Making Sense of People: Detecting and Understanding Personality Differences

Galton that if the characteristic behaviors

the taking of unnecessary risks because of a sense of invulnerability, and many narcissists self-destruct because of such errors of judgment.

Nevertheless, we can always change, sometimes substantially. The most common impetus is a disruptive personal event such as marriage, divorce, parenthood, a new job, or a religious conversion, any of which may lead to new opportunities, expectations, and adaptations.

improvement. Instead of simply singing the praises of a series of virtues, Franklin wrote out a personal to-do list and a step-by-step plan for upgrading one virtue at a time.

“[T]hough I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted

“[O]n multiple measures of personality and temperament, occupational and leisure-time interests, and social attitudes, monozygotic twins reared apart are about as similar as monozygotic twins reared together.”

high Conscientiousness has the potential downsides of oppressive perfectionism and the inability to abandon well-practiced

The narcissistic pattern has other dark sides. One of the most common is

most Americans who lived in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shared the view that character was the most significant part of personality—and the part that could be improved through conscious effort.