Can your personality change?

[Pallas]

Can your personality change? I always used myself as proof that it could, because I now act in completely different ways, love things I hated, hate things I loved, and behave wildly differently. I was proud is of myself and started writing poems about the drunken furor of the will in its grand struggle followed by its triumphal march when it at last wins, but then I realized that the fact that I was quite unhappy when acting the other way but am generally quite happy now might mean there's more to it than I thought.

[Shiver]

I've seen it insisted that sociotype does not or cannot change, but I highly doubt "it" takes into consideration modern research. Our brains have amazing plasticity; it seems highly likely to me that a multitude of things could cause a personality and type shift over time.

[Beautiful sky]

You may become more introvert or extravert; more empathetic, understanding; more accepting or less but you type doesn't change

[Sol]

There was similar discussion related to types
http://www.the16types.info/vbulletin...=1#post1145924

I now act in completely different ways, love things I hated, hate things I loved, and behave wildly differently.

probably because of P type. they are lesser stable

[The Exception]

I don't think socionics type actually changes. We may change our self-typing as we do more introspection or soul searching, but the same natural tendencies and brain wiring were always there. However, we can learn new ways to adapt to and cope with various situations. Our brains are very plastic in that regard.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Personality can change, but it is rare for there to be significant changes to a person's innate nature. Whether the answer is yes or no, you should consider your personality over a sufficiently long period of time e.g. the last two or three years, and consider the extent to which your apparent personality has been affected by the appearance of disorders (if any).

[Pallas]

Personality can change, but it is rare for there to be significant changes to a person's innate nature. Whether the answer is yes or no, you should consider your personality over a sufficiently long period of time e.g. the last two or three years, and consider the extent to which your apparent personality has been affected by the appearance of disorders (if any).

I thought I said I feel great now and felt meh before. Apparently my teal deer post is too much of a pain in the %#$ for many people to read. I'll try to figure out a better way to say what I tried to say.

[Joy]

Sometimes I think mine has. But then I think I'm always the same person, just going through different things at different times. One thing that I can say has changed about me is that I joke and make people laugh a lot more in professional/business settings. I used to be super serious, but I've lightened up a lot. I don't really even know how I do it? Like, the stuff I'm saying isn't really even funny, but I say it in a way that gets people to laugh. I don't do it on purpose, exactly. Like, it's what I'm going for, but not consciously? Vital Fe, I guess. And I'm a lot happier now than I was in my 20s.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

Also as we get older, everything becomes gray and neutralized. our relationships with other people... we realize their complexity. But as a kid/teen it was EWWW YOU STUPID IDIOT GET AWAY FROM ME!!! or 'OMG I LOVE YOU SOOOO MUCH. <3' Did we all forget who we were during those times of innocence? instead it's like this gray turd just shitted on the world. And everything is more convoluted then it really needs to be.

[strangeling]

Guess it depends how you use type. Nature is not something that just changes on a whim. If type is nature, then no. Otherwise, yes.

[Shiver]

How do those of you saying that type cannot change account for directly self-reported alterations in thinking and behavior after structural or psychological trauma? Do you simply consider the impact of whatever event and circumstances as a modifier on a given type?

[Exodus]

How do those of you saying that type cannot change account for directly self-reported alterations in thinking and behavior after structural or psychological trauma? Do you simply consider the impact of whatever event and circumstances as a modifier on a given type?

Behavior changes, type does not. There is a lot more to behavior than just sociotype.

[Shiver]

Behavior changes, type does not. There is a lot more to behavior than just sociotype.

People keep parroting that type does not change but I haven't seen any solid argument to suggest that is true.

[Exodus]

People keep parroting that type does not change but I haven't seen any solid argument to suggest that is true.

My argument is that none of the many people I have typed has ever displayed a change in their type. Even personality changes are pretty rare in my experience.

Obviously I can't prove this to you, you have to verify it for yourself.

[golden]

People keep parroting that type does not change but I haven't seen any solid argument to suggest that is true.

I think an argument for type not changing could come from how conservative the brain can be. Technically, the brain can be extremely plastic, but if it doesn't have a reason to reorganize, like in response to trauma, it will tend to keep doing what it already does.

So if the information elements actually reflect differences in how people perceive or process information, once those tendencies take root they would probably not change so easily. And that's only taking into account learned preferences.

Some things might also be more inborn. You can see even among infants that a lot of personality and temperament traits are evident. Afaik, some longitudinal studies have found that the way people behaved in infancy does correspond with their behavior later in life.

I'm not saying any of this is "right," I'm just pointing to the direction I'd look in if I had to make a case for personality stability* across the lifespan.

*I don't necessarily think "personality" = socionics in any neat way, either.

[Milo]

People keep parroting that type does not change but I haven't seen any solid argument to suggest that is true.

For one, all of your memories will have to be rewritten to match with the new values and "mission" of your type, as well as your new intertype relationships. Someone who was your dual, won't be your dual any longer. Your parents relation to you won't be the same relation after this event. Neither will your memories of them be same. What do you think is the likelihood of such a TIM-changing event happening and how much damage would your mental and personal life incur as a result of it? Can you name anyone who has gone through such a process (historic, personal, or otherwise)?

Personality changes, for sure; mine has changed many times since childhood, and I found myself liking that which I've disliked before. But someone's socionics TIM ("type of information meabolism") isn't equivalent to their personality and shouldn't be mistaken for one. If personality changes this does not mean that socionics TIM has to also change.

[ashlesha]

For one, all of your memories will have to be rewritten to match with the new values and "mission" of your type, as well as your new intertype relationships. Someone who was your dual, won't be your dual any longer. Your parents relation to you won't be the same relation after this event. Neither will your memories of them be same. What do you think is the likelihood of such a TIM-changing event happening and how much damage would your mental and personal life incur as a result of it? Can you name anyone who has gone through such a process (historic, personal, or otherwise)?

Personality changes, for sure; mine has changed many times since childhood, and I found myself liking that which I've disliked before. But someone's socionics TIM ("type of information meabolism") isn't equivalent to their personality and shouldn't be mistaken for one. If personality changes this does not mean that socionics TIM has to also change.

It's not unusual for values and relationships to change. I don't know why this would require a rewriting of memory, but I think that's even more common- memories are extremely malleable.

[Pallas]

Behavior changes, type does not. There is a lot more to behavior than just sociotype.

I would agree with this now that I made more observations. Usually when people don't behave like their type should they're physically unhealthy. If you're afraid to be who you want to be I think that derives from being physically unhealthy mostly. But your inner thought processes don't actually change. Just the people who make OCEAN, MBTI, and the popular ones don't really measure personality at all.

[marooned]

this reminds me of the documentary series 'beautiful minds' about autistic savants.

p1 - memory masters
p2 - the einstein effect
p3 - a little matter of gender

i only saw p1 and p2 a while back. most of these are on youtube, but some pieces are missing.

one thing noted in the documentary series is that a lot of the genius abilities autistic savants are capable of are already in everyone's brains. it's just that most people have all these filtering systems that block such abilities (it explains better if you watch). the point was that autistic savants don't have something more, but something less in terms of the brain.

i also remember when it was talking about this guy who had a stroke and how his personality seemed to do a complete 180 afterwards. before the stroke he had been a hard violent man with little feeling for others; after he was a sensitive artist. i think that might have been in the beginning of 'the einstein effect,' which is conveniently not on youtube.

playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...E87D3EE910C8EB

[Jake]

Absolutely, with life experience you change every day. A new way to react to something, or think about something. Sure, you may stay consistent for the most part but there are definitely little changes here and there.

[summerprincess]

Yes, I believe that socionics type can change too but only in certain circumstances..For instance if you type yourself when you're 18 (still adolescent) and then again when you are 28 (fully grown adult.) Then again, I think it's more common to have typed wrong in the past and then find the right type later rather than your type actually changing. For me, my personality has fluctuated but I'm still the same person deep down with the same enduring habits as when I was 12 or 13.

[Reficulris]

Speaking about colloquially Psychologie yes. People make new neural connections all the time, quit smoking, become monsters over trauma or reach a state of tranquillity with themselves.


socionics wise there isn't much indication that it could. But it's just a theory to make sense out of the primordial chaos and isn't sufficiently connected to neuro Psychologie to really make statements about it.

I changed markedly during my life, , could be "details" could be "enneagram", could be "sociotype". People from my childhood will give a different account then those of my high school or those in my university or those that know me now. And I'd agree...



#underinfluence

[wacey]

Severe extended stress and trauma can certainly change a person's core personality.

[Pallas]

Severe extended stress and trauma can certainly change a person's core personality.

I don't believe that at all. If this is physiologically based, which I'm convinced it is now*, you can't change a healthy body into a different kind of healthy body by cutting it up. Damage to a person's personality wouldn't give them a different healthy personality, just a damaged version of whatever they had. And I'm not sure you can actually damage that per se (well, not psychologically) as much as you can mess with its function by making people have fear that sort of stifles it.

*I think that in turn derives from some sort of spiritual level, since I view body as being sort of derived from the spirit in some way but then it can give feedback back to it.

[Shiver]

I've known some people have gone through some pretty traumatic events; I have no idea if their TIM is different than it was prior because of course at the time I wasn't typing them. Really though, socionics isn't old or researched enough to know for sure whether there would actually be any sort of gradual change over time or not either. I'm not inclined to write off that sort of possibility given how vague the theory is anyway.

[Pallas]

Were you acting the way you were previously for the expectation of others and believed you had to be a certain way? I've known a few people who 'came into their own' in their early-mid 20's. Did you have any life changing events happen to you that might have made you perceive the world differently? Have other people noted this change in you?

Yes, yes, and yes. I used to be afraid to take a single misstep lest people come down on me like a guillotine. My lack of missteps did not stop that, however. When I was very young I was the world's most outgoing person and would just talk to random people and stick my hand up in class every 2.5 minutes, but after people bullied me a lot I declared in a fit of rage that I didn't need people if they didn't like me and decided to isolate myself and live an almost schizophrenic-seeming existence in weird fantasy worlds. But I still had fantasies not of having a few friends (which I kind of had) but of being "popular", which my mother said I shouldn't have, I should just want some close friendships. She wanted me to be a scientist or mathematician (although she never stated it and might not have realized it herself) and I was concerned I'd have to be a lone genius working in a lab which didn't sound very appealing to me. I also tended to concern myself more with some weird mythical vision of heroism, struggles, spiritual ideas, and esoteric structures through which I framed my life, and with the rabid fantasizing that's really a chicken-or-egg scenario.

Then, when I finally went to summer camp, my mother told me what to write on everything that was often quite contrary to what I would have written on my own. "I like to keep my room moderately neat". "No, you keep it moderately messy". "Well, but I would like to keep it neat if you'd let me get rid of my old stuff so I'd finally have places for everything!" "Well, I listen to a lot of classical music". "People don't like that, just put rock music first". I ended up with roommates and suitemates whom I absolutely could not stand and withdrew even more than normal. But I met people whom I definitley did like. I also kept my room neat as a whistle, and played lots of Romantic cello concertos and Wagnerian overtures when no one was around. There were outspoken atheists and I stood up against them for all the (few) religious people and their villainous nihilism and talked to the Norse pagan girl a lot because she seemed cool. But I largely sulked through life.

Then, I had a bunch of spiritual experiences, the first one out in nature when I was watching a thunderstorm. I had read that various ancient pagans viewed divinity as inherent in nature and now I really experienced that for myself instead of just thinking that it sounded neat. The thunderstorm was beautiful but if it weren't for that thin roof it was as if it could wipe me out in one blink of an eye, and some primal part of me was scared. I suddenly became sensitivized to the outside world again that way and was wondering what happened and if anything I did beforehand was making me react this way. Then I ended up meditating and doing other spiritual stuff really hardcore and I started feeling really different and stronger. I became very, very, proactive, a living embodiment of "it is better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission". At college I joined a billion clubs, talked to everyone whenever they didn't seem to mind, made my room at home as clean as my dorm room rather than just staying out of the former because of how uncomfortable it made me, and decided to pursue what I wanted at university instead of what my mother impelled me to.

That's definitley not the whole story of my life but it's enough to show a lot of the crap that happened. Other parts are too personal and/or too long. It's already a tealest of deer as it is.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

Somewhat...but remember that a lot of what people like has to do with how other people will perceive them once they find out they like something- so it's a difficult gauge to judge by. It seems deeper then petty interests. It's hard to view yourself in a vacuum because everybody is worried about how they are seen.

I just think the magical idealizations and terrors of our childhoods are .... hard to shake. You know that pure simplicity of when we were a kid and life was terrifying one moment and incredibly new and wondrous the next depending on what we were doing and our own subjective interests and all that sort of molded over time. And as we got older it got more refined, sophisticated and complicated/complex, but I don't see how you can just shake them off so easily. The more adult brain can more easily tolerate bullshit situations (like as an adult you learn not to throw a temper tantrum being in a traffic jam as a basic example, and you also learn to curb you inner giddiness to not look overly dorky in front of your peers in social situations.) So you sadly over time accept what you viewed as bad and dampened what you viewed as good... but in a way that's just what growing up is like, right?

But they are there... that base blueprint is there. So nah you can't change completely. Maybe 'evolve' more than change.