A Personality Theory

A layperson's attempt to understand personality. If it inspires professional psychologists to use it as a starting point for a more robust theory - all the better.

This is my best attempt to explain personality, first of all, to myself, and also an attempt to integrate different branches of psychology that don’t seem to be meaningfully connected right now.

What you’re about to read is amateur psychology. Folk psychology if you will. It’s not a product of serious scientific research and there’s a lot of speculation involved in it. But this is a serious attempt at theoretical psychology. An attempt to create a theoretical framework within which personality could be better understood.

I tried to avoid creating any new, fancy, deep-sounding concepts. All the concepts that I used here already exist and are well known. The only thing I tried to do is to find how they relate to each other.

INTRODUCTION

Motivation for this new personality theory is simple: personality matters. Different personality traits strongly influence life outcomes, such as health, longevity, income, relationship satisfaction, divorce rates, and overall levels of happiness and life satisfaction.

In most other areas, if we identified that some factor X has so strong effects on things that matter and that we care about, we would try hard to understand X, and to either try to modify X in desirable ways, or to find ways to go around X and achieve positive outcomes in spite of unfavorable X.

In psychology this doesn't seem to be the case. Neither do we try to deeply understand personality, nor do we try to find ways to modify poor personality. Labeling personality as "poor" or "bad" is even seen as some sort of taboo. There is this dogma that personality traits are value neutral and that there are no wrong answers on personality tests. This might be appealing for ideological reasons (inclusivity or whatever), but this is simply not true.

We don’t deeply understand personality – Big Five is mostly about statistical correlations between different linguistic descriptions of traits. Some of them tend to correlate highly with each other, and they are thought to represent big traits: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. But these big traits aren’t things in themselves. They aren’t factors that can have causal influence. They are just clusters of descriptions of behaviors that tend to correlate. They are just an artifact of personality testing. They are our best attempt to measure personality.

Without such measurement attempt they don’t exist of themselves. So my conclusion is that instead of them being actual traits that exert some causal influence on behavior, they are just descriptions of final behavioral outcomes, they describe what we actually tend to do in the end, but they are not causing that behavior.

Since they are not causing behaviors, they also don’t explain behaviors. And it means, in order to understand behavior and personality and to be able to potentially influence it and modify it, we need to try to understand what are actually strongest causes of our behaviors, where they come from, and how they cause and explain our behaviors.

So instead of big five traits, which just describe our personality, our personality is determined by all the factors that actually influence it, and that actually contribute to behaviors.

To make an analogy with computers:

Big Five traits are like results of benchmark tests of computers. Benchmark tests can measure performance of various computers or components such as CPU, GPU, memory, etc. They can even define “traits” and measure them, such as speed, refresh rate, latency, error rate, power consumption, etc...

But trying to directly modify the results of such benchmark tests is impossible. Any such attempt would be like some sort of magical thinking. We can’t simply “will” the computer to achieve better results on benchmark tests.

And also, computer performance isn’t caused by traits levels defined in benchmark tests. They are just a way to measure performance. So such “traits” aren’t a thing. What actually causes computers to perform good or poorly are things such as motherboard design, CPU architecture, quality of chips, quality of software, memory capacity, etc... Computer performance can only be improved by improving its hardware and/or software, not by directly trying to improve the traits that are measured on benchmarks.

So my personality theory tries to take a closer look at actual things that actually influence behavior and to understand mechanisms via which they cause behaviors, and also to try to see which of these factors are modifiable and to what extent, and how such modifications of these factors could lead to changes in behavior, and therefore to changes in the measures of so-called big five “traits” (which I’ll continue to use, but just as constructs that are handy for measurement of personality, not treating them as actual things that shape our behaviors).

My theory is nothing revolutionary. It doesn’t introduce any exotic concepts. It’s kind of obvious after all. Doesn’t require any genius insights. The only revolutionary thing about it is that it breaks with the tradition of psychoanalytic school, which did try to be explanatory but it introduced exotic concepts (ego, superego, id, unconscious mind, defense mechanisms, etc...) and also breaks with tradition of Big 5 theory, that doesn’t even try to be explanatory, and just measures resulting behaviors – or “traits” and then tell us how they are correlated with various life outcomes.

My theory just tries to see what is actually there – tries to identify real things that influence behavior and explain how this influence works. So let’s start (finally):

THE THEORY

Traits, as measured by personality tests, are patterns of average behavior, they are just the final effects, final consequences of whatever it is in the psyche that causes them. They are like different types of smoke. But to understand combustion, we need to study materials that burn and how they are arranged, and not smoke itself.

All behavior is influenced by certain factors that have causative effects. They are the real things that are worthy of studying. These factors can be divided in first level factors - which are inborn, given, and mostly independent from our experiences, and second level factors, which are developed during our lifetime, through the interaction between first level factors, the environment and life events. Behaviors are caused by both, but mostly by second level factors. However, first level factors are crucial in development of second level factors and can sometimes also directly affect behaviors.

Factors that influence behavior can also be divided into physical factors (brain), mental/informational factors (mind), and environment. We can also make an analogy with computers: how we behave (behavioral output) is defined by our hardware (brain), our software (mind) and our environment (input).

Environment is both a factor in personality development, and also a very strong influence on behavior at any moment regardless of previously developed personality. To make an analogy with LLMs: Environment is both training data that shapes the model, and the prompt, that strongly influences the actual response the model will give. This second role (prompt) is because environment is a constant input to which we react all the time by producing certain behaviors (outputs).

FIRST LEVEL FACTORS (mostly physical)

First level factors are those that exist independently from what we do in life. Something that’s given to us and not influenced by life events. They include:

Environment – We can’t choose our early environment, but we can change it later in life. The environment provides all the inputs to our brain. This is like training data for LLMs. This is what fills our mind with content. So it’s obvious that it’s extremely influential on personality development. Not only is it influential itself, but it influences formation of second level factors such as knowledge and skills, values, beliefs, memories, etc. However these second level factors are shaped by our interaction with the environment, not by the environment itself. Even young children can influence the environment with their behaviors, so even in the same family, two siblings will have different environment, as parents will respond differently to their behavior, which in early ages is dominated by genetics.

Brain architecture (wiring) – This is the underlying factor that strongly influences most other factors that I mentioned, such as aptitudes, intelligence and natural temperament. But it can also be considered on its own, as a separate factor. Brain architecture, in this sense, is mostly about how neurodivergent, or neurotypical a person is. To what extent are they autistic, or to what extent they display any other type of neurodivergence. Of course neurodivergence will be extremely influential on personality, both directly, and also indirectly, as it will shape the development of some second level factors. Here I would list some examples of personal differences that probably directly follow from brain architecture:

a) level of autistic traits

b) level of aphantasia vs. ease of visualization

c) level of dyslexia

d) the presence or absence of inner monologue

These are some of the factors by which people are profoundly different from each other. Personality psychology as a science about personal differences between people shouldn’t ignore them. Unfortunately, they are almost ignored by Big 5 framework.

Brain chemistry (neurotransmitter levels, hormones) – This is another underlying factor that influences many other factors. It can be especially influential on development of gender (via hormone levels), or on measured levels of neuroticism (serotonin, etc). It’s also important to note that brain chemistry and brain architecture are closely linked. For example behavior is influenced not only by the amount of certain neurotransmitter, but also by number of receptors for that neurotransmitter.

These first three factors (environment, brain architecture and brain chemistry) are foundational. Next three first level factors directly derive from these.

Aptitudes and talents – They are pretty much fixed. Either you’re talented for music or chess, or you’re not. Practice can help a lot developing a skill, but aptitudes and talents determine how fast you’ll improve in something, and what’s the ceiling in some skill that you can achieve. People say hard work is more important than talent for succeeding at sports. This might be true, because hard work is required for professional success. All professional athletes work hard... without that, you can’t even compete. But out of millions of hard-working athletes only the most talented will see real success and will be able to earn a living from sport. Now, aptitudes and talents are important in all areas of life, not just sports, and they can determine how well we do in certain areas of life, and they can push us to some hobbies or lead us to developing some interests, etc...

Intelligence – Just like talents it’s mostly fixed – but not completely. Intelligence is hugely important factor of personality – it shapes our interests, values, priorities in life, aspirations, what we consider important, etc and it determines also how well we do at pretty much anything. It can lead to frustration if we struggle... or it can lead to poor work-ethics if we are so intelligent that we didn’t need to put much effort in school, and still got straight As.

Intelligence can be improved to some extent. Some studies show that education gives some boost to IQ. Also there are mental training exercises such as Dual-N-Back that might give some modest boost to IQ. Finally, I guess, especially in childhood, the IQ the child will eventually develop depends a lot on nutrition (like getting enough iodine, and not being exposed to stuff like lead and mercury), healthy lifestyle and stimulating environment.

Natural temperament - Intrinsic drives, inclinations, and desires – This is the closest we can get to “traits” being considered a real thing – perhaps we have some of these, like instincts, drives, etc... and some drives are stronger in some people, while other drives are stronger in other people. This is what could be called natural temperament. How the environment will react to a baby and a small child depends a lot on their early behavior, and that early behavior is mostly shaped by natural temperament. So our natural temperament to a significant degree influences how the environment will react to us, and therefore, it also influences what inputs we get from the environment, and how these inputs will shape us later on.

Of the factors mentioned so far only environment is external (it’s input), and the rest are mostly based on genetics and physical characteristics of our brain (hardware) – brain architecture and brain chemistry are the most basic factors, and intelligence, aptitudes and natural temperament are almost directly derived from them.

SECOND LEVEL FACTORS

Second level factors are produced throughout our lifetime by interactions between first level factors, the environment and by our experiences. Second level factors are mostly mental, and they are more about our mind (software), rather than brain. They include:

Knowledge and skills – It includes things that we know, and things that we can do. Like software for computers. This is pretty much self-explanatory. But I will underline that influence of knowledge and skills on personality is extremely strong and extremely underrated. What we know and what we can do, pretty much defines limits of our behavior. Knowledge is the “stuff” our mind is made of - informational content of our brain, it is pretty much the foundation for all of our behavior. If we have key knowledge and skills it can help us succeed in many areas. If we lack them, or worse, if we filled our brain with false information, this can lead to many dysfunctions, even insanity.

Here is an example how skills can influence traditional personality trait called extroversion: if a person has well developed social skills, this will make it easier for them to socially interact with other people, with less effort, while obtaining better results. They will receive positive feedback from their environment, and this will function as a reward that will reinforce the activity of social interaction. Likewise, if someone, for whatever reason, didn’t get chance to develop good social skills, they will likely get negative feedback and have little success in social interaction, which will cause them to start disliking it, preferring solitary activities. So social skills could increase extroversion, their lack – introversion.

I also want to underline that this factor (knowledge and skills) is not only extremely influential, but also extremely malleable.

We can gain knowledge and skills by learning. And after we learn something, this can permanently alter our future behaviors, therefore it will change our personality as well. One of the definitions of learning, explicitly states that:

“Learning is a relatively permanent and progressive change in an individual's personality and behavior that occurs as a result of their previous activity, i.e. experience.”

Habits – Habits are shortcuts that get established in our mind to save us energy. Instead of having to make simple decisions each day over and over again, such as “Will I brush my teeth this morning or not?”, habits put us on autopilot – we automatically go and brush our teeth, without much thinking. This way our cognitive resources and willpower are saved for more important and more novel situations. Habits form through the interaction of our first level factors such as inputs from the environment, expectations, intelligence, natural temperament, etc. Once habits are firmly established, their effects on behavior appears to be strong. Therefore, it seems like a lot of positive value can be derived from eliminating bad habits, and establishing good habits.

Unfortunately it seems that good habits are harder to establish and easier to break, and bad habits are easier to establish and harder to break. This is because bad habits are often more rewarding, and these short term rewards they give us, teach us to repeatedly keep engaging in harmful behaviors. Good habits, on the other hand, often don’t give us immediate rewards, and sometimes they don’t give any obvious rewards. For example having healthy teeth is a reward, but this is not something that we get from regularly brushing our teeth, this is something that we already start with, and often take for granted, and brushing our teeth only helps us maintain healthy teeth. For this reason, many people don’t take their dental hygiene seriously before they start having problems with their teeth.

So, to establish good habits, we need first to have mental clarity about why they are good, and why failing in them would be bad. And then we need to be very stubborn in repeating them, so that the behavior becomes crystalized, in spite of not being driven by immediate rewards that bad habits often offer.

The amount of good vs. bad habits, and how deeply entrenched they are has great influence on the big five personality trait conscientiousness. Therefore, to increase conscientiousness, one of the most straightforward interventions would be to simply break bad habits and establish good ones.

Values – Our values are partially internalized values of the community in which we grew up, and partially values that we develop ourselves, and they depend a lot on the kind of events, positive or negative that we experienced in life, and how we interpret them. This depends a lot on our intelligence level, and the kind of content we consume. Our deeply held values are often stable and resistant to change. But some strong arguments, especially if matched by appropriate examples from the environment, or personal experiences, might instill new values in our value system, or modify the existing ones. Values strongly influence behavior and personality because they often influence the goals we pursue, and even how we spend our free time, to the extent that we have enough willpower to pursue those values. Values can, for example influence the level of agreeableness... how much we value our own interest, versus interest of others. Also values influence the level of openness to experience... how much we value new experiences, or liberal principles vs. conservative ones, etc...

Morals and ethics - Morals and ethics can strongly influence our behaviors. They influence how we treat other people, how we treat our friends and even our enemies. They also influence how we relate to other sentient beings such as animals and even AIs. Religious beliefs can have a strong influence on our moral compass. Also learning about secular ethical theories such as deontology, virtue ethics and utilitarianism might inspire us to actually try to apply them in our life. Theoretical knowledge about ethics does not guarantee moral behavior, but in many cases it can indeed inspire people to live more ethical lives.

Dignity and self-respect - This is about how seriously we take ourselves and how we treat ourselves, whether we’re alone, or in presence of other people. This is, however, fundamentally social aspect of our mind, as we learn about respect, etiquette, norms and standards from the environment. We all start with some basic level of self-respect, but events in life can strongly influence how our self-respect evolves over time. Experiencing humiliation, verbal abuse and neglect can strongly undermine our self-respect. In a similar way, repeated failures can also lead to decrease in self-respect. On the other hand, being treated decently by other people, and achieving certain level of success can lead to developing healthy level of self-respect.

Excessive self-respect is not good either, as it can lead to developing narcissism and very low levels of agreeableness.

Self-respect has the strongest influence on 2 traits: agreeableness and conscientiousness. In general, agreeableness is negatively correlated with self-respect - extreme levels of self-respect can make us behave like entitled assholes. Conscientiousness, on the other hand, is positively correlated with self-respect. If we respect ourselves more and treat ourselves more seriously, we’re likely to be more focused on achieving certain goals and milestones, and to maintain certain standards in all areas of our life.

Self-respect can be shown by how we treat ourselves in public and in private as well. If we’re always well dressed, if we care about our word and our promises, if we can make clear boundaries and don’t let others take advantage of us, if we behave with integrity, this shows high level of self-respect and can show respect for other people as well.

On the other hand, if we neglect ourselves, if we live in a mess, if we don’t care about our physical and mental health, etc… this is evidence of having low self-respect.

It’s not easy to change our level of self-respect quickly, but therapy might help in developing a healthy self concept and appropriate levels of self-respect (not too low, and not too high).

Beliefs – Beliefs are usually our assumptions about things we don’t have full knowledge about. If we know something, then it’s knowledge. If we strongly assume something to be true, without fully knowing if it’s true, then it’s a belief. Many beliefs are useful and can serve practical purpose. On the other hand, some beliefs are dysfunctional and can lead us to failure and disappointment. Luckily dysfunctional beliefs can be modified with a relative ease. Beliefs directly influence behavior, which can be expressed in levels of agreeableness (how good we consider other people to be, how trusting) and neuroticism (how safe do we consider our environment to be, how cautious we should be).

Memories – Information that our mind is composed of can be divided in two main parts: 1 – knowledge and skills, that we already talked about and 2 – autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memories are extremely important for our sense of identity and how we see ourselves. Of course, it’s not only about memories, but also how we interpret them, what meaning do we ascribe to certain events and experiences, etc... But still, the importance of the raw memories, the actual traces in our mind of the actual experiences that we had can’t be overstated. Perhaps just having had certain experiences, won’t automatically change what Big 5 measures, but it will change our behavior in more subtle ways that aren’t so easy to measure. My belief is that each experience shapes us and leaves traces in memory, and eventually exerts strong influence on our behavior.

Aspirations – Aspirations are mostly about what we want to achieve in life, that is, it’s about our long term goals and dreams, in which we are the main protagonist. They depend on our values, and also on our beliefs about what we are capable of achieving, and whether it would be worth the effort. Aspirations can have a long lasting effect on some people’s lives: for example, someone can strive for decades to become a doctor or a lawyer or a software engineer, etc... or to become very good at some sport or any other skill. The existence of strong aspirations, especially if we’re dedicated to them, gives rise to higher conscientiousness levels as measured by Big 5.

Desires – Desires are simply about what we want, regardless of whether we just get it, or we achieve it by our own effort. Desires are usually more direct reflection of our values and preferences, but they are also influenced by our environment and intelligence. They strongly influence behavior because people spend significant amount of time doing or seeking what they desire. Desires can be created by exposure to certain things from the environment: if we don’t know how chocolate tastes, we can’t desire it. Sometimes marketing agencies try to instill new desires in us via ads. Desires often reflect our worldview, our values and aspirations, but they can also be more primal in sense that raw desires often don’t need justification. Sometimes desires can even be in collision with our values, creating cognitive dissonance or internal conflict. For example we can consciously strive to study and accomplish our goals, but our unconscious desire is to spend time on the Internet aimlessly surfing the web. Harmonizing our desires and our values and aspirations can lead to better mental health and less stressful living. Changing our desires can also lead to change in behavior, and therefore personality (as personality is just a long term average of behavior). Sometimes this change can consist in making certain desires weaker, starving them and trying to liberate ourselves from them. Buddhists emphasize this a lot. By making desires weaker, they can become much less of interference for us pursuing our more noble goals and aspirations.

Interests – Interests are similar to desires, but while desires are more strongly affected by our unconscious impulses, interests often stem from our intellect. But just like our unconscious mind might crave chocolate, in exactly the same manner, our intellect might crave certain types of intellectual stimulation, even if it doesn’t provide us, nor the humanity, with any benefits. This is how people develop interest in chess, or solving all sorts of puzzles, or keenly following the developments in tech, or any other niche. Interests often defy rational explanation, but our level of intelligence strongly influences what our interests will be. A smart person might follow developments in theoretical physics with keen interest even if they aren’t an expert in it, just out of sheer curiosity. Interests can be changed by exposure to new activities or ideas, but it’s rather difficult, because our intellect naturally leans towards certain types of things, which is mostly determined by how our brain is wired, and how naturally intelligent we are.

Fears – Some fears are inborn, like fear of loud sounds, heights or spiders, while some fears we acquire during our lifetime. How prominent place in ones mind take fears of all sorts of things, such as fear of failure, fear of success, fear of death, fear of disease, fear of global warming, fear of war, fear of civilizational collapse, etc, makes a strong impact on one’s personality, especially on levels of neuroticism as measured by big 5. Sometimes people develop irrational fears, about things that aren't real threats, or about things that are dangerous but that we can't avoid or control. Finding ways to face and/or neutralize one's own fears, especially irrational fears, can lead to a calmer mind and less neurotic personality. Changing what we're afraid of, and to what extent is difficult, as it depends not only on our rational beliefs but also on how strongly our brain reacts to a perceived danger – and this to a large extent depends on brain wiring and brain chemistry. But in spite of this difficulty, working on overcoming fears is one of the only ways to reduce neuroticism, which can, if too high, be quite debilitating and make life very difficult.

Aversions – Similar to fears, but their influence on our personality and behavior is somewhat weaker. But it’s definitely not insignificant. Aversions can be inborn, like disgust we feel when we see spoiled food or worms, but they can also be acquired. Sometimes they stem from traumatic experiences. For example one could have gotten very sick from eating contaminated ice-cream at some point. After that, they might develop aversion and disgust towards ice-cream and avoid eating it in the future. It is not a fear or anxiety, simply a strong dislike, which affects life only when it comes to such trivial decision as whether or not to eat ice-cream. But some other aversions can be based on our values or moral judgments. Prejudice we might feel towards certain groups of people are also a type of aversion. Having strong aversions towards certain people or things can severely limit our options in life and cause us a lot of trouble and dysfunction. Big 5 would probably measure it as decreased agreeableness – if we discriminate against certain people based on our prejudice, or increased neuroticism, if we avoid certain activities based on our aversions.

As said before, these second order factors, influence our behaviors in more direct ways.

So, all these factors, first level factors and second level factors, this is what our brain and mind consists of, this is what makes us us, this is our actual personality.

Traits are just outward manifestations of this personality, and they consist of observed, measurable patterns of behavior. They are useful concepts, and they can tell us about what kind of behavior we can expect from a person. But they don’t cause or influence behavior. In reality it is the opposite – our actual personality, defined by first and second level factors, causes and influences our behaviors, which can then be measured as traits.

So if we aren’t satisfied with our traits, that is, with this result of measurement of our behavioral patterns, the only meaningful thing we can do is to try to change our core personality, which consists of the aforementioned first and second level factors that lead to behaviors.

PERSONALITY CHANGE

Personality change should only be attempted if the person desires it. It should be self-initiated, self-directed and voluntary. Trying to change other people’s personality without their consent would be unethical. The main idea here is to try to identify ways people can intentionally change their own personality, if they desire such a change. In a way, it’s an exploration about how much we’re able to define ourselves and shape our personality so that it reflects our values, ideals, etc.

A professional such as psychotherapist can help with such a change, especially when it comes to overcoming some issues that make people neurotic, but they should never try to change their clients on their own.

To achieve personality change, we should try to modify the factors that are modifiable.

Most of the these factors are at least somewhat modifiable, though they strongly vary in their level of modifiability.

The following table shows the levels of modifiability of each factor, and how strongly they influence the behavior:

So the key to successful personality change is changing those factors that are easy to modify and that have strong influence on behavior. They include:

1. Environment (if one can afford it)

2. Brain chemistry (but it needs continual maintenance, like prescription medications, or supplements)

3. Knowledge and skills (very easy to achieve strong, permanent change)

4. Habits (requires some effort, and its questionable if habits are “a thing”)

5. Beliefs (a change may be uncomfortable, but can lead to significant and permanent changes in behavior)

6. Aspirations (can lead to complete change in one’s life orientation)

7. Interests (determines what we spend most of our free time on)

8. Fears (overcoming certain irrational fears can be a great relief)

It’s important to say that personality change should not be seen as limited to changes in traits measurable by Big 5. Big 5 is quite a rough tool, and there are many aspects of personality that it ignores. So, any kind of change in those factors that leads to a sustained change in behavioral patterns should be counted as personality change.

In spite of this, when discussing personality change, we’ll often focus on big five, because these five traits have strong impact on various important life outcomes, and also people are very familiar with that system, and a large body of literature exists that focuses on these big 5 personality traits.

SOME POSSIBLE INTERVENTIONS

As said before, even though I call it “interventions”, these are self-directed actions that a person can do on their own if they desire some change. Those interventions should never be imposed on other people, not even by a therapist. It should always be voluntary, self-directed, and self-initiated. Therapists, can, however, with the consent of their client offer some help, guidance and/or assistance.

We can explore all possible changes in measurable personality traits (10 possible changes, as each of five traits can be increased or decreased) that could be achieved by changing the factors that make up our personality. However, some of these changes are far more popular than others. For example, I think that the most popular personality changes that people would like to achieve are: increasing extroversion, increasing conscientiousness and decreasing neuroticism. So I’ll focus on these three:

INCREASING EXTROVERSION

Interventions on first level factors – To increase extroversion, one of the easiest steps is to change the environment, of course, if the person can afford it. Finding a roommate instead of living alone, would force a person to spend more time in social interaction. Also, choosing to live in a smaller, more tightly knit communities like villages or small towns may promote sociability, whereas living in huge cities might promote more isolation. (Though this is debatable). But in any case – moving from a less social to a more social environment may force the person to build “sociability” muscle. Also social interactions often promote positive emotions, and tendency to experience positive emotions is one of the facets of extroversion. Studies have shown, that even introverts experience positive emotions just like extroverts, when they find themselves in similar situations, but for some reason, they still don’t seek such situations as often as extroverts. Simply being more often in situations that can lead to positive social interactions filled with positive emotions, may boost natural level of extroversion to some extent.

Another first level factor that could be promising is brain chemistry. It is well known that alcohol makes people more social and extroverted. But alcohol comes with health risks and numerous side effects, and we can’t rely on it all the time, to make us feel better or boost our sociability. (NOTE: I'm not advocating alcohol abuse! Alcohol is a dangerous substance, and it's easy to overdo it. I'm just saying that it does seem to temporarily increase extroverted behavior to some extent - and what's important to note as well is that for this effect 1-2 drinks are enough. Drinking too many drinks often just makes people sluggish or can get them in trouble and they often regret it next day) Still, occasional use of alcohol in social situations, is completely valid, and is likely to lead to more social outcomes in the long term (not just in current, alcohol fueled interactions). If alcohol results in new contacts and friendships, they can serve as additional source of social interactions, long after. Alcohol also can lead to revival of old relations. In my experience, drinking alcohol sometimes pushed me to contact some old friends that I didn’t contact for a while, thus reviving and maintaining old friendships. There are, however, other ways to change brain chemistry in ways that boost positive emotions and social interactions. Exercise definitely leads to release of endorphins and serotonin, and they both boost mood and positive emotions. Remember, tendency to feel positive emotions is one of the facets of extroversion. Therefore, by releasing happiness promoting chemicals, exercise directly makes you more extroverted.

Other pleasurable activities can also lead to release of chemicals that promote happiness. These activities include walking for pleasure, listening to music, dancing, engaging in meaningful hobbies, etc. Low quality activities, like surfing the internet or mindless scrolling, unfortunately don’t have as strong effect on the mood. Therefore it pays off to spend some effort in finding more meaningful recreational activities instead of just defaulting to scrolling.

The important thing here is to realize that a simple choice like choosing music versus news, or walking versus doomscrolling can make a difference, and can directly make you more extroverted, at least in the short term.

Now, changing environment is more likely to lead to longer term changes in extroversion, whereas changing brain chemistry through substances (like alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, etc...) or activities (like exercise, walking, music, watching movies) has more short term effects, but even this can indirectly have long term effects, if it leads to new social connections.

Interventions on second level factors – The easiest way to permanently increase your extroversion level is to intervene on the domain of knowledge and skills. Simply learning social skills can make a huge and permanent difference. Everyone has a certain level of desire to act socially in certain situations. But if the effort you need to make to act is greater than your desire to act then you will most likely not act. Developing social skills will greatly decrease the level of effort you need to make in order to act smoothly in social situation. Social skills make it much more effortless. And when you possess certain social skills, you’ll find yourself much more often in situations in which desire to act socially is greater than the effort needed, and therefore you’ll more likely act socially.

Another area where intervention can be made are interests. If your interests are too uncommon and weird it’s unlikely you’ll be able to share them with other people. Therefore deciding to develop more popular and mainstream interests might offer you more opportunities to act socially.

We can intervene in habits too. Perhaps developing habit of watching movies and TV shows online instead of just surfing the internet, can make a person more social, as watching movies and TV shows exposes you to much more social interactions.

Sometimes certain fears prevent us from engaging in social situations. Social anxiety disorder is a legitimate diagnosis and it can be treated both with medicines and with therapy. Simply recognizing that certain fears aren’t rational can be the first step in overcoming them.

Having positive memories about successful social interactions can serve as a great boost to self-confidence and can lead to more extroverted behaviors. We can’t change our memories of the past, but we can try to accumulate more positive social interactions, that will eventually be banked as positive memories.

Changing our values and beliefs is more intellectual in its nature, and this too can lead to increased extroversion. It can be as simple as adopting beliefs such as “Friendship is important” “Social interactions are important.” “Most people are OK”, “People are generally good.” “Few people actually care about what I do”, “For most of the people it doesn’t matter if I get embarrassed”

INCREASING CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

Increasing conscientiousness may be one of the most important personality change interventions. High conscientiousness is positively correlated with health, longevity, income, career success, marriage stability, quality of friendships and relationship satisfaction. Therefore meaningfully and permanently increasing conscientiousness could lead to vastly improved life outcomes. Moreover, a large fraction of self-help books are already trying to achieve this goal, but with variable success. What they do achieve, undoubtedly, is generating income for a multi-billion dollar self-help industry.

Interventions on first level factors – Here again, we start with the environment. There are two ways in which we can change our environment to promote conscientiousness: changing our social environment, and changing our physical environment.

Changing social environment entails trying to associate with productive, ambitious, successful, well-organized, and hard-working people. By spending time with such people, they can transfer some of their values and mentality to us, and they can create some social pressure that would motivate us to try to catch up with them. There’s a proverb in Serbian language saying that we become like people we spend time with. So spending more time in success oriented environments could boost our own levels of conscientiousness.

Changing physical environment means applying nudge theory to ourselves. We can design our physical environment in such a way that temptations are not easily accessible, and that there is as little friction and as few obstacles as possible to starting productive activities. Also keeping our space organized could boost our productivity. Unfortunately you need to already have some conscientiousness to organize your space in the first place. But you can use your limited conscientiousness in such a way, that it leads to unlocking larger reserves of conscientiousness.

Another first level factor that can be meaningfully changed to promote conscientiousness is brain chemistry. There are two types of drugs that can boost conscientiousness. Drugs that reduce anxiety and improve mood (anxiolytics, antidepressants), and drugs that increase focus and energy levels (stimulants, nootropics).

Antidepressants and anxiolytics boost conscientiousness by removing obstacles to work, such as fears, worries, anxieties, or intrusive thoughts. If you’re unburdened by such things, you’re much more likely to actually achieve your goals. Of course taking such drugs on your own is not recommended. That’s why it’s important for people who struggle with psychological problems to enter the system of mental healthcare, so that they have the access to drugs that can help them cope with their problems.

Stimulants and nootropics, on the other hand, can help you if you lack focus. If you can’t concentrate on one thing, if your attention span is too low, or if you lack energy, these drugs can help. Many people have ADHD without even knowing it. Very low level of conscientiousness as measured by Big 5 test, could mean that it’s highly likely you have ADHD. ADHD isn’t supposed to be left untreated. Luckily there are drugs that can help with these conditions. Again, to get the access to these drugs, you must enter the mental healthcare system and work with a psychiatrist.

Many people avoid mental healthcare, because they don’t want to be seen as crazy. They associate it with people who have “issues” – in sense of being irrational, crazy, or whatever. Well, for some people “issues” may stem simply from having chemical imbalance in your brain, or problematic “wiring” of your brain. Addressing such issues with appropriate drugs will not only boost your mental health, but can turn your whole life around, and transform you from a person who can’t achieve their goals, to one who can.

There are ways to change your brain chemistry even without drugs. Exercise and physical activity improves memory and focus, and lead to release of feel good chemicals that could help you feel less depressed and less anxious. If you’re feeling better, having a calmer mind, you’re much more likely to work on achieving your goals.

Coffee consumption is also associated with better mood and less symptoms of depression. Too much caffeine, unfortunately could increase anxiety, so some caution is needed, as this can be counterproductive.

Dark chocolate and certain types of food such as cheese and turkey may also boost mood, by increasing serotonin levels.

Interventions on second level factors – For many people habits are the cornerstone of conscientiousness and well-organized life. But the good news is that you don’t need conscientiousness to produce good habits – it’s the opposite, good habits are what creates and defines conscientiousness. There are many proven and tested ways for creating good habits, and if we’re serious about becoming more organized, productive and conscientious, we should apply them. (This is where I could actually recommend a self-help book that’s already written on that topic - Atomic Habits)

Aspirations are also extremely important. Setting our goals high, dreaming big, could be important for awakening our ambition, and unlocking our motivation. But it’s important not to set goals too high. So, aspirations must be combined with strong beliefs that we are, in fact, capable of achieving them. For some people religion plays an important role here, and they find their strength in belief that God will help them, if they are trying to do the right thing. Belief in our capacity to achieve goals can also derive from knowing ourselves, knowing what we’re capable of, and from our past successes. Each goal that’s already achieved makes the next goal more believable, more plausible, and more easily achievable.

Reducing fears and anxieties is also extremely important for achieving high conscientiousness. It’s possible to be extremely unsuccessful and stuck, in spite of having high ambition and good work-ethic, if we are paralyzed due to our fears, anxieties or intrusive thoughts, which can directly interfere with work. Therefore reducing neuroticism could be even seen as a prerequisite for increasing conscientiousness. We’ll discuss ways to do it in the next section.

Regarding values, one of the ideas that could contribute to high conscientiousness is the belief that we have a duty to contribute positively to the society, to the extent of our ability. In other words, placing high value on work and productive contribution to society could lead to conscientious behaviors. Even unemployed people can still volunteer, or try to contribute by writing meaningful blog posts, or other types of content, or helping in family, etc.

Another thing very important for conscientiousness is self-respect and dignity. It could be argued that we are disrespecting ourselves if we eat in front of our computer, or if we leave food packaging on our desk, or if we skip brushing our teeth.

If a guest came to your house, you’d serve them food decently, on the dining table. You wouldn’t leave food packaging everywhere while they are there, and you’d make sure to brush your teeth if they’re going to sleep at your place so that they don’t think that you’re some crazy person who doesn’t brush their teeth.

Self-respect requires that we always treat ourselves like we would treat ourselves in public and behave like we would if someone else was present. If what you’re doing would be embarrassing in front of other people, it’s high chance it’s embarrassing even when you’re alone. You’re treating yourself poorly, in front of yourself. You’re your own audience. Just like your friend might think poorly of you if they see you behaving like a pig or a slob, you yourself will likely think poorly of yourself, if you behave in such ways.

So trying to avoid behaviors that are damaging to your self-respect and dignity, might be important for taking yourself and life more seriously, and for slightly changing your entire mindset in a more positive direction.

Here’s how poor self-respect destroys conscientiousness - if you don’t respect yourself, and if you treat yourself poorly, on some level you’re reinforcing the belief that you’re a loser, and that it doesn’t matter if you reach your goals or not. Poor self-respect is like giving up trying, and accepting your status of a loser.

Self-care is important not just because of self-respect, but also because of showing love to your own self. If you don’t brush your teeth in the evening, you’re engaging in self-neglect. You’re withholding love and care from yourself. If you can’t love yourself, how can you love others?

Morals and ethics can also promote conscientious behaviors. It’s a well known fact that Protestant work ethics may have contributed to extreme increase in productivity and prosperity in the Western world, especially in the United States. Religious ethics and faith can be a very important source of strength and motivation for many people. Secular ethics, such as utilitarianism has also motivated some people to live more productive lives and to try to make big positive impact on the world through their actions. Effective altruism community is the best known example of how ethical beliefs can push people to seek more success and to make more positive contributions to the society. So, engaging with religious texts or secular ethical theories might push people in the direction of more conscientious, and more productive life.

DECREASING NEUROTICISM

Interventions on first level factors – When it comes to environment, one of the most straightforward interventions is to simply avoid bad news, or the content in general that will make you worried, anxious, etc. I’m not saying that you should isolate yourself from the world or stick your head in the sand, but you should limit, to some extent, your exposure to negative information. This can mean dedicating certain times of day to news consumption, and avoiding the news outside that time slot. If you know reading news is likely to make you anxious and impact your day, then perhaps it’s better to read them after work, and not before. The best time for reading news would be some time after work, but not in the evening before sleep, since that could affect your sleep. Bad news could have the least impact if consumed in late afternoon, as they will not affect your work that came before it, and you’ll still have enough time to process them before sleep. After news, comes the entertainment. You should be done with news in half-an-hour or so, and after that, it’s time for having fun.

When it comes to brain chemistry – we have already discussed it in detail when we dealt with increasing conscientiousness. Here the same thing applies, minus the stimulants.

So antidepressants and anxiolytics could help you achieve better mood, and be free from worry and anxiety. Exercise and physical activity, and foods high in tryptophan (cheese, turkey, nuts, dark chocolate), could also boost your mood and change your brain chemistry.

One thing that I didn’t mention yet is magnesium. Magnesium is a natural anxiolytic, and can promote calmer mood and therefore decrease neuroticism, without side-effects of certain prescription medications. Magnesium is also found in many foods such as soy products, legumes and seeds, nuts, etc... and is also available in the form of supplements. Magnesium citrate has a particularly good absorption rate. However, it’s important not to overdo it with supplements. I’d personally recommend not taking more than 200 mg of magnesium per day from supplements.

Interventions on second level factors – When it comes to second level factors, fears are the most important for neuroticism. Ways to reduce fears, especially if they are irrational often involve therapy. So this information isn’t very actionable in DIY sense, but can, once more underline the importance of using professional mental health services, if needed.

Knowledge can also be liberating. Developing strong knowledge about certain threats and their likelihood might diminish certain fears. An example of this is education about incidence of certain diseases or about safety of air travel etc. Once one has clear understanding of actual risks involved, they are less likely to exhibit fears when they are not warranted.

Intervention on level of values involves reassessment of certain things we value highly. Fears are often the consequence of clinging too strongly to certain things that can be lost. The fear of loss forms a basis for many other fears. Once we re-calibrate our values in such a way to avoid overvaluing certain things, we might as well, start being less neurotic about the potential of losing them.

Changing dysfunctional beliefs is also very useful for decreasing neuroticism. For example a common belief that causes a lot of social anxiety to people is that other people care a lot about what we do in public. People are very afraid of embarrassment and this can lead to paralysis in social situations. Knowing that other people don’t care that much about what you’ll do or say can be very liberating. Instead, most of them, most of the time, are minding their own business and focusing on how they themselves will appear in public.

Fundamental beliefs about people and their nature can also strongly influence the level of neuroticism. Thinking of people as hostile by default can lead to paranoia. Thinking of them as generally benevolent, can lead to much more relaxed approach to life.

A LOT OF OVERLAP

You can notice that there is a lot of overlap between interventions for increasing extroversion and conscientiousness, and those for decreasing neuroticism. Interventions that reduce anxiety and promote calm and positive emotions can be useful for any of those three objectives. These include: changing brain chemistry with certain foods, supplements, medication, exercise or other pleasurable or stimulating activities.

EXPLAINING INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIORS

While general behavioral patterns can be explained as being caused by all of these factors of personality (with a possibility of changing them, if we change some of these factors), this in itself doesn’t explain individual behaviors.

To explain individual behaviors, we must always consider the influence of the environment, that is of the situations we find ourselves in.

Environment, as said before, is not just a factor shaping our long term personality, but is also an input to which we constantly react. Just like LLMs are both shaped by their input (in this case training data), they are also constantly reacting to inputs from the environment (in this case prompts). So for us, it’s the same. Our environment is both our training data, that shapes us in long term, and as such it’s one of the first level factors of personality – and it is also our constant stream of input, or in LLM terminology, it gives us prompts to which we react.

So, individual instances as behavior can be explained as the results of processing of the inputs from the environment by (or through) all the factors of personality that we mentioned. So these factors are our system, they are our hardware and software, and the environment is the input, and our behavior is the output.

This can be shown in the following scheme:

ADDITIONAL BENEFITS OF THIS THEORY

A personality theory that looks at the core causes (or factors) of our behavior and equates personality itself with these factors while considering behavioral patterns or personality traits to be just measurable manifestations of actual personality which is composed of these factors - can bridge a gap between theories of learning, conditioning, social psychology, personality psychology and even psychotherapy.

Today, unfortunately, psychology is a disjointed science with many of its sub-fields or schools of thought at war with each other. For example social psychology is “at war” with personality psychology – social psychology has a concept of “fundamental attribution error”, which states that most of the time, when we attribute behavior of people to their personality, rather than to circumstances they are in, we’re committing this error.

This theory that I’m proposing is integrating insights from different branches of psychology and harmonizing their differences.

First of all it acknowledges the importance of learning. Knowledge and skills are acquired by learning, and they are recognized by this theory as one of the second level personality factors. For a long time psychology has been defining learning as a permanent and progressive change in an individual's personality and behavior resulting from their previous activity, i.e. experience. This theory accepts this view. Furthermore it accepts findings related to conditioning and reinforcement – that processes like classical conditioning and operant conditioning, even when they aren’t explicitly and formally performed, can have long lasting effects on behavioral patterns. This is how we form our habits, and this is how addictions arise.

Also this theory acknowledges the importance of the environment. Not only does environment shape us in the long term, by filling us with knowledge, information, skills, shaping our beliefs and values, etc... it also directly affects our behavior in every moment in time. We’re always receiving inputs from the environment and reacting to it. This is a finding that social psychologists would agree with, as they always underline the importance of circumstances and social situations in which we find ourselves.

By bridging gaps between its different branches, psychology will have an easier time becoming a mature, integrated, and coherent science.

Furthermore, this theory allows us to have a better theoretical understanding of why psychotherapy works. Namely, according to this framework, therapy works, because it modifies to some extent factors that make up personality, especially second level factors, such as fears, beliefs, habits, etc.

It’s often said that personality is stable and that therapy doesn’t change personality. I disagree with this view. Personality might have some stability, but it’s definitely not fixed. Therapy definitely changes personality, in sense that it changes predominant patterns of behavior (manifested personality), as well as factors that cause those patterns (core, or actual personality). However these changes aren’t always permanent, and sometimes continued therapy, or at least occasional sessions are necessary to maintain certain positive changes. That of course, does not mean that permanent changes are impossible. Perhaps we haven’t yet found robust ways to ensure permanent changes, at least not all types of change, but it doesn’t mean it’s impossible in principle. It just hasn’t been discovered yet.

But some permanent changes have already been recognized. For example certain psychedelics such as ayahuasca or magic mushrooms seem to have permanent effects on personality.

It’s also very important to note that studies that claim our personality is stable over very long periods of time are observational studies. They just observed a group of people over time, and they noted that they haven’t changed much over 50 years. This doesn’t mean that personality change is impossible, it just means that people typically don’t change much. One of the most important reasons people they don’t change much is because 99% don’t even try to change. Most of the people are OK with their personality, and they aren’t actively and systematically trying to change it.

So, the studies that say personality is stable lack experimental group. They only have a control group - which consists of people who weren’t subjected any intervention. So if you don’t make an intervention, why should you expect any kind of change? It’s only natural that no changes were observed.

This theory suggests some actual possible interventions, that could actually be done, in order to change personality in certain directions. If successful this could be very valuable since we know that personality has a very strong effects on numerous important outcomes in life and on life satisfactions.

So I’m inviting actual, academic psychologists, who know more about this stuff than amateurs like me, to perform some actual experiments, trying to change personality of certain volunteers, applying some of the interventions that I suggested.

This theory at this stage is just a draft, or a suggestion by an interested outsider to the field. But if taken by academic psychologists, polished and refined by them, and most importantly tested and tried (especially the part about interventions for changing personality), it could be a basis or a forerunner, to a much more robust future scientific personality theory, that could integrate various sub fields of psychology, and reconcile trait theories like big five, with theories that deeply investigate underlying causes of our behavior and dynamics that contributes to them.