Have you ever noticed that some people have the same personality for a long time, while other people seem to change a lot from day to day? In my studies of personality (however brief), I've often wondered why and how people's personalities change. It turns out that there's a pretty straightforward process of transformation:
1. Unfreezing of previous identity.
2. The acceptance of a comprehensive role expectation.
3. Participation in "ordinances."
4. Acceptance of a new name or identity.
5. Refreezing of the new identity.
To illustrate this, let's look at the process of changing from a Board reader to a Board writer. The first step in becoming a Board writer is to have the idea that perhaps one could be a writer. This is the melting of the reader identity. Perhaps you start making comments or researching your own questions. After being applying and being accepted as a writer, you have a new role to fulfill - a personality you make up and a new social circle to break into. Answering questions gives everyone common experiences, and one chooses his new names... or in this case pseudonyms. When others address you by this new name, it's kind of like the new identity is freezing, and this personality you made up for yourself becomes a part of you. Okay, maybe that wasn't the best example, but you get the idea. Other examples of such transformations include marriage, religious conversion, missionary work, brainwashing, and military service (you can see that transformation can be used for good and evil).
Other interesting thoughts:
If you can construe another person's processes (love him), you can predict his behavior.
There are three layers of looking at people: 1. Behaviorist (we're machines reacting to our environment) 2. Kelly (every man as a scientist) 3. Agentive (we choose our feelings and actions). No human behavior belongs exclusively to any layer - they are like different sets of lenses we can look through.
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About Me
- Rachel Helps
- Indie videogame writer and Wikipedian-in-Residence at the BYU Library. You are probably wrong about something, and so am I.
3 comments:
According to some people we never change our personalities. They claim that personalities, as measured by the MBTI, never change. They believe your personality is determined by your genes.
I asked my sister about this. She is a registered administrator of the test, and a practicing family counselor. She dodged the question a little by saying that in her experience of 20 years or so no one has ever changed werf's personality, as measured by the MBTI.
hmm, interesting. Perhaps it's two layers of personality we're discussing here! I think we have enduring characteristics, but these become manifested differently based on our life perspectives, which do indeed change.
Some things change, some things apparently do not change. We are expected to have a change in our nature - to become more Christ like. Is a change in our nature a change in our personality?
Is God introverted or extroverted? Is He intuitive? Is He a thinker or a feeler? Do these types of distinctions even make sense for the personality of God? And, if becoming Godlike meant becoming extroverted, and an introvert could not change his personality, would this mean that an introvert could never become like God?
I asked some questions like this at the 100 hour board months ago. Katya attempted an answer.
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