A Better Me: The Science and Promise of Personality Change

Christian Jarrett dismantles William James's century-old claim that personality "sets like plaster" by age thirty, revealing that the Big Five traits remain malleable throughout life. From Gordon Allport's pivotal 1920 encounter with Freud at Berggasse 19 to Nathan Hudson's challenge-based experiments at Southern Methodist University, the evidence is clear: acting extroverted actually increases extroversion, and reducing neuroticism delivers happiness equivalent to earning $314,000 more annually.

You'll learn:

- Why weak ties with strangers boost well-being

- How the "yes, and" principle rewires social anxiety

- What Kathryn Paige Harden's kitchen cupboard metaphor reveals about genetic limits