The Myth of Fixed Personality.

In a world saturated with labels, personality typing offers a kind of relief, but are we just one type of person really?

Your personality isn’t fixed, you are a range dictated by context, permission and adaptation.

Why You’re Not Just One Type.

The first time I saw Michael run a meeting, he was magnetic.. confident, articulate, effortlessly in control of the room.  He opened with a joke, closed with a plan and in between held everyone’s attention like it was the easiest thing in the world.  

He looked like someone born to lead, but when we spoke one-on-one later that afternoon, I found a different rhythm beneath the polish. 

He was quieter, more deliberate, almost hesitant actually. He told me that public speaking exhausts him, that he rehearses for days beforehand and that left to his own rhythm, he prefers a book and a quiet corner.

“I’m not really like that,” he said. 

I remember thinking.. but you were.

That tension might feel familiar, the performance parts of ourselves whilst at work.  Not to deceive, but to meet the moment, to become the version of us that’s needed in the moment. 

We humans are not actually fixed types of personality, we are ranges, dictated by context, permission and adaptation.

Placing people into a personality type box, gives a simple label to what is a complex and heavily nuanced part of human behaviour.

The Comfort of a Box.

In a world saturated with labels, personality typing offers a kind of relief.  Whether it’s introvert versus extravert, thinker versus feeler, or optimist versus pessimist, these binaries give us shortcuts. 

They reduce something vast and shifting into something we can grasp.  They make the intangible seem knowable and predictable.

It’s easy to see the appeal.  Many of us have taken quizzes that promise to reveal our type, our colour, our dominant element, or which Greek god governs our work style. 

These models are often used in professional settings to build teams, shape communication styles, or predict leadership tendencies.  They can offer insight, sometimes they even give people a vocabulary for parts of themselves they hadn’t yet named.

Beneath the comfort however, there’s a cost.

Categories can become cages. 

When a person is told they’re “just not a people person,” they often stop trying to connect. 

When someone believes they’re naturally disorganised, they may not see the point in building habits and when a manager types their team by surface-level traits, they risk underestimating what they’re capable of.

The idea that people are fixed, that who you are is who you will always be, is one of the most enduring myths in both self-development and leadership, but the deeper we look into psychology, the more that idea begins to unravel.

Traits are Spectrums, not Types.

The most scientifically robust personality model we have, the Five Factor Model (aka Big Five,) doesn’t divide people into types.  It maps traits along spectrums. 

You’re not an introvert or an extravert, you sit somewhere on a scale between the two and where you sit may shift depending on your context, energy level, or stage of life.

The same is true of optimism and pessimism, these are not identities, they are tendencies.  Habitual ways of interpreting information. 

Ways we’ve learned, consciously or not, to explain the world to ourselves.

Even seemingly stable traits like conscientiousness, emotional stability, or openness to experience are more fluid than we realise.  They might look stable from the outside, but internally they rise and fall with sleep, pressure, belonging, uncertainty and responsibility.  

What seems like personality is often context in disguise.

Take introversion and extraversion, perhaps the most familiar personality contrast.  You might describe yourself as introverted because you prefer quiet to crowds, but you’ve probably experienced moments of animated sociability too.  Laughing at dinner, leading a session or advocating for someone you care about. 

That doesn’t make you an extravert.  It makes you human and adaptable.

Psychologists now refer to most people as ambiverts. 

Not a tidy halfway point between the two extremes, but people whose social energy shifts with purpose, circumstance and need. 

You might be reflective on Monday morning and expansive on Friday evening. Neither is false. 

Personality, in this view, is less like a label and more like a range, one shaped by both internal wiring and external demand.

Life roles shape Personality Expression.

If traits describe our tendencies, then roles describe our requirements and over time, those requirements shape which parts of us show up most often.

A person who scores high in conscientiousness (diligent, structured, prepared) might be relaxed and scattered at home, but precise and disciplined at work. 

That’s not inconsistency it’s called context sensitivity. 

Likewise, someone who’s sceptical in meetings might be deeply optimistic when supporting a child or mentoring a younger colleague.  These aren’t contradictions, they’re adjustments.

This pattern becomes even clearer across life transitions. 

Adolescents typically score lower in emotional stability and conscientiousness than adults, but most people develop these traits over time, not because they train them explicitly, but because life demands them. 

You move out, take a job, lead a team, raise a child. 

Each new role pulls different parts of you forward.

The research supports this.  Longitudinal studies show that most people become more emotionally stable, more agreeable and more conscientious as they grow older, particularly in early adulthood. 

These are not minor shifts, they reflect real developmental change. Not in terms of a change of essence, but in how they express themselves.

So when we describe personality as stable, we need to be clear what we mean.  The underlying architecture may be consistent, but the way it shows up in daily life is shaped and reshaped, by experience.

When Personality Surprises us.

We’ve all heard ourselves say things like “That’s wasn’t me, I don’t normally react like that” or “I don’t know what came over me.”  

These moments often arrive under pressure or fatigue, when our usual patterns seem to fall away and something sharper, messier or more raw breaks through.

The temptation is to dismiss these reactions as glitches, but in many cases, they’re signals.  Stress changes us, sometimes temporarily, sometimes more lastingly.

In neuroscience terms, the brain is a prediction machine. It uses past experience to anticipate what comes next and to prepare a response, but when the situation changes suddenly, a new threat, new demand, new environment, the system doesn’t always update fast enough. 

That lag creates what psychologists call prediction error.

In those moments, we respond in ways that might surprise even ourselves.  Not because our personality has vanished, but because our context has overwhelmed the usual response.  Sometimes we shut down, sometimes we escalate and sometimes we rise to the occasion.

Understanding this helps us move away from the illusion of fixed personality. 

What matters isn’t whether someone is “the kind of person who handles pressure well.”  What matters is whether they’re able to respond flexibly to new demands and whether the systems around them allow that flexibility to be expressed.

We are all a spectrum of responses.

Personality is a Range, Not a Role.

You are a spectrum of responses, shaped by experience, primed by context and made real by repetition.

You may not always be confident, but you can act with courage when it matters.

You may not always be socialable, but you can connect when the moment calls for it.

You may not always be calm,  but you can learn how to return to calm more quickly.

This is growth and proof that we are not one fixed type of person. 

When we stop insisting that people are one thing  “she’s shy,” “he’s cynical,” “they’re difficult”,  we create more space for truth. 

We start listening for who they are today, not who we expect them to be and when we stop typing ourselves, we allow new versions of us to emerge. 

Ones shaped by conscious practice, not fixed identity.

This isn’t a rejection of personality. It’s a reframing.  You are still you, but not just one version of you. 

You are layered, responsive, complex and adaptive.

Personality types offer a lens to view people through, a way to understand identities.

Closing Reflection.

If you’re building teams, designing learning or leading people, try treating personality not as a verdict but as a lens, a way to understand tendencies, not defining identities. 

Recognise patterns, yes, but leave room for variation, growth and possible change.

If you’re reflecting on yourself, know this: the most powerful shifts often begin not with reinvention, but with realisation.  

The recognition that who you’ve been is only part of the story.  That you can grow in ways that feel both unfamiliar and yet deeply right.  That you can expand your range.

You are not in a box, more a large field.

Growth is not about becoming someone else.  It’s about discovering how many versions of yourself were always possible.