“Refuting the idea of rigid personality types could make us all happier”
Simone Rotella
There is a meme in modern therapy culture saying that you shouldn’t try to change – you are perfectly imperfect, and that the right people will accommodate your every idiosyncrasy. Relatedly, personality has traditionally been defined as a pretty stable collection of traits. Indeed, you might believe you are hostage to the genetic hand you were dealt at birth when it comes to things like how agreeable or conscientious you are. These ideas are nonsense.
There is plenty of evidence that our personalities are more fluid than we think, fuelling fascination with the craft of personality change to improve our lives. For example, a 2024 study found that three months of digital coaching reliably increased traits like emotional stability and conscientiousness.
Other traits provide further support for the fluidity of personality. Most people will label themselves exclusively as extroverts or introverts. But Carl Jung, who coined these terms, said they are a spectrum and that there is no such thing as a “pure” introvert or extrovert. Some of us may be more likely to revel in the role of chief party entertainer, while others tend to prefer quietly attuning to their surroundings, but these preferences are malleable. Who you are on a cold winter Wednesday is likely to be different to who you are on a sunny Saturday. If you menstruate, where you are in your cycle might radically affect your personality.
Whatever your tendencies, getting enough social connection is crucial for your well-being. Displaying extroverted traits is linked with being better able to withstand the physical effects of stress, like higher blood pressure and heart rate. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, an 80-year project tracking the lives of about 700 men in a bid to understand the core components of a happy and healthy life, found that nothing matters more to that end than thriving social relationships.
Of course, many of those who prefer smaller groups and one-on-one conversations, or who need significant alone time to feel their best, also have robust social lives. But in a loneliness crisis, these findings make the growing popularity of the introvert label – and its potential use as a badge to allow people to lean into their less social side – alarming.
Before the covid-19 pandemic, younger people in the US were already more likely than older ones to self-define as being introverted. The pandemic seems to have accelerated this trend, bending many personalities into a less social shape: one study showed falls in extroversion, as well as openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness, in US adults in 2021-22 compared with pre-2020. This isn’t good. Globally, 1 in 6 people report feeling lonely, a state linked with cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease and premature death. Again, rates are higher in younger people.
Even if you file yourself as a hardcore introvert, embracing a more social slant may be easier than you think. Indeed, research from 2022 shows that it is the strength of someone’s identity as an introvert, more than how highly they score on traits of introversion, that makes them uncomfortable when prompted to act more outgoing. This indicates that a looser grip on self-image can help to drive deliberate change.
Already highly extroverted? Perhaps you would benefit from working to boost your capacity for reflection, a trait often found in those who lean towards a quieter life. Similarly, enhancing other traits linked with well-being – like good emotional regulation or becoming more open to new experiences – has repeatedly been shown to be possible.
Refuting the idea of rigid personality types could make us all happier. But first, you might need to accept a painful truth: maybe trying to change isn’t such a bad idea.
Claudia Canavan is head of features at New Scientist
