Personality Stays With Us | INFJ Forum

Personality Stays With Us

for those too lazy to click the link:
Childhood Personality Traits Predict Adult Behavior: We Remain Recognizably the Same Person, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (Aug. 4, 2010)
 
I would say experience and time wouldn't really.... change us, but it made us grow; it gave us more perspective, more alternatives. But the original personality still remains. It's only Me vr.2.0, rather than Me Vista compared to Me 7. Sometimes we revert back to it, sometimes we display some bugs still prevalent, sometimes... we don't. We choose not to. So for some people who didn't want to change, they won't.

I would say it's willpower that make us capable of change.

I wonder, does the phrase 'be yourself' was related to this?
 
the article would be more useful though if it mentioned what kind of 'life events' the people went through. if they experienced really dramatic changes growing up, and still remained relatively the same, that would more clearly point to our genes being the basis of our personalities.
 
the article would be more useful though if it mentioned what kind of 'life events' the people went through. if they experienced really dramatic changes growing up, and still remained relatively the same, that would more clearly point to our genes being the basis of our personalities.
Agreed. We don't know if they grow up 'well', or they have a troubled life or so.
 
I remember when we brought our Son Pat home from the hospital, one of my deepest moments was walking up to his crib when he was asleep. The first thing that came into my mind was that "here was a blank page and that Brenda and I had the opportunity to impress as many positive things as we could on him." It was our job to imprint the good and not the bad. I just don't think you can seperate genetics and the environment. As we get older we have the chance to enlarge and refine our personalities, but let's face it, lot's of people don't seem to have that need. I see it as such a complex subject that all we can really do is hint around at the truth and try not to declare absolutes.
 
Elementary school children. So, perhaps personality developes prior to this. I want to see a study of younger kids/babies and how their environment shapes their behavior. Maybe it is just set in stone by an earlier age. Or, maybe it is genetic ^_^
 
the article would be more useful though if it mentioned what kind of 'life events' the people went through. if they experienced really dramatic changes growing up, and still remained relatively the same, that would more clearly point to our genes being the basis of our personalities.
Not necessarily. Eg: the external factors, that shaped them, happened earlier and mattered more.
 
Neh... something in the article made me think they were drawing a lot of conclusions about how these people were all-round as opposed to how they were just observed. Saying that a person sounds intelligent is an inference, not an observation, and is thus very dependant on the testers and how they view most people.
 
I would say that at least 40% of people I meet at work behave like elementary school kids into adulthood, so this finding does not surprise me. Many people have a total incapacity for change.

I'll also say that the study just sounds bogus. I believe it's a real study, but the entire premise is flawed. They're taking videos of kids, then taking videos of those people 40 years later to "find similarities".

Of course they're going to find similarities, you can't rewrite your DNA, and if you look hard enough among a group of people in a study, you'll always find exactly what you're looking for. I bet if I looked at the same content and approached it from the point of view of "finding differences", I'd find a ton. Then I could come up with some nice report on how people fundamentally change as they grow older. Without quantifiable data, it's really just hyperbole.
 
I would say that at least 40% of people I meet at work behave like elementary school kids into adulthood, so this finding does not surprise me. Many people have a total incapacity for change.

I'll also say that the study just sounds bogus. I believe it's a real study, but the entire premise is flawed. They're taking videos of kids, then taking videos of those people 40 years later to "find similarities".

Of course they're going to find similarities, you can't rewrite your DNA, and if you look hard enough among a group of people in a study, you'll always find exactly what you're looking for. I bet if I looked at the same content and approached it from the point of view of "finding differences", I'd find a ton. Then I could come up with some nice report on how people fundamentally change as they grow older. Without quantifiable data, it's really just hyperbole.
This! Thanks for explaining what I couldn't express. :)