Last weekend I spoke to a neighbor, Bob, about my new book, Clear
Thoughts, Rational Decisions. He said the ideas made sense to him because
he was struggling with his son, Harry. Their conversations had become tense and
confusing. Bob felt they misunderstood each other’s motives, and he worried
that Harry’s personality had changed for the worse.
That conversation inspired this blog, since it was consistent
with an article that I had explained in my book.
Two psychologists, Colin J. Lee and Emorie D. Beck,
published research in 2026 suggesting that personality is not fixed. Instead,
personality is something we express moment by moment through thoughts,
feelings, and actions.
Using thousands of real-time reports from participants, they
found that each person shows a unique pattern. We may react differently
depending on the situation—at work, with family, under stress, or when
relaxed—but there is still a recognizable “signature” to how we behave. In
other words, personality is both stable and flexible.
This is an important shift in both professional and layperson
thinking. Many people treat personality as a label: shy, outgoing, disciplined,
anxious, stubborn. But these labels can be misleading. A person may be
organized in one setting and careless in another. Someone may seem patient with
friends but irritable at home. What matters is not just traits, but patterns.
That idea supports a central theme of Clear Thoughts,
Rational Decisions: self-understanding begins with noticing your own habits
in real time.
For example:
- Do you
become defensive when criticized about your reliability?
- Do you
procrastinate when anticipating a long term project?
- Do you
think more clearly early in the day as opposed to later?
- Are
you kinder to strangers than to family members?
When we notice these recurring patterns, we gain power over
them.
A fixed view of personality can lead to resignation: “That’s
just how I am.” A dynamic view creates opportunity: “This is what I tend to do,
and I can change it.”
That is where personal agency begins. We do not need to
erase our personality. We need to understand it well enough to guide it. If you
know stress makes you impatient, you can pause before reacting. If you know
structure improves your focus, you can build routines. If you know certain
people trigger anger or insecurity, you can prepare yourself differently.
So Bob may not be seeing a completely “new” Harry. He may be
seeing Harry under new pressures, in a new life stage, expressing parts of
himself that were always there but now showing differently, perhaps more
intensely or more frequently.
The same is true for all of us. We are not statues carved in
stone. We are patterns in motion.
Cognitive freedom comes from learning to read those
patterns—moment by moment, situation by situation—until they become tools
instead of blind forces.
As is obvious, I tend to endorse and accept the Colin J. Lee and Emorie D. Beck study results—for now. I am inclined to believe that every person exhibits their own multivariate “signature”—a recurring pattern of personality expressions that shifts with context but remains recognizably theirs. However, the particulars of the study warrant careful consideration. Although it was conducted drawing on more than fifteen thousand momentary reports from two undergraduate samples and used experimental modeling, the limited study sample and limited age range makes replication and use of diverse research participants essential.
Reference
