AspiringRationalist comments on Post Request Thread - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 11 April 2013 01:28AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (99)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: AspiringRationalist 11 April 2013 04:18:03AM 17 points [-]

How can I alter my Big 5 personality traits? (In particular, conscientiousness and extroversion)

Comment author: beoShaffer 12 April 2013 01:51:51AM 4 points [-]

Given the seemingly high interest I'm considering researching a full post on this. However, going just off what I remember from psyc classes the short answer is we don't know and suspect that you can't alter them much, at least not without doing something drastic. That said, putting yourself in social groups were the desired trait is common/expected looks relatively promising. Additionally, it may be possible to change your behavior in ways that emulate the effects of a big five change without technically changing your personality. In particular the Getting Things Done I learned from CfAR is supposed to boost your effective conscientiousness, and I have observed that to kinda be the case since I adopted it.

Comment author: gyokuro 12 April 2013 12:54:45AM 4 points [-]

Related: Should I alter my Big 5 personality traits?

Comment author: evand 12 April 2013 05:19:20AM 3 points [-]

I realize it's not the ones you were explicitly asking about, but single dose psilocybin can increase openness long term. Relevant Google search.