Improving your happiness and changing your personality for the better

[Not A Communist Shill]

I think The Community are naturally inclined to thinking they're stuck with their personality, and also, that they have little agency to improve their levels of happiness much. But I often read research on what makes people happy and unhappy and what measures are most effective (efficient and/or achievable for most people), as well as research that shows that people can change their personality for the better if they make a deliberate effort to do so. So, this thread is where I'd like people to pool resources about making people's lives for the better etc.

[Not A Communist Shill]

Buettner, D., Nelson, T. and Veenhoven, R., 2020. Ways to greater happiness: A Delphi study. Journal of Happiness Studies, 21(8), pp.2789-2806.

In the first round of this Delphi study 14 experts suggested strategies for improving life-satisfaction. In a second round, experts rated these strategies for (a) effectiveness, (b) feasibility and (c) cost-effectiveness. They considered 56 strategies policy makers can use to raise average happiness in a nation and 68 ways in which individuals can raise their own happiness. Experts were informed about the average ratings made by the panel and about the arguments advanced. Then, in a third round, experts made their final judgments. Summed ratings for average effectiveness and feasibility of the strategies ranged between 8.4 and 4.9 on scale 2–10, which means that most of the recommendations were deemed suitable. Agreement was slightly higher on policy strategies than on individual ways to greater happiness. Policy strategies deemed the most effective and feasible are: (1) investing in happiness research, (2) support of vulnerable people and (3) improving the social climate, in particular by promoting voluntary work and supporting non-profits. Individual strategies deemed most effective are: (a) investing in social networks, (b) doing meaningful things and (c) caring for one’s health.

2.3 Questions

We asked these experts the following two fundamental questions:

A.

What policies are most likely to yield greater happiness for a greater number of citizens in nations?
B.

What individual strategies are most likely to enhance people’s happiness in the long run?

2.4 Procedure

The following 5-step procedure was followed:

1.

We asked experts to suggest their best ideas to address each of the two questions above: what ways to follow and why.
2.

We sorted the answers, eliminated redundancy and rephrased some of the suggestions.
3.

We presented the resulting list of strategies to the experts, together with the justifications provided in first round. We asked them to rate each of the strategies for effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and feasibility.
4.

We then presented the list obtained in step 3, consisting of strategies and initial ratings, to the experts and invited them to comment.
5.

The experts then made their final rating. For this second rating, we limited to the 40 strategies on which experts had disagreed most in step 2. In this last round, the experts were also asked to consider a set of specific individual behaviors that figure in popular happiness advice. Rating of these latter strategies was optional.

Table 3 Expert rating of ways to greater happiness for a person can follow (individual strategies)



Table 3 Expert rating of ways to greater happiness for a person can follow (individual strategies)

[Not A Communist Shill]

Stieger, M., Flückiger, C. and Allemand, M., 2023. One year later: Longer‐term maintenance effects of a digital intervention to change personality traits. Journal of Personality.

Objective

Recent research suggests that personality traits can be changed by psychological interventions. However, it is unclear whether these intended personality changes can be maintained or merely reflect ephemeral shifts.
Method

The present study reports 1-year follow-up effects of a 3-month digital intervention for personality trait change. Personality traits were measured before the intervention (pretest: N = 1523), directly after the intervention (posttest: n = 554), and 3 months (follow-up 1: n = 437) and 1 year (follow-up 2: n = 157) after the end of the intervention.
Results

Attrition analyses suggest that participants who completed the 1-year follow-up were significantly more open to experience (d = 0.19), less neurotic (d = 0.20), more agreeable (d = 0.35) and more conscientious (d = 0.27) than participants who did not complete the 1-year follow-up. Also, until the 1-year follow-up, personality trait changes achieved remained stable (for those who wanted to increase in extraversion and conscientiousness) or even changed further in the desired direction (for those who wanted to decrease in neuroticism).
Conclusion

These results suggest that changes in personality traits due to a targeted intervention are not just ephemeral shifts and can even continue.

Measures
Personality change goals. At pretest, participants chose one out of nine change goals for the intervention. Change goals included all Big Five traits in both directions except for
neuroticism (only decreases were possible). To help participants with the goal selection, they received descriptions of normal characteristics of individuals with high versus low levels in each trait. For example, for the goal to increase in extraversion: “I want to be more extroverted, which means to be more sociable; to have more energy and zest for action; to be less quiet; to be more active and more enterprising; to take the lead more often: to take decisions in groups more often”. The present forced-choice format to assess personality
change goals is inspired by other measures of goals to change specific traits (see Baranski et al., 2017; Hudson & Fraley, 2015; Hudson & Roberts, 2014; Robinson et al., 2015). In
Supplementary Table 1 in Stieger et al. (2020) we provide the nine change goals and their detailed descriptions used in this study. Details on differences between personality change
goal groups at pretest are also reported in Stieger et al. (2020)

Supplementary Table 1, from Stieger, M., Eck, M., Rüegger, D., Kowatsch, T., Flückiger, C. and Allemand, M., 2020. Who wants to become more conscientious, more extraverted, or less neurotic with the help of a digital intervention?. Journal of Research in Personality, 87, p.103983.

Supplementary Table 1. Description of Goals
Change Goal; Description

Increase in extraversion I want to be more extroverted, which means:
- to be more sociable
- to have more energy and zest for action
- to be less quiet
- to be more active and more enterprising
- to take the lead more often
- to take decisions in groups more often

Decrease in extraversion I want to be calmer, which means:
- to retreat more often
- to leave decisions to others more often
- to take the lead less often
- to have less zest for action
- to be less active and enterprising

Increase in agreeableness I want to be more agreeable, which means:
- to be more sensitive and warm-hearted
- to be more polite and less harsh
- to trust others more and believe in the good in humans
- to appreciate others more
- to treat others with respect
- to be less distrustful of others

Decrease in agreeableness I want to be more uncompromising, which means:
- to be less influenced by the feelings of others
- to represent my own opinion more often
- to trust others less easily
- to be more skeptical about others
- to make fewer compromises
- to be more self-conscious

Increase in conscientiousness I want to be more conscientious, which means:
- to be less messy
- to procrastinate less
- to be more reliable
- to clean up more
- to stay on a task until it's done
- to be less careless

Decrease in conscientiousness I want to be more easy going, which means:
- to be more careless
- to not feel the urge having to fulfill tasks right away
- to procrastinate more often
- to not always be reliable
- to not always clean up immediately
- to sometimes leave things messy

Decrease in neuroticism I want to be more emotionally stable, which means:
- to worry less often
- to be depressed less often
- to be more even-tempered
- to stay more relaxed in stressful situations
- to be less moody
- to be more self-confident

Increase in openness I want to be more open, which means:
- to be more original and developing new ideas
- to be more enthusiastic about new things
- to think more about complex things and trying to understand them
- to be more imaginative
- to question traditions and routines more often
- to be more curious

Decrease in openness I want to be more objective, which means:
- to be able to come to terms with simple solutions
- to appreciate habits and routines I have more often
- to bring more routine into my life
- to be more conventional
- to not always question everything
- to not always try something new

[Not A Communist Shill]

^ I find this table of goals as simplistic and it doesn't tell people how exactly to achieve the goal, so I think it's remarkable even something so basic could have a moderate impact on personality for the better, and seemingly without any extra support.

[Sol]

Among most influencing on emotions factors:

1) Good relations with people. It's instictual need to be in good and close friendship relations, - to like people near, to be liked by them, to notice be useful for them and their help to you, to have mutual compassion. Emotionally good marriage pair is among most important factors to feel the satisfaction by the life. Individualism is what opposes to have this. As Freud said, to be psychicly healthy supposes the abbility to love and to work, - where love is about relations with other people. There are behavior therapy methods used for emotional disorders (including of group kind) which improve of how people interact with others, to help them having more common communication style and such to have more of pleasant in relations with others.
2) There is a need in successful creative activity, - to have not totally predictable tasks and to solve them positively, when you'd follow to conscious intention. Such activity preferably to be thought as useful for you and other people. Long passive resting is bad for emotions and normal state. The mind and body are made to work, what is needed to be in healthy/pleasant state.
3) Biology. Emotions are physical processes and so there are physical conditions for them. Among ways to feel emotionally better is to have good meal with needed substances, to have no disorders (some of them are known to influence on emotions; including infections, toxins). Among examples of biology ways to improve emotions is significant physical load, as it activates endorphines to reduce feeling of physical discomfort.

From personality traits aspects among what is not related strongly and directly to said above behavior and conditions of life, Jung typology has hypothetical usefulness. Jung supposed that his types are psyche accentuations, which predispose to neurotisatic symptoms (because of inner conflicts). Besides types make people lesser smart by social norms for 1/2 of functions and hence as worser solving tasks, having lesser abbility to feel a pleasure of achievements, having worse life conditions and lesser of sympathy from other people. To enrarge conscious activity of 2 weak functions, skills and achievements in them can be significantly helpful for better emotional state.
From Socionics side, to Jung types is added a possibility to get a help in this process from people having duality types, which are among 4 most differing in functional behavior and skills (experts and models for your weak functions). And also among 4 most fiting to your valued sides of functions, what makes interactions with them easier for your psyche and makes easier to study of their help.
The most weakest is Jung's 4th function (in both e/i sides), so it's where the most of improvement and help is useful.
This means that people who choose occupations much relying on their weak and valued functional side (as can be Si linked dancing/hymnastics for Ne types, accountant work for Fe types, to write/play music for T types, to practice imagination esoterical methods for Se, etc) and in case they by harder and not exhausted efforts achieve there social norms - they may feel emotionally better, than those who choose occupations in strong functional regions, activity in which accentuates Jung types and so may worsen their neurotic symptoms (a part of which is worse emotional state). To have significant activity and skills does no mean obligately to have that as formal social occupation, alike sport and dances can be done without that on individual and clubs levels.

[Not A Communist Shill]

I've briefly returned in order to make this post. I intended to post these before, but wasn't sure where my screenshots were located or what I was looking for.

Be Who You Want: Unlocking the Science of Personality Change by Christian Jarrett











Be Who You Want: Unlocking the Science of Personality Change by Christian Jarrett


Farewell for now.