Your Personality Can Change (and Probably Should)

Your Personality Can Change (and Probably Should) Wednesday, May 23, 2007 By Jeanna Bryner E-MAIL STORY PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION Can a Type-A overachiever become a slacker? How about the guy who can't hold down a job to save his life — could he transform into an adrenaline-pumping go-getter? A leading expert in personality psychology says yes: Personality can change. The once accepted idea that an individual's personality is set in stone is, well, changing. "You read about this twin research where these people who have been raised apart have remarkable similarities," said Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University. "They married women with the same name; they named their dog the same thing; they both build little ships that fit into a bottle and they show up to their reunion wearing almost identical clothing." "The implication there is that it's all programmed in," she added, that personality is permanently stamped into our genes. The static-character research is typically based on the five-factor model, a definition of personality comprising five features, including openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. • Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Human Body Center: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,275053,00.html?sPage=fnc.science/humanbody