Last week, I wrote about the belief that it is always best to “just be yourself.” I introduced you to Brian Little, professor emeritus at Carleton University in Ottawa, and his free trait theory. The Canadian psychologist argues that you can – and should – pursue projects that do not come naturally to you if it helps to advance values that are dear to you.
There are, however, limits to this. Pretending is exhausting, as Little points out. He warns that sustaining atypical behavior for long periods of time creates strain and tension that can be detrimental to well-being. The further you move away from your biogenetic nature, the greater the burden will be.
He is the best example of how serious the effects can be. He regularly acts out of his introverted character by giving lectures “extrovert” style to engage his students. But afterward, he feels exhausted and needs rest, even though he's used to teach like that. One semester, he pushed himself so hard that he was down with double pneumonia.
What is the mechanism behind this? There is intriguing research literature, he explains in his book Me, Myself, and Us, that can explain what might be going on in the body when you are pretending to be something you are not. The central idea is that suppressing your biogenic traits – introversion in Little’s case – causes arousal in the autonomic nervous system. If such arousal becomes chronic, it can extract a health cost.
Little refers to work by his colleague Jamie Pennebaker from the University of Texas and his colleagues. It suggests that people who have suppressed something important about themselves, such as deeply unpleasant experiences from their childhood, have chronically raised levels of autonomic arousal and have more health problems than those who are not suppressing something important.
Engaging in free trait behavior over a long period may burden the body in a similar way, Little suggests. For example, a biogenically agreeable and friendly lawyer who tries to act more aggressively may experience signs of autonomic arousal, such as increased heart rate, sweating, muscle tension, and increased jumpiness.
What can be done to avoid this? To reduce the negative consequences of strategic role-playing, Little suggests three options:
Creating recreational niches: These are places or situations where you can be your natural self and don’t have to role-play anymore. A niche can look very different depending on your personality. For example, little withdraws consciously after lectures and concentrates on himself for a while. If necessary, he even locks himself in the men's room to do this. On the other hand, a sociable student who spent a whole week in his room learning might find recreation in the biggest and loudest nightclub in town.
Engaging in recreational activities and projects: Similar to recreational niches, recreational activities and projects allow you to behave in a way that feels natural to you, thus providing rest and replenishment. An overloaded introvert may sign up for a meditation class, for example. A creative person forced to do a repetitive job in a warehouse might start an art project at home.
Enter into “Free Trade Agreements”: Such an agreement, negotiated with your partner, friends, colleagues, or others, acknowledges that you act out of character sometimes while being yourself the rest of the time. For example, this could mean that a novelty-loving wife agrees to go camping with her nostalgic husband to the same spot every summer in exchange for an adventurous trip to an exotic place over Christmas.
The person, however, with whom you can best strike such an agreement is yourself, author Susan Cain points out in her book Quiet and gives an example. Maybe you dream of building your own small company but hate schmoozing. You could reach an agreement with yourself to push yourself to go to networking events, have at least one genuine conversation, and follow up with that person the next day. But you only have to do this once per month, staying at home without guilt in between.
Most people should not find it too difficult to find possible areas of application in their lives. It might be worth letting your imagination run wild. Because the great benefit of adopting free traits, Brian Little writes, is that they can advance personal projects that bring a sense of meaning to your life but cannot be pursued successfully without behaving out of character from time to time.
Not to miss resources
TED Talk: Brian Little – Who are you really?
In this talk, watched by more than 16 million people, Little explains what traditional personality traits and free traits are.https://www.ted.com/talks/brian_little_who_are_you_really_the_puzzle_of_personality
Book: Ben Fletcher/ Karen Pine: Flex - Do Something Different
In this book, two British psychology professors explain FLEX, their behavior change program that allows you to practice traits that don’t come naturally to you.Article: Olga Khazan - I gave myself three months to change my personality
In this feature article from The Atlantic, staff writer Olga Khazan reports about her self-experiment to nudge herself to become more extroverted, less neurotic, and more agreeable.
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