Psychologists put 'character' under the microscope - and it vanishes!

[Lark]

In addition, I've heard people who really do buy into this premise conclude that despite it being situational that if people can be persuaded of expectations in such a way that they have a major emotional stake in it, either from religion or ideology or something which is an idea with a strong emotional attachment, that they will develop the sembalence of a character, this could be good or bad, for instance the "ideology" of "respect" between rival gangs which can sanction either self-control or aggressive outburst in response to particular stimuli.

Fromm's theories are similar, he has his own first principles which are a little funny or unique to him about people wanting to retreat to womb like states of dependency or earlier animal-instinctive behaviour, which sometimes, although I think its happy coincidence or accident, correspond to attachment theories or more recent research and sometimes dont. What is important is that he describes character formation as the cohering of inherited traits, biological facts of life, like instincts, and habits, which can be received from socialisation. So even if its just a set of habits in a particular context which are adaptive there's still such thing as "character".

 

[gps]

So even if its just a set of habits in a particular context which are adaptive there's still such thing as "character".

There's ... there is ... is qua IS?
That we can't prevent others from apperceiving a pattern they think-of-as `character' entails that character forever shall remain a mind-of-a-beholder experience, if not not an extant `thing'.
Without qualification and quantification `character' remains an un(der)specified notion, term, and concept.
Reading `character' seems closely related to reading ink blots and tea leaves.

What allows the so-called `character' types of the MBTI any utility at all are comparison and contrast among greatly-constrained discrete categories.

If people are allowed to describe the `character' of others with the full assortment of adjectives and nouns available in any would-be `natural' language -- even over a well-specified fairly-short interval of time -- I imagine something akin a projective test ensues.

 

[primaloath]

They don't actually spell out what their results were. The entire article merely describes their interpretation of their results.

When you carry out experimental psychology, you put people through different tasks and examine the results. In their experiments, they probably divide participants into two groups: the group that performs a task in subtly altered circumstances and the group that performs the same task in normal (i.e. baseline) circumstances. They then compare the results of the task between the two groups. If they find noticeable (or "significant", to use a statistical term) differences (no matter what the magnitude, or "effect size", of these differences), they report it. Also, bear in mind that most experimenters can't afford large experiments that recruit participants from amidst the public, so they recruit psychology students - most of whom are female, and possibly more easily influenced by social norms.

So "people's character changes during subtle manipulations" could mean "some people's actions change a bit during subtle manipulations".

For Stanley Milgram's experiments, these changes are quite dramatic: two thirds of all people tend to deliver lethal electroshocks on command, and 90% seem willing to contribute to their delivery on command, if memory serves. But that does leave out a sizeable minority of people that are thankfully immune to authority.

I agree about the bad attitude the article's authors show towards the homeless person. Also:

The problem with this view is that, intense psychopathology aside, it makes little sense from an evolutionary perspective to assume that the mind would have