Can Personality Be Changed? The Role of Beliefs in Personality and Change

Using recent research, I argue that beliefs lie at the heart of personality and adaptive functioning and that they give us unique insight into how personality and functioning can be changed. I focus on two classes of beliefs—beliefs about the malleability of self-attributes and expectations of social acceptance versus rejection—and show how modest interventions have brought about important real-world changes. I conclude by suggesting that beliefs are central to the way in which people package their experiences and carry them forward, and that beliefs should play a more central role in the study of personality. KEYWORDS—personality; personality theories; change; self-beliefs; interventions James Springer and James Lewis were identical twins separated shortly after birth and reared apart. Yet both married and divorced women names Linda, and then married women named Betty. They had similar interests. James #1 enjoyed carpentry and James #2 enjoyed mechanical drawing, and both showed similar levels of sociability, flexibility, and self-control on personality tests. When Barbara Herbert and Daphne Goodship, also identical twins, were reunited at age 39, each arrived wearing a beige dress and a brown velvet jacket. Each had the eccentric habit of pushing up her nose and each giggled more than anyone else she knew. These dramatic examples might lead people to believe that personality is encoded in our genes and impossible to change. If such specific things as the velvet jacket or such broad things as sociability are programmed in, it might imply that everything in between is too. However, more and more research is suggesting that this is not the case. Far from being simply encoded in the genes, much of personality is a flexible and dynamic thing (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) that changes over the life span and is shaped by experience (Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006). What is more, we are beginning to understand how to change it. Studies of twins often highlight (a) specific preferences and habits and (b) broad traits of personality and temperament (but see Roberts et al., 2006, for data on how much even these broad aspects of personality change over time). However, they often neglect the levels in between, and yet these are arguably the most important part of who we are. What is this ‘‘in-between’’ part of personality? Several prominent theorists of personality propose that all (Mischel & Shoda, 1995) or much (McAdams, 1995) of the action takes place below the level of broad traits. Mischel and Shoda place such things as goals and construals at this level, and McAdams places such things as personal strivings and coping strategies there. In this paper, I focus on core beliefs or belief systems that, I will show, can organize and shape people’s goals and strivings, as well as their construals of and reactions to the environment, to create consistent patterns of experience and actions. Indeed, Allport (1964) defined personality in terms of consistent patterns of experience and action that are evident across multiple situations or life contexts. As such, beliefs, with their power to mold experience and action, are central to this definition of personality. Moreover, showing that belief interventions do, in fact, change such consistent patterns of experience and action will be central to the case that personality can be changed. People’s beliefs include their mental representations of the nature and workings of the self, of their relationships, and of their world. From infancy, humans develop these beliefs and representations, and many prominent personality theorists of different persuasions acknowledge that they are a fundamental part of personality. For example, Mary Rothbart, the eminent temperament researcher, argues that personality contains much more than temperament and patterns of habitual behavior; importantly, it also includes the way one perceives self, others, and events (Rothbart & Ahadi, 1994). Jack Block, often seen as a trait theorist, proposes that models of the self and the self’s relationship to the world create the ‘‘organizing, motivating, and life-defining contexts within which the individual acts,’’ and suggests that a central part of personality development is the encoding of internal models, schemas, and premise systems from socialization experiences (Block, 1993). Address correspondence to Carol Dweck, Department of Psychology, Jordan Hall, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; e-mail: [email protected]. CURRENT DIRECTIONS IN PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Volume 17—Number 6 391 Copyright r 2008 Association for Psychological Science Focusing on people’s beliefs, as opposed to their simple preferences and habits or broad personality traits, helps us answer in more precise ways questions like: What personality factors allow people to function well in their lives—that is, to grow and learn, sustain satisfying relationships, achieve well in school and careers, be caring toward others, or recover from setbacks? This is because beliefs can typically be defined very precisely, measured very simply, and altered through interventions to reveal their direct impact. In contrast, broad personality traits can be assessed, but they contain no implications for how you might change them. Beliefs are not necessarily easy to change, but they tell you where to begin. To illustrate these points, I will use recent research that examines two very basic beliefs: people’s beliefs about whether their attributes can be developed or not and people’s beliefs about whether others will accept them or not. In describing this research, I will underscore the idea that beliefs and their impact are part of personality, that they underlie important aspects of adaptive functioning, and that they have unique implications for interventions. SELF-THEORIES: BELIEFS ABOUT THE MALLEABILITY OF PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES My research shows that acquired beliefs play a critical role in how well people function. These are people’s self-theories. Some people have a fixed (or ‘‘entity’’) theory, believing that their qualities, such as their intelligence, are simply fixed traits. Others have a malleable (or incremental) theory, believing that their most basic qualities can be developed through their efforts and education. Research shows that people with a malleable theory are more open to learning, willing to confront challenges, able to stick to difficult tasks, and capable of bouncing back from failures (Dweck, 1999). These qualities lead to better performance in the face of challenges such as difficult school transitions (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007), demanding business tasks (e.g., negotiations; Kray, 2007), and difficulties in relationships (e.g., dealing with conflict; Kammrath & Dweck, 2006). All of us would agree that these are a key part of how people function. However, a malleable theory can be taught. When it is, people show increased motivation to learn and they perform better on challenging tasks. How is the malleable theory taught? In a study by Aronson, Fried, and Good (2002) with college students at a rigorous university, students in the experimental group were shown a film that highlighted how the brain is capable of making new connections throughout life and how it grows in response to intellectual challenge. They also wrote a letter to a struggling younger student emphasizing that the brain is malleable and that intelligence expands with hard work. At the end of that semester, the college students who had learned about malleable intelligence (compared to two control groups that did not) showed greater valuing of academics, enhanced enjoyment of their academic work, and higher grade-point averages. Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (2007) conducted a malleable-intelligence intervention with students making the difficult transition to junior high school (see also Good, Aronson, & Inzlicht, 2003). Both the experimental and control groups received an 8-session workshop built around study skills, but the malleable-intelligence group also learned that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that the brain forms new connections every time learning occurs. The students in the control group, despite the excellent tutoring in study skills, showed little improvement in motivation and no improvement in grades. Those in the malleable-intelligence group, however, showed significant improvement in grades and significantly greater changes in their motivation (e.g., showing greater conscientiousness in their homework and studying, and putting more effort into their classroom learning). More recently, we have been developing and testing a computer-based version of this workshop (called ‘‘Brainology’’). After a pilot study in 20 New York City schools, virtually every student (anonymously) reported important changes in such things as their study habits and persistence in the face of obstacles. Many reported picturing their neurons forming new connections as they studied and learned. People can also learn these self-theories from the kind of praise they receive (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Ironically, when students are praised for their intelligence, they move toward a fixed theory. Far from raising their self-esteem, this praise makes them challenge-avoidant and vulnerable, such that when they hit obstacles their confidence, enjoyment, and performance decline. When students are praised for their effort or strategies (their process), they instead take on a more malleable theory— they are eager to learn and highly resilient in the face of difficulty. Thus self-theories play an important (and causal role) in challenge seeking, self-regulation, and resilience, and changing self-theories appears to result in important real-world changes in how people function. RELATIONSHIP BELIEFS: EXPECTATIONS OF ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION Fifty years ago, John Bowlby proposed that infants form internal working models of how relationships work and that these internal working models serve as prototypes for subsequent relationships. An important implication was that ‘‘insecure’’ models might not allow children to recognize consistent, available, and affectionate caretakers should they come on the scene. Infant-attachment researchers have long been able to measure the quality of parent–infant relationships and have assumed that internal working models accompany them, but they had not measured working models in infants. In new research, Susan Johnson, Frances Chen, and I (Johnson, Dweck, & Chen, 2007) have provided the first evidence for internal working models of relationships in infants. We began by assessing 12to 392 Volume 17—Number 6 Personality Change