(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-11-27 19:39

Let's see, a leopard can't change its spots, ditto a tiger and its stripes, can't teach an old dog new tricks, and you can't change your personality. Wrong!

"You read about this twin research where these people who have been raised apart have remarkable similarities," said Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University. "They married women with the same name; they named their dog the same thing; they both build little ships that fit into a bottle and they show up to their reunion wearing almost identical clothing.

"The implication there is that it's all programmed in" that personality is permanently stamped into our genes.

The static-character research is typically based on a definition of personality comprising five features, called the five-factor model, including openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

While these factors are important to a person's character, Dweck argues they aren't the definitive word, and results generated from the model could be missing subtle, yet critical, aspects of personality. She will present her research this week at an annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Washington, D.C.

When Dweck studied students at Columbia University, she found that those with fixed views about intelligence were primarily focused on proving their smartness and so were less motivated to learn and less likely to take on challenges.

Dweck and her colleagues have shown that "when you change the belief, a lot of important things happen: students’motivation turns around; their grades and test scores go up; managers become better mentors, more successful negotiators."

When children or even adults are taught that abilities and character features can develop and change, they become more resilient to setbacks.