Why is it so Hard to Change Yourself? (Sci.Amer. article)

note: what’s interesting for me here is that I used to use external change like travel to stimulate myself; now with Tao technology, I use internal stimuli, which is probably not available to most of the people surveyed in this article….. Michael

SET IN OUR WAYS: WHY CHANGE IS SO HARD
By Nikolas Westerhoff
Scientific American
December 17, 2008

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=set-in-our-ways

Millions of us dream of transforming our lives, but few of us are able to
make major changes after our 20s. Here’s why.

…………..

“The shortest path to oneself leads around the world.” So wrote German
philosopher Count Hermann Keyserling, who believed that travel was the best
way to discover who you are.

That was how 22-year-old Christopher McCandless was thinking in the summer
of 1990, when he decided to leave everything behind — including his family,
friends and career plans. He gave his bank balance of $24,000 to the charity
Oxfam International and hitchhiked around the country, ending up in Alaska.
There he survived for about four months in the wilderness before dying of
starvation in August 1992. His life became the subject of writer Jon
Krakauer’s 1996 book Into the Wild, which inspired the 2007 film of the same
name.

Not every newly minted college graduate is as impulsive and restless as
McCandless was, but studies conducted since the 1970s by personality
researchers Paul Costa and Robert R. McCrae of the National Institutes of
Health confirm that people tend to be open to new experiences during their
teens and early 20s. Young people fantasize about becoming an adventurer
like McCandless rather than following in the footsteps of a grandparent who
spent decades working for the same company. But after a person’s early 20s,
the fascination with novelty declines, and resistance to change increases.
As Costa and McCrae found, this pattern holds true regardless of cultural
background.

Although people typically lose their appetite for novelty as they age, many
continue to claim a passion for it. Voters cheer on politicians who pledge
change. Dieters flock to nutritional programs advertising a dream figure in
only five weeks. Consumers embrace self-help books promising personal
transformation. And scientists tell us that novel stimuli are good for our
brains, promoting learning and memory.

Yet even as people older than 30 yearn for what is new, many find themselves
unable or unwilling to make fundamental changes in their lives. Researchers
say this paradox can be largely explained by the demands of adult
responsibilities and that unrealistic expectations may also play a part in
thwarting our best intentions. Change is rarely as easy as we think it will
be.

The Age of Openness

Psychologists have long identified openness to new experiences as one of the
“Big Five” personality traits, which also include extroversion,
agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Considerable disagreement
exists about how much these personality traits change after age 30, but most
research suggests that openness declines in adulthood.

“Clear age trends are observable,” says psychologist Peter Borkenau of
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. “People tend to become
more reliable and agreeable with age, but their openness to novelty drops at
the same time.”

In a comprehensive survey of more than 130,000 participants published in
2003, psychologist Sanjay Srivastava, now at the University of Oregon, and
his colleagues assessed the Big Five traits in 21- to 60-year-olds using
standard psychological tests on the Internet. They found that openness
increased modestly up to age 30 and then declined slowly in both men and
women. The survey results suggest that men begin adulthood slightly more
open to new experiences than women but decline in openness during their 30s
at a faster rate than women.

Age 30 is not a magical turning point, however. Openness declines gradually
over many years, often beginning in the 20s. As the years wear on, novelty
becomes less and less stimulating, and the world outside someone’s own
private and professional sanctums becomes increasingly less attractive.

This change happens to almost everyone, regardless of individual
personality. That does not mean that everyone reaches the same level of
openness in later life, however. Some toddlers love to go back to the same
playground day after day, whereas others get bored after a day or two of
digging in the same sandbox with the same shovel. Children who are less open
to new experiences than their peers are will continue in adulthood to cleave
to the conventional more than their more adventurous childhood friends will.
As psychologist Richard W. Robins of the University of California, Davis,
showed in a longitudinal study, those who begin life with a more open
personality remain relatively more open in their later years.

Nature or Nurture?

The fact that an age-dependent pattern of decreasing openness appears around
the globe and in all cultures suggests, according to biopsychologists, a
genetic basis. But the jury is still out. As psychologist and personality
researcher Rainer Riemann of Bielefeld University in Germany points out, it
is conceivable that people all over the globe are simply confronted with
similar life demands and societal expectations. Young men and women
everywhere have to go out into the world and find a partner and a
livelihood. Later, they have to care for their children and grandchildren.
These life tasks require commitment and consistency and may serve as a
catalyst for personality change.

Once a family and career are in place, novelty may no longer be as welcome.
New experiences may bring innovation and awakening but also chaos and
insecurity. And so most people dream of novelty but hold fast to the
familiar. Over time we become creatures of habit: enjoying the same dishes
when we eat out, vacationing in favorite spots and falling into daily
routines.

“The brain is always trying to automate things and to create habits, which
it imbues with feelings of pleasure. Holding to the tried and true gives us
a feeling of security, safety, and competence while at the same time
reducing our fear of the future and of failure,” writes brain researcher
Gerhard Roth of the University of Bremen in Germany in his 2007 book whose
title translates as Personality, Decision, and Behavior.

But even negative events may have thoroughly positive results, according to
sociologist Deborah Carr of Rutgers University. For example, many widows are
able to start life over again and to develop talents they never knew they
had. People who have been diagnosed with cancer learn to redefine themselves
as a result of the disease — and may even conquer their cancer in the
process. Survivors of natural catastrophes often discover new strengths. But
we should not draw sweeping conclusions from these examples, says
psychologist William R. Miller of the University of New Mexico. Many older
people report that they have changed little in spite of major life
experiences.

In a recent experiment psychologist Kate C. McLean of the University of
Toronto Mississauga asked 134 volunteers of different ages — some older
than 65 and others ranging in age from late adolescence through young
adulthood — to describe three self-defining memories. She found that both
old and young participants reported novel experiences such as the death of a
partner, an unexpected career advancement or a cross-country move. The older
people ascribed different meanings to these events than the younger people
did, however. For younger people, external changes were more likely to lead
to internal transformation, but that was not the case for older individuals.

These very different narratives are no coincidence. Personality traits
change more during young adulthood than any other period of life, according
to psychologist Brent W. Roberts of the University of Illinois, who together
with two colleagues analyzed 92 studies of personality development. They
concluded that some personality changes occur well past the age of 30 but
that typically these changes are small in magnitude compared with the
changes that occur between the ages of 20 and 40.

Even major life events such as a divorce or the death of a loved one, though
stressful, are unlikely to result in profound personality changes. The
middle years of life are often a time of reflection and reevaluation, but
few people experience a genuine “midlife crisis.”

The structure of one’s personality becomes increasingly stable until about
age 60. “That means that a person who is particularly conscientious at the
age of 40 will be conscientious at 60 as well,” Borkenau says. Stability
decreases again, however, after the age of 60. It seems that people are only
able to become more open to new experiences once they have fulfilled their
life obligations — that is, after they have retired from their careers and
their children have flown the nest.

False Hope Springs Eternal

Even after age 60 it is difficult to completely reframe your life. In fact,
those who seek to make large changes often end up failing even to make the
most minor corrections. The more an individual believes he can set his own
rudder as he pleases, the more likely he is to run aground. That’s one
reason why so many smokers who tell you that they can quit whenever they
want are still smoking 20 years later.

In 1999 psychologists Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman of the University of
Toronto Mississauga coined a term for this phenomenon: false hope syndrome.
Over and over, they say, people undertake both small and large changes in
their lives. Most of these attempts never get anywhere, thanks to overblown
expectations.

Take the woman who believes that if she can lose 20 pounds she will finally
meet the man of her dreams and live happily ever after. This fantasy is
based on the notion that one positive change — losing weight —
automatically brings with it other desired changes. But the reality is that
it is difficult to keep weight off over the long term, and finding an ideal
life partner is often dependent on luck. Even if dieting proves successful,
other goals may remain out of reach. But the false hope syndrome seduces
people into trying to overhaul their entire lives all at once: the smoker
and couch potato is suddenly inspired to become a nonsmoker and marathon
runner, but because he attempts too much too fast, he is doomed to fail.

The cure for false hope is to set more reasonable goals and recognize that
achieving even modest change will be difficult. And if you are older than
30, remember that your openness to new experiences is slowly declining, so
you are better off making a new start today than postponing it until later.
Perhaps most important of all, try to appreciate the person that you already
are.

As the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus put it: “Do not spoil what you
have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was
once among the things only hoped for.