The 21st Show

Best of: Changing your personality in 3 months

 
Writer Olga Khazan is the author of

Writer Olga Khazan is the author of "Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World" and The Atlantic piece "I gave myself three months to change my personality." Photo courtesy Olga Khazan

Today on The 21st, we revisited a conversation about something we all have: Personality. Maybe you’re talkative and extroverted, or you’ve always felt a little more shy and introspective. When it comes to agreeableness, do you generally trust other people? Or maybe you're a little more skeptical of people's motivations. One of our guests wanted to see if her personality could actually be changed, and she gave herself three months to do it through a series of activities.

She joined us, along with one of the experts she consulted, to talk about how her experiment played out and what she learned along the way.

This segment originally aired February 23, 2022.

GUESTS: 

Olga Khazan 

Staff Writer, The Atlantic | Author, Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World 

Brent Roberts

Psychology Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

 

 

Prepared for web by Owen Henderson

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