andrewducker | Can people change?

From:

That's one where a lot depends on what you mean by "change." Becoming more (or less) patient, adventurous, or likely to follow through on plans is a different kind of thing than taking up different hobbies.

This feels like you're giving me a series, saying the first two numbers are 2 and 3, and asking for the eighth value in the series. Is it 9, 19, 55, or something else?

From:

wildeabandon

To clarify, there are probably a few things that people can't change about themselves, and there are a lot more things that are very hard to change and one probably shouldn't try. But there are vastly more things that can be changed, with varying degrees of difficulty from trivally to with a lot of work.

But whilst I'd expect a certain amount of disagreement over what things fall where on that spectrum, I'd be surprised if more than a tiny proportion of people disagreed with the general principal.

From:

momentsmusicaux

Yes, because clearly you have -- you used to write it as SEWIWEIC in your polls.

From:

andrewducker

I figured it's been long enough that people wouldn't remember what it stood for!

From:

duckshaveears

Sometimes. Depends on how open their minds are and how well they listen.

(This is Ashfae, can't be bothered logging out of this account)

From:

rhythmaning

So. Basically it depends.

I didn't used to like classical music. I didn't used to like jazz.

Then I did.

Now I'm addicted to it.

That's change.

I've become more politically active as I've got older. And, I think, moved to the left.

But whether these are really change, I don't know.

I think my values are probably the same.

Society has changed during my lifetime. So people have changed.

From:

mountainkiss

You like cats more.

From:

rhythmaning

More than what?

I've always liked cats. That's stasis.

And, as I recall, I wasn't given much choice, by either you or Talisker.

From:

mountainkiss

I think you like cats more than you used to. But could be wrong.

From:

chess

Yes, but it doesn't absolve them of the things that they did before, nobody owes them a second chance, and if they have actually changed they will understand that.

From:

nancylebov

People can change, but they don't very often. People can change for the better or the worse.

From:

mtbc

Best not to easily believe that they have, though!

From:

jjhunter

Yes, But The Timescales On Which They Change Mean Change Is Often Not Noticed Or Appreciated By Others In Real-Time

The article I keep coming back to when I get frustrated at Wanting Change Faster Darnnit is Atul Gawande's Slow Ideas, particularly

We yearn for frictionless, technological solutions. But people talking to people is still the way that norms and standards change.

From:

anef

Thank you for the link to that fascinating article.

From:

ninetydegrees

I think all people change at least in some small ways. I think personal growth can be harder to achieve though. I think some people are really set in their ways and opinions until life happens to them. I also think the way we think about lives has changed somewhat as humans get longer life spans in general and we see or live all kinds of different lifestyles. It gives us more time and more opportunities to change and experience different things.

From:

theandrewhickey

I think people can change. I think most of the time, those changes are small ones that are consistent with their past behaviour and role in society. So for example, I have become a lot more vocally anti-racist over the last twenty years, and now consider several behaviours and beliefs I used to exhibit to be at least mildly racist. *However*, I am about as antiracist compared to the other people in my social circle, and compared to other people of my demographic profile, as I was then. If, twenty years ago, I was in the least racist fifty percent of young white British men (I wouldn't like to estimate where I actually sit or sat) because I would go on anti-BNP marches but still thought it was OK to use the n word when quoting something that used it, today I would be in the least racist twenty percent of middle-aged white British men because I gave a few quid to Black Lives Matter in lieu of being able to go and protest, and I *don't* think it's OK to use the n word even when quoting.

So that's a change in my beliefs and my actions, and as a result of that change I am harming fewer people, but it's a change that more or less goes with the flow of my position in society.

I think it is *possible* to change more drastically -- for a killer to feel remorse and devote their life to helping people, or for a Buddhist monk to suddenly think "you know what? Fuck ascetism and vegetarianism. I'm off to get a kebab". I don't think that happens very often at all. I also think that in the case of powerful people who have an incentive to appear to have changed once bad behaviour has been dragged into the public view, such changes should be treated with scepticism until there's a lot of evidence for them.

From:

snippy

People can change, but it's not the way to bet. People won't change unless they want to, and they seldom want to-you have to be vulnerable in order to change, and most people cannot tolerate being vulnerable because it's too frightening.

From:

kmusser

To me it's pretty self-evident that people can change, plenty of folks I knew in school are completely different people now than they were then. Can people change quickly would be a much more difficult question, as I think that is rare, it usually takes years.

From:

starwatcher

.
They can change -- but it takes a lot of being willing to be open to sources outside their comfort zone, and to consider the information from those sources without resorting to instinctive reactions of, "That's not me!". That's hard, so, in general, very few people (relatively speaking) will put in the thought needed to actually change. Although, given current events, there are signs that more people are noticing the need for, and making the effort to, change.
.

From:

ironyoxide

People can change. They just, generally, can't be changed.

From:

lilysea

Yes, people can change.

Whether people change depends on:

how motivated they are to change;

whether they have the mental energy, emotional energy, physical energy, and time to devote to changing;

whether they have access to resources like psychologists to help them change;

whether they have access to supportive friends who have the same traits that they want to change towards. [It's going to be harder to quit smoking if all your friends are smokers; it's going to be harder to stop yelling at your kids if all your friends yell at their kids]

From:

f4f3

Yes. But we only tend to notice when they change for the worst.

From:

anna_wing

I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'change'. People definitely have tendencies, and those don't change very much. What they do to express those tendencies can change vastly, depending on the situations you drop them into, and the various pressures acting upon them (social, familial, economic, professional, personal etc etc). People change their behaviour all the time when placed in different circumstances, dealing with different people. This is most easily seen in explicitly hierarchical communities, like any large organisation.

A left-wing fanatic can become a right-wing fanatic and vice-versa, far more easily than either of them will become an indifferent moderate pragmatist. The tendency is the innate (ish) bit, the expression is circumstantial. I don't think people can change their tendencies much, but they can certainly change how they express them if given enough incentive.

From:

heron61

To clarify my answer a bit - IME, people who are somewhat humane and sensible often change for the better and occasionally for the worse, although most such changes are fairly small, but often still noticeable. However, I've yet to see anyone who was seriously problematic (bullies, abusers, and the like) who managed anything more than (at most) very mild improvement. Big changes can occur, typically as a result of extreme events, but are also exceptionally rare. Of people I know at all well and have known for more than a decade, I can't think of any who have changed by a large amount. I've known a few such people in the past, but not many.

From:

azurelunatic

Occasionally, but it's rarely the people you wish would stop being assholes already.

From:

anef

I expect there is a context to this which you will let us know at some point. But yes, people can change, if they want to. I have changed quite a few things about myself, some willingly, some not, some easily, some less so. One of the things that has helped me change was doing some NLP courses, which helped me to see what I wanted to change and gave me some techniques for doing so.

One of the things the NLP gave me was a hierarchy of levels ("logical levels") identifying what level a problem was at and therefore where change was needed. In descending order of difficulty this is as follows:

Identity
Belief
Cabability
Behaviour
Environment.

It is relatively easy to change things that are wrong in your environment, but it won't help if the problem is at a higher level.

For example, our house is untidy. So this looks like a problem with the environment. I would like it to change, but it doesn't. One thing we could change is our behaviour, ie not leaving books, papers, boxes of games, CDs etc strewn over the sofas, or committing to tidying them up. But perhaps we have some beliefs about tidying up and our capability to do this or ownership of different bits of the environment that we need to work on before we can actually effect the change.

From:

andrewducker

That's useful framing! I shall try to remember that.

And it was this line, in "Fixer Upper" in Frozen that set me off.
"We're not saying you can change him
'Cause people don't really change"

And I was curious what other people thought.

From:

rhythmaning

I reckon your daughter has changed a fair bit since she was born.

From:

cmcmck

And this question you ask me? :oD

From:

white_hart

It depends.

Tastes change over time.

Most people can change habits fairly easily with enough motivation to put in the initial work.

It is possible to change fundamental patterns of behaviour and thinking, but it takes a lot of work and there is always a risk of revrting to the old patterns under stress.

From:

haggis

Specifically thinking of changing as "actively making a change to do better" -

I think, on both an individual and a social level, that change is possible and that it is possible to steer/encourage that change in other people (although for meaningful change, the other person needs to buy into it).

However, the actual triggers and processes that create and support that sort of change are not intuitive and can be very context dependent. Why did the murder of George Floyd spark a bigger reaction than previous similar murders? There are lots of reasons and it feels like the combination of these catalysed a bigger response. It's partly hard work by campaigners and the slow building of pressure after previous events but it's partly due to factors outside their control.

I disagree that you can't make another person change. We have whole industries and areas of knowledge dedicated to this - childrearing, education, media, politics, the justice system, religion, theories of rhetoric and political communication and on and on. However, as with individual and social change, if the other person is willing to change AND willing to put effort in, you will only get very limited change and high likelihood of resistance and entrenching the behaviour you wanted to change. You trying harder will not make up for the other person not trying.

From:

naath

People change all the time, but in tiny ways, so if you think someone's going to move from neo-nazi to BLM activist overnight you are almost certainly wrong, but lots of people move from "on balance I agree with $this" to "on balance I disagree with $this" over years. You can't make someone change, and trying might make them dig in harder (might be worth it anyway to encourage others though).

In the last decade I have changed my hair colour, become very ill, moved house, got a new job, changed how I usually dress, understood more about more things and thus become less shit at being supportive of some people (but not changed the desire to be an ally to those people, just developed in how shit I am at doing it), joined a political party (the one I voted for before)... I'm not the same persen I was in 2010.

From:

maia

I tend to think that individuality is an illusion, people are what the environment makes them, and change is all there is.

(Would you mind if I link to this post?)

Edited Date: 2020-06-27 01:51 pm (UTC)