<story><title>You Can Change Your Personality</title><url>http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/how-to-change-your-personality.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nxc18</author><text>People often use &amp;quot;its just my personality&amp;quot; as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality.&lt;p&gt;There is a weird meme that tech people aren&amp;#x27;t capable of being &amp;quot;team players&amp;quot; or working with other people. Maybe research will help address that perception; awkward is ok, but we shouldn&amp;#x27;t accept that techies will be dicks to people all the time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>underwater</author><text>It is a really counter productive meme. My theory is that engineers are so comfortable using logic to solve problems, and viewing solutions as right or wrong that they fail to adapt when there are shades of grey.&lt;p&gt;Get a bunch engineers in a room and they&amp;#x27;ll argue forever about a solution because they don&amp;#x27;t understand their own biases or how emotion is clouding people&amp;#x27;s judgement. Bringing a bit of empathy can resolve these impasses so much more quickly.&lt;p&gt;The most effective technical people I&amp;#x27;ve met have combined intelligence with an ability to get people on board with their vision.</text></comment>
<story><title>You Can Change Your Personality</title><url>http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/how-to-change-your-personality.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nxc18</author><text>People often use &amp;quot;its just my personality&amp;quot; as an excuse for bad behavior. Intuitively I think most people know that you have control over your behavior at the very least as well as aspects of your personality. Just like any other activity, you can practice being a more considerate, or more respectful, or less neurotic personality.&lt;p&gt;There is a weird meme that tech people aren&amp;#x27;t capable of being &amp;quot;team players&amp;quot; or working with other people. Maybe research will help address that perception; awkward is ok, but we shouldn&amp;#x27;t accept that techies will be dicks to people all the time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tw04</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always wondered, given this &amp;quot;stereotype&amp;quot; if there isn&amp;#x27;t more to it.  Is it possible that because, in general, people who were &amp;quot;nerds&amp;quot; were likely more of a social outcast growing up, that they have essentially become &amp;quot;hardened&amp;quot;, if you will, to social graces.  They spent so much of their developmental years being teased&amp;#x2F;ridiculed&amp;#x2F;whatever that what is &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; treatment of others has essentially become foreign to them?  Sure, you can form a relationship with your family, but that really doesn&amp;#x27;t extend to how you interact with people outside of your inner circle.&lt;p&gt;There seems to be such a strong correlation, curious if anyone has ever studied it.  It seems we&amp;#x27;ve gotten to the point that so very much of our adult behavior can be traced to childhood events&amp;#x2F;upbringing that this can&amp;#x27;t be an outlier.</text></comment>