Thankfully, most people don’t experience a sudden shift from feeling normal to the scary, distorting depersonalization depicted in Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream”. But the notion that one’s personality can change (unlike eye color and voice) is gaining some traction. There are important implications for organizations.
In selection and development processes for all kinds of organizations, psychometric testing plays an important role. Unsurprisingly, these processes are critical in self-managing organizations, where management decision-making authority is widely distributed to and assumed by its members. Those members, in turn, shoulder a very high quantum of responsibility and accountability. Organizations--all organizations--must deploy solid processes to select, develop and acculturate people in their unique ecosystems.
Ipsative (self-referential) and normative (comparative) tests and test vendors populate the human resources landscape, selling millions of instruments each year and producing vast reams of data on every conceivable personality characteristic. Industrial psychologists consult with thousands of companies on how best to select people, develop leaders, and blend teams.
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, in an article titled Can Personality Be Changed?,i says that beliefs play a critical role in how a person functions. People can have either a “fixed” belief (what she refers to as “entity” belief), meaning that they believe that one’s characteristics are stable and fixed, like eye color. Other people have what she refers to as “malleable” beliefs, meaning that basic attributes can be developed. Her research indicates that those with a malleable belief system are more open to new learning, more willing to stick with difficult tasks, more willing to confront challenges, and better able to bounce back from setbacks.II And those qualities make a big difference in a high-performance business environment where time pressure, conflict and relationships are constant challenges.
Dweck cites research showing the malleable mindset can be taught.III Aronson, Fried, and Good (2002) performed a study with several college students. Students in the experimental group watched a film showing how the brain makes new connections and grows in response to challenge. They also wrote a letter to a struggling fellow student describing how intelligence can expand through work. At the end of that semester, the college students exposed to the concepts of malleable intelligence (compared to two control groups that did not) placed a measurably higher value on academic achievement, enhanced joy in their academic work, and higher grade-point averages.
Researchers Peter A. Heslin and Don VandeWalle note in a recent article Managers’ Implicit Assumptions About Personnel,ivreferring to Dweck’s findings, that entity theorists’ implicit assumption that personal attributes are largely stable leads them to quickly form strong impressions of others that they resist revising, even in light of contradictory information. Their own research demonstrated that the mindset (fixed vs. malleable) of managers in a nuclear power plant played a huge role in the degree to which they acknowledged improved performance in subordinates. Is it possible that this concept contains some large ramifications for performance appraisal processes?
In an article by Jeanna Bryner entitled Study: Your Personality Can Change (and Probably Should),v she writes: “Dweck and her colleagues have shown that “when you change the belief, a lot of important things happen: students’ motivation turns around; their grades and test scores go up; managers become better mentors, more successful negotiators.”
Bryner continues, quoting Dweck: “Individuals with fixed ideas about their personalities don’t try to resolve conflicts. Why bother? ‘They just try to either ignore [the conflict] or when it gets really bad they consider leaving the relationship.”
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i Dweck, Carol, Current Directions in Psychological Science, December 2008; vol. 17, 6: pp. 391-394.
ii Ibid.
iii Ibid.
iv Heslin, Peter A., and VandeWalle, Don, Current Directions in Psychological Science, June 2008; vol. 17, 3: pp. 219-223.
v https://www.livescience.com/9507-study-personality-change.html
vi Ibid.
