Who Are You, Really?, page 4
But that doesn’t mean we can leave our traits back on shore, speeding freely across the water toward a self shaped by projects alone. Our projects and traits are connected. Our research shows that where you stand on the Big Five trait dimensions affects your appraisal of your personal projects—the “How’s it going?” part. This has practical implications for which projects you undertake and how challenging they are for you.26
For instance, neurotic people have a generalized sense of negative emotions and so are much more likely to appraise all their projects, whether they are interpersonal or academic or work-related, as stressful. If this describes you, there is one practical implication you should know. Make a space in your life for projects that you find uplifting. These needn’t be major projects; indeed, it is better if you have frequent engagement with smaller-scale projects that give you a sense of pleasure. Your natural tendency to see the downside of the larger endeavors of life can be offset by frequent, intense experience with the little things.
A more surprising link is between conscientiousness and how we see our projects. As you might expect, those high in conscientiousness rate their academic and work projects more positively, and see these projects as meaningful and efficacious: they get things done and feel good about getting things done. If you are conscientious, you have a trick that helps make you efficacious and positive—you can spin mundane tasks into enjoyable ones. For example, a numbingly boring task can be made more interesting by transforming it into a game where you pit yourself against an imagined opposition or even your previous self of yesterday. Even if you are not so conscientious, this strategy can help you get through a long to-do list.
But conscientious people also see their interpersonal projects positively. I have to say that that initially surprised me. I didn’t expect conscientious people to be so positive about their interactions with others, perhaps because I held a false stereotype about them as being, yes, highly committed and earnest, but also, at times, rather joyless drudges. That stereotype is just plain wrong.
Extraverted and agreeable people also tend to have positive feelings about their personal projects, but these feelings are especially strong in interpersonal projects. Although both extraverted and agreeable people are sociable, they differ in the kinds of social projects they enjoy. If you are an extravert, you feel most efficacious and positive when engaged with others in exciting social events like parties, even when they may involve the occasional conflict. If you are agreeable, but not especially extraverted, you see interpersonal project success somewhat differently. You enjoy sociable activities, although not raucous ones. And unlike your extraverted friends and especially your disagreeable ones, you really don’t like conflict-laden social encounters. In contrast, disagreeable individuals have actually been reported to experience positive emotions when they are doing disagreeable things, such as disciplining another person.
People who are open to experience are more likely to initiate their own projects rather than have them imposed by others. This is consistent with what we know about their capacity for active engagement with the world. Also, those who are more open are likely to choose projects that accord with their core values, in contrast to those who are more closed.
Recent research has shown an important link between traits, personal projects, and well-being. We have already seen how personality traits are a strong predictor of happiness, with stable extraverts being especially likely to be happy. However, the impact of traits on well-being is not always direct. The direct influence is through the kinds of personal projects individuals pursue.27 For example, a disagreeable introvert is not necessarily constrained to a life of unhappiness. She might engage passionately in writing a politically charged blog. It brings her deep pleasure both because of its intrinsic meaning but also because she loves making others squirm. In short, when it comes to well-being, projects can trump traits. This should give you some hope that you are not the victim of the traits with which you entered this world. Your deeds speak louder than your dispositions.
Acting Out of Character
Let’s say, however, that what you wish to do goes against your natural grain. Maybe you are a biogenically agreeable sort, averse to conflict in any form, who nonetheless loves mysteries and dreams of being a hard-boiled detective. Or you’re a natural introvert with a chance to work as a sales representative, a job that requires you to be an over-the-top extravert. Or a highly conscientious, regimented planner who wants to become more improvisational to connect with your free-spirited child. Are your dreams doomed? Are you confined only to projects that suit your inborn traits? Not necessarily. Our ways are not as stuck as they might seem. In fact, one of the things that makes you so intriguing is your ability to sometimes act “out of character.”
This capacity for shape-shifting is a startling and fascinating aspect of our personalities. Your ability to act beyond the bounds of your personality is where the purpose of my impertinent questioning at the bar becomes fully clear, because the reason we often take on new traits is to more effectively pursue our personal projects. This is how what you do can remake who you are—and it’s a revelation that turns previous ideas about human personality on their heads.
How exactly does this work? Well, it is a fact of living that we sometimes want things that require us to stretch ourselves to achieve them. So an agreeable person may act disagreeably to book an urgent appointment with an in-demand physician, or a biogenically anxious person may appear poised and unruffled when first meeting her in-laws. These people are engaged in what I call “free traits.” And they are doing so to more successfully pursue a personal project.
You typically enact free traits with the best of motives, but they may “trick” others into thinking that you are, say, agreeable when in fact you are a biogenically disagreeable person. Or stable when you are highly neurotic. Or extremely extraverted except that you overload easily, are sleepless after caffeine, and prefer to curl up with a below-average book than go seriously crazy at the Boom Boom Room. So when we meet and I begin to form my impressions of you, is what I see displayed who you are, really? Is your behavior a trick or a trait? Perhaps neither. It could be a free trait.
For example, many are surprised to find out that Robin Williams, the late comedian and actor, was a self-professed introvert. In a fascinating interview, James Lipton, the host of Inside the Actors Studio, tells Williams that Mike Myers, also a comedic actor, had described himself as being a site-specific extravert but an introvert most of the time. Williams affirmed that he was the same, describing himself as “introverted, quiet, and absorbent.”28
The notion of site-specific extraversion is essentially what I mean by the enactment of a free-trait behavior. With Myers and Williams, the extraverted behavior is literally scripted, part of the role they are playing to advance their personal projects of being successful actors. But many of us also engage in such behavior; our scripts may be metaphorical, but they similarly ask us to act in ways that go against our biogenic dispositions.29
Consider having a job as a flight attendant or a debt collector. Each has an associated personal style that may or may not align with the biogenic personalities of those who work those jobs. A grumpy, taciturn, impatient flight attendant isn’t going to last, nor is a sweet, engaging, and forgiving bill collector. But a person who is not biogenically suited to a certain role may still desire to fill it. So to survive in their fields, they become site-specific free-trait adopters. At first this can be difficult, but during the course of developing their occupations, they practice again and again until it becomes more natural. Though seasoned travelers might be able to spot them, pseudo-hospitable flight attendants are generally able to pass. Their professional roles matter to them.30
Or consider the case of Victoria. She is a genial and generous person who is agreeable to a fault. But she has been trying to get her mother into a care facility for six months with no success. She loves her mom dearly and sees her cognitive decline progressing rapidly. But Victoria is stonewalled at every turn by bureaucratic intransigence and bored indifference. So she adopts a free trait and becomes a site-specific pain in the ass. Hurricane Vicky is most definitely not a pleasant person at the care facility, but her mom is admitted and that personal project of hers is a success.
If we practice such free traits often enough, they can creep into our personalities in more pervasive and permanent ways. “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.” This quote, by Archibald Leach, perfectly demonstrates the power of using free traits to shape who you are. Archibald was a high school dropout, a traveling circus performer. But he wanted more, a bigger life. When he began to gain success as an actor, he changed his name to the one we all know him by: Cary Grant. By consistently acting the part of the cool, confident, witty charmer he eventually, as he put it, truly became that person. Or that person became him. And he flourished.
The phrase “acting out of character” actually has two meanings. It means acting away from our characteristic way of behaving. But it also means acting from character. We often act out of character in the second sense when we guide our actions by our values. You may not be naturally open and extraverted. But given an important occasion or project you have little choice but to act out of character, to rise to the occasion and be an alternative you—in a sense, perhaps, an optimized you.
Restorative Niches and Burnout Prevention
Acting out of character—and against one’s first nature—can be psychologically and physiologically depleting. So how do we recharge after the stressful effects of free-trait behavior? By finding or creating the right environment, or what I call a restorative niche, to reconnect with our biogenic selves and prevent burnout, which is key to the success of any personal project.
The right niche for you is the kind of setting that harmonizes with your essential, original personality. A restorative niche for a pseudo-extravert, for example, would provide quiet and reduced stimulation. In contrast, a natural extravert, called upon to act out of character as an introvert, would require a restorative niche that was stimulating and engaging—preferably with lots of other extraverts who would be extraverting themselves with great vigor. Karaoke, anyone?
One of our doctoral students at the University of Cambridge, Sanna Balsari-Palsule, has been investigating the nature and function of restorative niches at two different companies.31 Participants completed a measure of Big Five traits that assessed both their “natural” traits and those they enacted at work. This allowed us to assess the extent to which they were engaging in free traits. They were also given a general description of restorative niches and asked to describe what kinds of niches they used in their workplaces. Her results are intriguing. She found that the restorative niches fell into five categories:
FORMS OF RESTORATIVE NICHE
EXAMPLES
FREQUENCY
People
“lunch with colleagues,” “chatting in the kitchen,” “go for lunch with interesting people,” “time with friends”
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Places
“sit in the sun,” “breakroom,” “shutting myself in a meeting room,” “quiet rooms”
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Activities
“Ping-Pong,” “short five-minute breaks,” “read a book during my lunch break,” “go for a walk in the park,” “drawing,” “go for coffee”
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Health/Body
“gym,” “running in Regent’s Park,” “meditation,” “yoga”
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Technology
“listening to music,” “YouTube,” “surfing the Internet,” “my blog”
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Interacting with other people was the most dominant restorative niche reported, especially getting together with others at lunch, which was mentioned equally by introverts and extraverts. However, introverts preferred to go to lunch alone or with a maximum of one or two colleagues, while extraverts on average reported eating with four others. One extreme participant listed having eighty lunch partners!
Activities were also frequently mentioned as restorative niches and involved a mixture of indoor activities like foosball and pool (available on the premises) and running. But even though many people engaged in the same activity, there were subtle differences reflecting personality. Extraverts were more likely to report “running club” and introverts just “running.”
The notion of free traits has been studied primarily with the Big Five dimension of extraversion, but I believe it applies to other traits as well. Recall Victoria? She is naturally agreeable and kind but needs to be strategically pushy, assertive, and disruptive in order to find a safe place for her ailing mother. After all that head-butting, Victoria may need a restorative niche where she can regain her natural affability. It may be simply chilling with gentle people who would never think of themselves as comprising a restorative niche. But I suspect they would find the prospect a most agreeable one.
It’s important to understand how restorative niches work because, when we act out of character, our environments might afford us the opportunity to return to our “natural” state. Or—and here is where you are empowered to support yourself—we may create new restorative niches on our own. This trick is especially important, considering the kind of power our environments can have over our endeavors.
What kinds of niches would be most restorative for you? Is it a hip-hop dance class or a long swim in a cold ocean? Is it dinner with ten friends or a solo hike in the forest?
As a biogenic introvert I have had my own challenges in finding restorative niches, particularly after having acted out of character as a pseudo-extraverted professor. One of the most rewarding things in my life is to engage with students. Particularly with students who are highly combustible, I work hard in my lectures to throw out sparks. I act out of character. This can be exhausting. So during breaks, I will retreat to my office, or the men’s room, or occasionally a broom closet, in order to give a lucid second half to my lecture. Once, I inadvertently locked myself in the closet. That restorative niche didn’t restore me for long.
As for your own restorative resources, they become most apparent when everyday constraints are lifted and you can act spontaneously. Perhaps catching some time to read a short book that helps you better understand your personality fits the bill just fine. If so, I’m happy you picked this particular niche.
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Personal Contexts: The Social Ecology of Project Pursuit
Let’s say that by now you’ve got a manageable, meaningful set of personal projects that are neatly aligned with your inborn traits. Can you look forward with confidence, sure of smooth sailing ahead? Not so fast; biogenic traits aren’t the only forces that can help or hinder you. The world around you also plays a vital role in your pursuit of personal projects. But here again, you have power. You needn’t sit passively by as external circumstances buffet your projects about. Just as you can pick up a free trait to overcome your biological first nature, you can actively alter your environment to clear a path for your personal projects.
Take a closer look at your social environment, and you’ll see that some parts of it are relatively fixed and some parts are flexible. The fixed features might be things like the demographics of your city or the topography of your neighborhood. The more dynamic personal features might be which neighbors you choose to befriend and the transportation you use to get around town. The distinction between the stable and dynamic features is that the former are objective realities: the fact that you live in a high-density city. The latter are how you personally view and interact with that context: you find the crush of people lively and exciting or smothering and claustrophobic; you develop a particular daily routine; you find your niche within the urban jungle.32
These dynamic features are what I call the personal contexts of your life. They are external environments—physical, geographical, cultural, social—that you can influence through your own actions and attitudes. The stable features of your social ecology are difficult for you to change, but personal contexts are malleable. Bend them to better support your personal projects, and you take greater command of your flourishing or floundering.
Let’s start with how your personal projects work within your environment—what are the various influences and where do the flexible, personal contexts lie? These might range from the micro-level influence of people and places in your immediate environment to the middle-level influence of the organizations where you work and play, to the more distant influences, such as your political, historical, and economic contexts. So, let’s see how we can configure our environment to most effectively pursue our personal projects.
Close-Up: Projects with Others
Consider your own personal projects right now. Are they mainly solitary pursuits? Are they primarily pursued with an intimate partner? Are they shared with scores of loving friends whom you can’t see enough of? Clearly your stable personality traits will determine which of these ways of doing your projects is most congenial. But for those of us who are not recluses or hermits or monks of a certain order, other people figure importantly in our daily pursuits. How does this play out?
Those whose personal projects are carried out exclusively with one other person are potentially vulnerable. We have studied these close-up aspects of project pursuit by looking at how many other people are involved in a person’s projects. One of the important issues here is whether you have a diversity of individuals with whom you share your projects, or whether they are instead all focused on only one person. You can look at your own projects in this way. For each of your projects list the names of others who are involved in it.33
