Can Personality Be Changed

Can personality be changed? Well according to Carol Dweck it can. I feel that Dweck is convinced that different situations changes someone’s personality and that personality can also be taught. In order to change a personality the person must be willing to change. She speaks about how you are born with certain trait that will always stick with you. She did the study on the twins that were separated at birth and how they had so much in common. Dweck argues that when someone is taught how to respond to certain situations that’s how someone’s personality is developed. “People can also learn these self-theories from the kind of praise they receive (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). Ironically, when students are praised for their intelligence, they move toward a fixed theory. Far from raising their self-esteem, this praise makes them challenge-avoidant and vulnerable, such that when they hit obstacles their confidence, enjoyment, and performance decline. When students are praised for their effort or strategies (their process), they instead take on a more malleable theory—they are eager to learn and highly resilient in the face of difficulty.” The paper is very well conducted in my opinion because they have looked at the in-between part of personality by examining acquired and changeable beliefs. They have seen that they underlie many patterns of adaptive functioning, and that they have unique implications for understanding personality development and personality change. There are a few different things that we have learned so far that support Dweck’s argument. In chapter 3 page 42, it talks about Moral Development and how it changes the ability to decide what’s right and what’s wrong. When someone has to make decisions they go by what’s best for them and the way they chose what’s best for them is by what their personality can handle. In chapter 3 page 43 it says that in adolescence they go through physiological changes where the conflict with parents increase, they