opposites attract like my dad is like a stay-at-home dad and like we call him like a charity wife like he runs like a non-for-profit like giving bags to refugee children in Australia and like then my mom is like a like badass like ceo
And, like, she has, like, she is the lowest person, like, the lowest neuroticism levels I have ever seen in an individual. Like, I have never seen that woman break a sweat. She is not anxious at all. Like, nothing phases her. And then my dad is, like, the complete opposite. And it's, like, completely, like...
He's not completely anxious, but he's very anxious and very existential and very like in his own head about very deep things. And it's really funny like seeing it, like me and my sisters always joke that it was like, you know, one of us got my mom's genes and me and my other sister got my dad's genes. And it was like, damn, like if I could switch, like I totally would. Yeah. Yeah.
So there you see it.
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