> This is a stale and old debate, personality is extremely flexible and heavily depends on environmental and social constraints, as were demonstrated by seminal social experiment studies such as those of Milgram or Zimbardo.
These experiments first of all show how people react in highly stressful situations. To equalize this with changes in their personalities doesn't seem right to me.
The hardest part of these artificial and mostly extreme experiments - because you want to see reactions in a short amount of time - is what kind of conclusions you can take out of them.
I agree, this is confusing actual personality changes with stress behaviour. Obviously if you reduce stress you can remove unproductive behaviours such as neuroticism but the persons fundamental view of the world hasn't necessarily changed, even if it seems that way if you didn't know the person before the stress behaviours began to dominate.
Look into the Birkman Method, it's a psychometric personality assessment that, unlike other pop-quiz type tools (MBTI et al), distinguishes between your usual behaviour, your fundamental expectation of the world (needs) and your reactions (stress) when those expectations aren't met. It's unlikely that your usual behaviour changes, although it's quite possible that your stress behaviour could mask that (even for years on end) if you're in an environment you can't cope with.
These experiments first of all show how people react in highly stressful situations. To equalize this with changes in their personalities doesn't seem right to me.
The hardest part of these artificial and mostly extreme experiments - because you want to see reactions in a short amount of time - is what kind of conclusions you can take out of them.