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I'm not sure there's a material difference, though. > You don't become more extroverted, but you can improve your social skills. What's the difference, though

by kelnos 10mo ago

I'm not sure there's a material difference, though. > You don't become more extroverted, but you can improve your social skills. What's the difference, though? Having well-developed social skills is an aspect of extraversion. > You don't become less neurotic, but you can learn to manage stress, or just avoid stressful situations altogether with proper planning. Isn't this the same thing as being less neurotic? If the overall effect is lower stress when confronted with the same situations and stimuli, then hasn't your personality changed? > You don't become more agreeable, but you can learn to become more considerate. Being considerate is just an aspect of agreeableness. If you become more considerate, then you do become more agreeable. > You don't become more conscientious, but you can make a framework to complete your tasks: schedules, checklists, etc... I would argue that the act of making those schedules and checklists in order to ensure you get your tasks done is, in and of itself, an act of being conscientious, so teaching yourself to do those things does indeed make you a more conscientious person. > You don't become more open, but you can educate yourself on opposing viewpoints. What is the goal of educating yourself on opposing viewpoints if not to understand different people better? You may still disagree with those viewpoints just as strongly, but the simple fact of a newfound willingness to educate yourself is an increase in openness. To me, you are focusing on the mechanism here, and not on the outcome. After reading this article I found and took a big-five test[0] and found that some questions did try to assess how you feel about aspects of yourself, but many (most?) are about outcomes in your life. That is, "do you feel like it's easy to complete tasks?" is a different question from "do you tend to complete tasks?" The first one is about how it feels: even if you do tend to complete your tasks, you may feel like it's only because you've created your task-completion framework, but it takes concerted, difficult effort to stick with the framework. The second is about the outcome: you do complete your tasks, and the mechanism behind it isn't relevant. I think both things (the feelings and the outcome) are important to assessing the personality traits, to be sure, but changing the outcome (even if the feelings have not changed at all) is a material change. And I'd suspect that, if you do succeed in changing the outcome, the feelings will change over time, at least to some extent. [0] https://bigfive-test.com/ https://bigfive-test.com/ (doesn't require some bullshit registration to see your results)

GuB-42 10mo ago
I think there is a big difference. You can go against your traits, but it will take effort. That is, it will feel like work, not fun. Many people are good at their job while not particularly enjoying it, they like the money, status, recognition, etc... they learned the skills to make it easy for them, but the job itself is just a mean to an end. This is like these programmers who may be skilled, but during their time off, they won't do so much as touching a computer. This is the idea behind a "social introvert", they socialize for the benefits of socializing, like for their career, or simply maintaining friendships, because even introverts want friends. They can be good at it, they can do it with little effort, but they don't enjoy it. Extroverts will socialize just for the sake of it, even if it is detrimental, as in partying all night when there is work to do. Same idea for all the other traits, you can go against your personality, but it will cost you. Do it too much, and you will burn out. That's why I think you should be honest with yourself. For example, if you are low on openness, it is good reading on opposing viewpoints, it may help you understand customer needs at work, hold more interesting conversations, etc... so it is worth the effort. However, it doesn't mean you should force yourself to spend a week in a hippie festival if you can't stand drugs just because you pretend you are open. Actually open people will not force themselves to go, in fact, they are more likely to force themselves to be reasonable and not go.

by kelnos 10mo ago

GuB-42 10mo ago

I think there is a big difference. You can go against your traits, but it will take effort. That is, it will feel like work, not fun. Many people are good at their job while not particularly enjoying it, they like the money, status, recognition, etc... they learned the skills to make it easy for them, but the job itself is just a mean to an end. This is like these programmers who may be skilled, but during their time off, they won't do so much as touching a computer. This is the idea behind a "social introvert", they socialize for the benefits of socializing, like for their career, or simply maintaining friendships, because even introverts want friends. They can be good at it, they can do it with little effort, but they don't enjoy it. Extroverts will socialize just for the sake of it, even if it is detrimental, as in partying all night when there is work to do. Same idea for all the other traits, you can go against your personality, but it will cost you. Do it too much, and you will burn out. That's why I think you should be honest with yourself. For example, if you are low on openness, it is good reading on opposing viewpoints, it may help you understand customer needs at work, hold more interesting conversations, etc... so it is worth the effort. However, it doesn't mean you should force yourself to spend a week in a hippie festival if you can't stand drugs just because you pretend you are open. Actually open people will not force themselves to go, in fact, they are more likely to force themselves to be reasonable and not go.