As soon as I finish Genome by Matt Ridley, I’ll hit Pollyanna. Unless Eeyore shows up in Chapter 2 or there is a picture of a rhino pooping on a potty, my girls probably won’t be interested.

cheers,
Todd

Kathryn

I envision a very different future if everyone became curious and growth-oriented. Each person has their own preferences, interests, and values and thus, there is plenty of space for everyone to add to the collective pot of innovation, pleasure, and meaning. Also, connecting with my prior comment, we need each other as support systems for our explorations. Thus, I envision a social system where people’s complementary strengths and strivings are all being capitalized. To me, there’s nothing boring at all about watching people evolve.

As a parent, watching my kids explore and grow is the meaning of life.
As a professor, the moment when my students challenge me and find flaws in my thinking, is the day when I smile. They are surpassing my sharing of knowledge….awesome.
As a therapist, when clients start to assert themselves and suggesting new goals that clash with my ideas….again, awesome. This is a sign that they are ready to take on the challenges of the world with new resilience.

and so it goes. I don’t think this is being pollyanish, I think its taking what we know about curiosity and extrapolating to larger units: relationships, communities, and societies. Curious people are flexible and tolerant, at least in the moment of being curious. Build on this and only good things can happen.

cheers,
Todd

Todd, you said that there are times when we need to accept order/structure in order to synthesize and make sense of everything, but what accounts for some people being especially slow and deliberate in this process and unable to move on quickly? Also, I can’t help but think that if everyone followed your advice and became this wonderfully curious person whose values were growth-oriented, etc., wouldn’t this world be boring having a bunch of people who were all the same? I mean, if everyone was uber-curious this world would spin out of control and everyone would be jockeying for the same positions.

As one other point as to why we might be able to affect more than this so-called 40%, there are gene-environment interactions and gene-environment transactions. An example of a transaction is a strong, supportive family and peer group might be necessary to allow for the genetic disposition to be good at recognizing and managing emotions to prosper. An example of an interaction is that finding love might affect different people with different genetic predispositions differently. Put all this together, and that simplified pie chart might be too simple.

Based on the above, I am optimistic that we can change a great deal. But the data provide the knowledge….I just babble.

cheers,
Todd

The interesting reserach comes from looking at the outliers – eg Seligman – why didn’t some dogs learn helplessness.

Based on your discussion of how much of personality is malleable, where do you weigh in on the 40% volitional (50% genetic, 10% environment) argument about changing happiness?

I’ve always thought of the counterargument in my head when hearing those numbers: those numbers are averages, and I think it’s not accurate and also day-to-day limiting that people read that and start to argue, “I can change a lot – 40% of my happiness, but not any more than that.” So not 41% or 42%?

I think we can affect a lot more than 40% of happiness. Would love to know your thoughts.

Senia

No caveats necessary, I prefer it when people speak their mind. I agree with your more nuanced approach to order and structure as important values in life. Forget absolutes, we need to ebb and flow between being curious and seeking out knowledge and new experiences and other times when we need to synthesize and make sense of it all. Thus, as you say, creating order and structure is certainly part of the dynamic process.

Now, there are some people that place order, structure, and tradition as their most endorsed value above all others. What the work of Schwartz and others shows is that this pattern of values is linked to less satisfaction and meaning in life compared with people with more growth-oriented values at the helm.

Finally, yep, we have no clue how much our personalities can change. All we know is that some change is possible. To me, the important story is we are better defined as clay than plaster and people can learn to become more tolerant of change, uncertainty, novelty, and distress.

damn good questions. Thanks for the mental fodder on a tiring Wednesday afternoon. Keep ‘em coming. Hopefully we will meet at IPPA.

and thanks for buying the book!

cheers,
Todd