The Science of Personality Change
How to be a little less neurotic and a little more extraverted
I’ve been a fan of Olga Khazan’s writing at the Atlantic for a long time. She has a remarkable ability to toggle between the silly and the serious, often in the same paragraph.
That ability is on display throughout her book, Me, But Better: The Science and Promise of Personality Change. The book has been out for nearly a year, but I only inhaled it recently (and the paperback just came out).
In the book, Olga delves into each of the so-called “Big Five” personality traits that psychologists study—the ones that go by the acronym OCEAN: Openness to experience; Conscientiousness; Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.
She takes a personality test at the beginning of the book, and then—via a chapter on each trait—commits to personal experiments in an effort to shift her personality in ways that make her calmer and happier.
Olga joined me recently to talk about her “journal of worries,” the happiness boost of extraversion, alcohol as a social crutch, and why everyone should take an improv class. Our discussion is below.
David Epstein: A main idea in your book is that personality change isn’t some spontaneous out-of-body experience, but rather the result of acting how you’d like to be on a consistent basis. Can you expand on how we can shift our personality traits?
Olga Khazan: I think the simplest way is just to deviate from the common thought that you should only look for things that already fit your personality perfectly. This would be something like not taking a job that requires any public speaking if you feel like you’re an inborn introvert, or not doing anxiety-provoking things if you feel that you have a lot of anxiety. What I advocate for in the book, and what the science shows, is that you can take that stuff on and rise to meet those challenges because your personality traits can actually shift.
What’s required is to do those behaviors consistently over time. As you do them more and more, it’ll start to feel like part of your identity. You notice this with runners. Runners start out running every day or every other day, and then suddenly they’re doing 5Ks and 10Ks and they’re saying, “I’m a runner.” It becomes part of their identity. The same thing can happen with different traits. You can go from seeing yourself as someone who’s very shy or withdrawn to someone who feels like they’re a natural public speaker. You can go from feeling like you’re someone who’s very anxious to someone who can handle really significant challenges. Rather than looking for situations that you feel are a perfect fit, you are developing skills and routines that allow you to rise to the occasion.
The Concept of “Free Traits”
DE: You also write about “free traits.” How does that help people who might be hesitant about the idea of changing who they are?
OK: Free traits is an idea from the psychologist Brian Little. It’s kind of for people who are scared of the concept of personality change. When I tell people about personality change, they often say, “I don’t want to change my personality. I love myself exactly the way I am.” Ok, great, but they could still try free traits.
Let’s say you’re a total introvert and you’re never going to change, but you have a job that requires occasionally talking to big groups, or presenting. You can try on the trait of extraversion as a free trait and say, “I know I’m not an extrovert, but I’m going to behave like one for this time frame.” That is still a form of personality change. Brian Little says that in the service of important personal projects, we can actually shape-shift for a short period of time in order to achieve our goals. It just might not be permanent if you don’t see it as part of your identity.
DE: I think that bridges the gap between professionalism and authenticity. If something is meaningful enough, acting in a certain new way doesn’t feel inauthentic; it feels purposeful.
OK: Authenticity is kind of in the eye of the beholder. Whether a skill is authentic or not is totally up to you. It can also come from familiarity. As something becomes more familiar and you get better at a skill, it might just start to feel more authentic.
I recently moved to Florida, and something I learned doing this book is that I have always thought I don’t need friends, but I actually think I do need them. I feel better when I have people in my life who I would consider friends. I’ve started going out and meeting friends intentionally—putting myself out there in a much more forward way than I would naturally. And it’s starting to feel more authentic. I’ve started to feel like, “Oh yeah, I’m totally going to go to that and talk to three people and get someone’s phone number and text them later.” That’s not something I would have ever done before, but now it feels more authentic because I’ve just done it so much.
Journalism as Exposure Therapy
DE: I had a similar experience switching from science to journalism. I went from being someone who could spend a summer in a tent in the Arctic [when I was an environmental science grad student] not talking to anyone for much of the daytime while working, to being an overnight crime reporter who had to talk to strangers constantly. It really fundamentally changed me. When I first started, I would pace back and forth and psych myself up to talk to strangers. That is long gone. Since you’re naturally introverted, I wonder if journalism did the same for you?
OK: That’s almost exactly what happened to me. I was a very, very shy kid up through my teen years. Even talking to classmates I didn’t know was very uncomfortable. I had to psych myself up and plan out exactly what I was going to say. Journalism is kind of a crutch because you do plan out what you’re going to say, but it forces you to talk to people who are important or scary or mad at you. You have all of these different types of interactions all the time.
Eventually, I was just sort of like, “Look, I’m not shy anymore.” That’s just not part of who I am at all. I feel very comfortable talking to strangers now, even in my personal life. A lot of the social anxiety challenges I came across in the personality research didn’t really apply to me because I had overcome so much of it because of journalism.
Taming Neuroticism
DE: You mention in the book that personality has a genetic component. And so let me just read this passage you write in the neuroticism chapter about your father:
“My father, for example, is so anxious that he once declined to buy a car manufactured near Hiroshima, Japan, because he worried that a particle of the residual radiation from the atomic bomb dropped there in 1945 might somehow have nested in the glove compartment. And upon the car’s arrival at Pat Lob Toyota in Texas would jump out and give him instantaneous fatal cancer.”
I thought that was very funny. But also, wow. I think you wrote that you scored in the 93rd percentile on neuroticism when you first took the test.
OK: I was really high. Neuroticism is basically depression and anxiety, and it really just sucked the joy out of my life.
DE: Honestly, just reading that chapter made me tense.
OK: Good things would happen to me and it was two seconds of feeling okay before moving on to the next worry. It made it so I wasn’t living in the moment at all. I felt like I was on some sort of eternal grind through various worries until they would get resolved, and then it was on to the next worry.
When I was 16, I kept a journal of worries: getting my driver’s license; passing an AP chemistry test; and whatever else. I had no responsibilities; my food and shelter were taken care of, and I was just this bundle of nerves. I realized I couldn’t keep doing this for my whole life, living with a list of worries that never get resolved.
DE: You wrote in a really compelling way about being paralyzed by both sides of choices—for example, afraid of not getting pregnant but also being afraid of getting pregnant. What experiments did you try to lower that neuroticism?
OK: I did a lot of different kinds of meditation. I did a lot of loving-kindness meditation, which is where you say kind things to yourself. It helped me be more compassionate toward myself. A lot of my anxiety was focused on self-blame—the idea that you have to figure this out because if it goes wrong it’s all your fault. Through practice, you end up feeling a little bit better about yourself. It’s very cheesy, like the Stuart Smalley “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough,” but when you really do it, it helps.
And I was a huge meditation skeptic. I did not believe it worked. But I took an eight-week class called MBSR, which stands for mindfulness-based stress reduction. It’s essentially meditating every day and being part of a weekly group class. I really liked the class, even though I thought it was stupid at the time. One of the things the teacher would always say is: “Things happen that you don’t like.” It’s so obvious, but I had literally been living my life thinking that if I did everything perfectly, nothing would ever happen that was bad. I thought people with good lives were just so smart they never messed up. Having someone else tell me that’s not true somehow got through to me. It made me less frustrated with myself when things didn’t go as planned.
Also, one of the suggestions for reducing neuroticism is just to do things that you enjoy. Doing new activities and meeting new people made me have a lot more fun than I was used to having.
The Happiness Boost of Extraversion
DE: You make a compelling case that being a little more extroverted provides a happiness boost comparable to making significantly more money. Why should comfortable introverts consider being more extroverted?
OK: Most studies show that extroverts are happier. And when in studies they make introverts go out and socialize and behave like extroverts, they come back and say they feel happier, and actually also that they feel more true to themselves. I think it’s because your mind loves challenges. Engaging with the world in real life is a little bit challenging no matter what you’re doing. Even if you’re in a book club, just listening and saying one or two things, that’s still more challenging than watching Netflix.
Extroverts are just taking on more challenges that involve other people, and they’re succeeding and feeling better about themselves. Of the Big Five personality traits, extraversion was the easiest one to make a difference in. For neuroticism or agreeableness, you have to really want to do it and be ready to let go of the anxiety or be a more calm person. For extraversion, you just have to go talk to people. You don’t even really have to like it, and you don’t have to do something that involves a ton of talking. You just have to leave your house.
Improv as “Rehab for Perfectionists”
DE: One of my takeaways was that everyone should do improv, because it involves so many of the things you write about that can lead to positive personality change. You called it “rehab for perfectionists,” which I loved. Why was that so effective?
OK: I do think everyone should take one improv class. I was way too dedicated to it. I was trying to get an “A” in it because I’m conscientious, another part of my personality. But everyone should do at least one exercise because it’s great practice for surrendering control in challenging situations. You let other people pick up some slack, and you play off what they’re doing. It’s great practice for getting up on stage and having the worst thing ever happen—trying to be funny and failing—and realizing that everyone just moves on. And it’s a great stress reliever because having fun relieves stress. It’s basically exposure therapy.
“I was relying on [alcohol] as a crutch”
DE: Speaking of your conscientiousness, you were already highly conscientious when you started this book, so that wasn’t a big area for improvement. But you looked at healthier habits, specifically your relationship with alcohol, which comes up a lot in the book. You mentioned using it as a “social crutch” to handle the anxiety of meeting new people. How did that change?
OK: I used alcohol especially to deal with the extraversion chapter. Before I went out on missions to talk to people, I’d have a glass of wine, and then one at the end, too. At some point, I realized I was relying on it a lot as a crutch. Part of conscientiousness is being healthier; conscientious people tend to drink less.
I ultimately just stopped drinking when I wasn’t doing it for the purpose of having a good time. I was doing it to make myself less anxious or to smooth some social thing that I thought wasn’t going well. Sometimes at a dinner, if I felt like everyone wasn’t having a great time, I would order another drink to make myself more fun. I stopped doing that, and it became less fun sometimes because I wasn’t as outgoing. But I was testing myself to see if I could be okay with the discomfort of other people not always getting the most fun version of me. I had to be okay with that long awkward silence at a happy hour and just not order another drink.
Agreeableness and “Sending Anger Home”
DE: In your chapter on agreeableness, you had a provocative line: “In the 20th century, we chased anger out of the workplace, but in doing so, we sent it home.” Can you explain that?
OK: It’s really common for people who struggle with anger to mostly express it around family members. This is why people yell at their kids and spouse more than anyone. You can’t yell at your boss, your coworkers, or your customers. In the anger management class I took when I was working on the book, I noticed people take out their frustrations in life on whoever couldn’t retaliate. It’s usually the person we feel safe around or who we feel will understand.
DE: This makes me think of the book Bowling Alone, only in the sense that people just have fewer separate community spaces to do things now. It’s like work, and home, and even those are often the same. So where is anger or frustration going to be expressed?
OK: I noticed this with my dad. He was very scared of losing his job all the time, so if anything happened at work, he was going to take it out on the kids because there wasn’t anyone else in his life to express anger to. My colleague just wrote a great piece about venting. Even venting is now frowned upon within friend groups. You’re supposed to ask, “Do you have the capacity for me to vent?” With the suppression of negative emotions elsewhere, the only place you have to release it is at home.
Lightning Round: Experiments for the Big Five
DE: Okay, I just want to do a quick lightning round here. If someone wants to start their own personality-change experiments, what is one beginner task you can recommend for each of the Big Five traits?
OG: Openness to experience: Go to a restaurant you wouldn’t normally go to and order something you would never eat.
Conscientiousness: Try decluttering for one week. Eliminate a meeting from your calendar and throw away some stuff in your office.
Extraversion: Join a club—anything that involves other people regularly.
Agreeableness: Do something that involves being around people who are different from you, like volunteering at a homeless shelter.
Neuroticism: Take a yoga class. It’s meditative but easier for people who are fidgety.
DE: And finally, which of these changes that you tried for the book stuck with you? And, since you did decide to have a kid, how has motherhood changed the way you view your personality?
OG: I still do yoga, though I don’t meditate as much because I have a toddler. With agreeableness, it has changed my approach to people who piss me off. I have a lot more empathy for where they might be coming from. My first instinct now is empathy instead of wondering how mad I can get in return.
Having a kid has made me way less neurotic about my job. I was more neurotic about him in the first year, Googling every rash or cry, but I used to obsess about my career and how it was going. I still try hard, but I’m just not as wrapped up in it as I used to be. I just don’t obsess about it like I used to.
Thank you for reading, and thanks to Olga for her time. The paperback of Me, But Better just came out. It’s insightful and hilarious.
I recently started a YouTube channel. If you like books, here’s a video in which I summarize 34 books that changed my thinking in about a minute each.
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Until next time…
David
As an introvert I am happier when I go out--but then I can't help but crash/take a few hours to recharge. I'm not quite sure if "fake it til you make it" works. I think having and keeping real friendships, not making small talk with strangers, feels that need in a way that does not require that much replenishment.
Fascinating interview with Olga about her book. I've always felt that many people may have been introverted in their youth but later in life accomplished in their roles as CEO's or other professionals got them categorised differently. Society prefers them categorised anything other than introvert because their new roles involve public responsibilities. Olga's explanation of personality changes over time resonates.