Why are you like you are?
Could you be happier?
And can you mould the personality of your children?
It's your mind that shapes your personality,
and this is the story of how it happens.
In this programme we'll see how a personality
develops over an entire lifetime.
And we can start.
We'll be doing experiments that show our true selves.
We'll be finding out what a lemon can tell us about our personality.
Come on, move your...
And we'll be following this man's struggle to change his.
I've got too much to lose.
I could lose Ange, I could lose Samuel,
I could lose all of those if I don't change.
What makes us who we are is our personality,
and most of think we've got a pretty good idea of what we've got.
I'm quite thoughtful.
I'm extrovert.
I'm a neurotic.
Sporty, generous.
Quiet and shy.
I'm a mad character.
I am playful and bubbly.
He's crackers.
But our personality isn't just centred around one characteristic.
In fact, scientists now believe that
there are as many aspects to the human personality as there are people
in this crowd of football fans supporting their team.
There are around five thousand characteristics in each of us which,
mixed in endless ways, make every one of us unique.
And all these characteristics are embedded within our brain.
You might think that our story begins here,
in the first few weeks after we're born, but you'd be wrong.
Little Charlotta is just a few weeks old
but her personality began to form over nine months ago
almost at the moment of conception.
It's at this moment she inherited
a unique combination of her parents' personalities,
from their genes.
This inheritance will form the foundation
of many of Charlotta's future characteristics
and we're beginning to find out which ones.
Even characteristics as important, for instance,
as whether Charlotta will be introvert or extrovert.
A major part of these characteristics is inherited.
Scientists have even discovered how they are embedded in our brain.
To find out we're extrovert or not,
most of us don't need to look inside our brains, we just need
one of these.
Because apparently just one squirt of lemon juice
can reveal the inner workings of our minds.
To put this to the test and discover how introversion
and extroversion are created,
we've come to Britain's busiest fruit market, Spitalfields.
Two groups have volunteered for our experiment.
They've been chosen from two professions
which psychologists have identified as tending to attract either extreme.
So for our team of introverts we've physicists
from Imperial College, London.
Meet the Labcoats.
And to make up our extroverts
we've recruited a team of holiday camp reps, the Redcoats.
For our test you need a lemon,
a psychologist and plenty of tongue.
The experiment
to discover how much saliva our two teams can produce in just thirty seconds.
We'll stimulate their taste buds with a drop of lemon just
and see how many fruit boxes they can seal with sticky packing tape.
So, can sucking a lemon give us a clue as to what's happening in our brain?
Ok, and three, two, one, go.
Right, go.
Stop.
Excellent, thank you very much.
Here's two metres and two centimetres, perfect.
Twenty seven.
Tilt your head back slightly, tongue out, two metres sixty five.
Already there's a difference.
These introverts are slick lickers
but the extroverts don't seem to be licking much at all.
Down to the last two volunteers.
An awesome three metres twenty six. Good work.
She's licked the lot of them, whereas that's one of the shortest.
Seventy five.
Mmmm that was, mmmmm.
That was lovely wasn't it?
Nice.
So how have they done?
Well, our extroverts have licked their way through eight metres of tape,
enough to seal sixteen boxes, not bad.
But now for the introverts.
They've slobbered their way through a massive twelve metres of tape
that's enough to seal twenty four boxes, half as many again as the extroverts.
Three, two, one, go.
So how does it work?
It's all down to how our brain handles stimulation.
There's an area that reacts both to lemon juice and to meeting people.
Ok, wow, that's incredible.
With introverts this area is very sensitive,
which means that they react more to lemon juice but don't like parties.
And stop.
Is that impressive?
That's very good.
Whereas with extroverts this area is not so sensitive,
so they react less to lemon juice but love to party.
Even though characteristics like introversion or extroversion
have already begun to take shape by the time we're born,
many other aspects of our personality are formed by what happens
in the early years of our lives.
During childhood, all parents can influence
how their baby's brain physically develops,
by the way they play with and teach their children.
Childhood is the most important phase in our personality's development.
And the reason why are our experience as youngsters
is so crucial to our future personality is because of what's happening our brain.
Every child's brain is growing in a truly amazing way.
And it's all going on at the tiniest level.
As young children,
our brain cells or neurons are sprouting branches
to create more connections with one another.
But at the same time, almost as quickly,
other branches and their connections are being pruned.
It means that different aspects of our personality
are growing in our brain as we grow.
This constant growth and pruning of children's brains is shaped
by what's happening around them and how they react to it all.
So, specific experiences in childhood can help to form specific personality traits.
And this is how it happens.
The way a particular experience shapes our personality in childhood
is rather like walking through a field of wheat.
When children have a new experience, whether good or bad,
neurons on their brain make new connections.
These connections form pathways,
and it's these pathways which affect the way children
behave not only now but also later in life.
In the beginning, these pathways are hardly there,
just like the trail we leave in a field of wheat for the very first time.
But if as children we have the same experience several times,
our behaviour begins to form a pattern
and the pathways in our brain become better established.
Until finally we've created the equivalent of an expressway,
a new aspect of our personality has formed.
The characteristics we develop in childhood are those most likely to say
with us for the rest of our life.
Some of these characteristics may be ones we like,
but others may be characteristics we don't.
This is Shaun Carroll.
A family man with a lot going for him.
He's got a good job, a loving partner and a baby son,
with another child on the way.
But Shaun risks losing it all
because of one particular aspect of his personality.
Shaun has agreed to have a camera rigged in his car to capture his problem.
I can lose it very easy in certain situations,
I can get very angry in a very short space of time.
Oh... yourself.
to the point of ultimately losing control.
For... sake, oh... Your side of the road, dimwit.
Come on, move your...
The blood's pumping round me
and I've got so much adrenalin and so much anger.
You...
My body takes over
and the brain just takes a ten second blank.
...Don't indicate... or nothing will you...
I will shout, scream, holler,
all of these things straight away,
but then after that I'll be angry for a couple of hours
and then after that I'll be ashamed.
And he isn't the only one,
his partner Angie also has to endure his rages.
Although Shaun's never been physically violent to his family,
Angie fears he's a bad role model for his son,
and their relationship is at breaking point.
I think it's probably because he's been
behaving like that for such a long time,
he knows that he does it, you know,
and afterwards he hates himself for it,
especially you know if he gets you know short tempered with Sam.
Do you want your nana?
Do you want some nana?
When he's old enough to understand
I don't want him to think that Daddy shouts all the time.
He just can't stop and think and you know before he acts.
Come here.
What you doing?
I've got too much to lose,
I could lose Ange, I could lose Samuel,
I could lose all of those if I don't change.
Shaun knows that to keep his family together,
the rages have to stop.
So he's going to try a new approach.
Shaun has travelled to see rage management psychologist,
Jo Ellen Grzyb.
Over weeks of intensive sessions,
they will try to overcome Shaun's rages.
We're talking about how we express our emotions about angry,
and over here are the two extremes, the nice side, and over here is -
The idea behind the therapy is ambitious,
it will try to change the way Shaun's mind works
by altering the structure of his brain.
Deep inside our brain is one area responsible
for our emotions - it triggers anger.
Shaun's amygdala flares up too often and too easily,
and at the moment there's not much he can do about it.
However, there's another part of Shaun's brain
that can stop him acting on these impulses.
These are the frontal lobes.
They act as a kind of control centre in the brain.
If Shaun can strengthen the influence of his frontal lobes,
he may be able to control his anger.
- actually seeing the passion you might feel for Tottenham
or the passion you might feel for Italian football,
the passion you might feel about...
And that's what Shaun's therapy is trying to do,
or that's the theory, in reality it will only work
if Shaun can put Jo Ellen's advice into practice.
So what happens, what sort of what's your trigger?
What do you actually do?
Shout, scream, adrenalin pumps,
for about five to ten seconds my brain doesn't know what's going on.
And what about - do you ever hit things like kick a car or hit a wall or -
I head butted a front door and put my head through the window.
In a sense there's parts of your brain that are fighting with each other,
the conscious, aware,
actually I know how I want to feel and behave,
and the habitual part of the brain that's just used to snap reactions.
It's all about giving Shaun's frontal lobes a chance
to overrule his raging amygdala.
One of things that I talk about a lot is buying time.
So sometimes when you don't have the words at the same time
at the right moment, get yourself out of the picture.
I left something in my van I'll be right back.
Anything that gets you out of that immediate confrontation but they
if you begin to work those in
and practice those things even when it doesn't matter,
you'll be able to do them when it does.
Shaun has just ten weeks in which to re-shape his brain.
When it comes to personality,
it seems the brain is a bit like an orchestra,
just as the orchestra comes together with various sections,
woodwind brass and strings to play music,
so it seems the brain has different parts which combine to form our personality.
The frontal lobes are just like a conductor.
They control different aspects of our personality in the same way
a conductor directs the different sections of an orchestra.
When our frontal lobes are in control,
our personality becomes a carefully orchestrated melody - music to our ears.
But control over our behaviour isn't always this harmonious.
Let's see what happens when a child picks up the baton.
Painful, isn't it?
Young children often can't conduct themselves very well
because their frontal lobes haven't developed
enough to keep the rest of their brain in check.
During childhood, with so little control over our impulses,
it's often more chaos than harmony.
That's why, when children throw tantrums,
it's worth remembering what's happening in their brains.
Sometimes they simply can't help it.
Let's see.
Oh look at the sweets.
And it's not just anger.
Not only do immature frontal lobes mean children can't control their behaviour,
they also make resisting temptation difficult.
To put this to the test,
we secretly filmed twenty primary school children
as they faced the ultimate childhood challenge.
We've told them that if they don't eat their favourite sweet for five minutes,
they'll be given three more sweets later.
You can choose, you can either eat the sweet now or,
Daddy has to go out for a few minutes,
if you wait until I come back you can have three sweets.
Does that make sense?
Then you can have three, so you can choose, all right?
I'm not going to eat it now cos I want three.
Do you think so?
Ok, I'll see you in a minute.
Little Jacqueline thinks she's on her own,
but what she and the other children don't know
is that our hidden cameras are still watching.
The temptation is almost unbearable.
Our experiment confirmed the results of previous tests.
Even though the kids knew they would get more sweets later,
two thirds of the children couldn't resist the single sweet
in front of them now.
It's all because their brain isn't mature enough to control their impulses.
It'll be another few years before their frontal lobes develop further
and all of them can do what Jacqueline has done - resisted temptation.
A week has passed since his first anger management session
and Shaun has been battling to keep his impulses in check.
Monday and Tuesday brilliant, brilliant, really really good.
Thank you sir. Thank you, goodbye.
Wednesday was a little bit stressful with Samuel
and I was still a little bit moody by the time I got to work.
One two three - oh you...
I had such a crap end of the week that worried me.
Oh... indicate,
you...
I was totally ashamed of my behaviour.
What's the matter with you, you thick...
Totally ashamed, totally ashamed.
Personally I've seen no change in him whatsoever since the first session.
When he come home Sunday he was full he was full of ideas,
he was full of talking about what had happened in the sessions
and how he could think about it and change,
and I really think that he wanted to try,
but now we've been through the week
I think he can go back for his second session
and hopefully talk about what's happened
and we'll see some improvement next week, I think.
My head hurts, I can feel my head right across there,
it's just like it wants to explode?
everything come out.
A battle still rages in Shaun's brain,
and he's desperately trying to put what he's learned
in therapy into practice.
Notice what you do, even if you can't control it,
give yourself ticks,
acknowledge yourself for doing something well,
it just keeps reinforcing the confidence that you're actually an Ok guy.
But Shaun's journey is only just beginning.
One, two, three, hup.
During childhood as our mind develops,
we begin to get to grips with who we are
our personality is establishing itself
and our ability to control it is improving.
Everything seems to be going smoothly.
At the end of childhood,
something momentous happens to our personality,
something so momentous that at times it can temporarily send us way off course.
And that something is puberty.
We all know puberty has a big effect on our body,
but it has an even more dramatic effect on our mind.
This means teenagers get a personality all of their own.
In particular, they're known for being insensitive and socially awkward.
They're going to find out why.
Taking part in his experiment are twenty children.
The team in the red T shirts are around ten years old
and those in the yellow are a bit older.
Although these children may look around the same age,
there's a crucial difference.
Those in red and those in yellow
are likely to be either side of an important divide - puberty.
The test is to find out how quickly the kids
in the teams recognise other people's emotions.
We're going to flash up images of a face displaying different emotions
happy, sad, angry, expressionless.
The images last only a fraction of a second
and they'll have to make a snap decision about which emotion they've seen,
the fastest correct answer wins.
So if the face you see is happy press the yes key,
if it's any of the other faces then you press the no key.
And with that we can start.
You'd think that older kids, in the yellow shirts,
would be better at judging other people's emotions
than the children in the red shirts.
After all older should mean wiser.
Yet our results confirmed what researchers found
when they ran a similar experiment.
Surprisingly, the older kids were slower
at judging emotion than their younger counterparts.
Scientists believe this may explain
the apparently insensitivity of the teenage personality.
The reason for this lies once again in what's happening
in teenagers' frontal lobes.
During puberty our brain is once again
sprouting a vast number of new connections between neurons,
but many of these new connections don't yet have specific functions.
With so many of these new pathways,
signals can get disrupted and confused.
Its' this disruption, caused by the new growth,
which makes teenagers slow to understand other people's feelings.
So, with all that going on in the brains of teenagers,
how good are they at controlling their personality?
Let's see what happens when we make the transition
from childhood to adolescence.
It's different but it still doesn't sound right.
Our brain's conductor is being overloaded by confused signals,
we can't control what's going on.
So, in the teenage years,
too much is happening in our frontal lobes,
which is why being a teenager is most memorable
for being confused, frustrated and moody.
Well, we all grow out of being teenagers it's just a passing phase.
But this isn't the case for all aspects of teenage personality.
Some characteristics we develop in our teens may stay
with us for the rest of our lives, and one of them is risk taking.
The kern River in California.
These kayakers only saw the appeal of this dangerous sport
in their early teens,
and now they can't get enough of it.
It's definitely a dangerous sport I mean you're at the mercy of the river
and you're going to go where it's going to take you.
Going huge, chicks yelling on the shore,
getting crowds of people excited,
that gets me excited then everybody's happy.
It's definitely a thrill, yeah.
Because a teenager's frontal lobes are already confused,
they're easily seduced by risky behaviour,
and taking risks creates a surge of a hormone
called dopamine through the brain,
which gives them an instant high.
I'd never really done anything dangerous
until I got around like some of my other buddies.
Sometimes I just I prefer losing control,
I just want to have fun and let go.
The more risks we take as teenagers,
the more we become desensitised to dopamine
and need higher doses to get the same kick as adults.
So, if you're the sort of person who enjoyed taking risks as a teenager,
chances are you could be a risk taker for the rest of your life.
So what happens to how we control our personality
as we move from adolescence to adulthood?
Our personality is now fully formed,
and for the first time our frontal lobes are in control
at last the conductor is properly directing the orchestra,
and if we're lucky,
we'll have a mind playing as harmoniously as this.
But that doesn't mean as adults we're stuck with what we've got.
It is possible to alter our personality in the short term.
And psychologists have found a powerful way of doing just that.
It's as simple as changing your mood.
To put this to the test we need two volunteers
who are as alike as possible.
They need to act alike, think alike and have a very similar personality.
In fact, they need to be almost identical.
This is Charmagne Charles and this is Genevieve Charles.
They're identical twins.
I think mannerisms are the same,
we have the same sort of mannerisms and the same outlook on life
and the same perspective on life.
Even our partners,
oh, it's embarrassing us sometimes
when my sister's partner has kissed me or has kissed my sister
and you give them this look, like what are you doing?
Right now, Charmagne and Genevieve couldn't be more alike,
but our psychologists are going to put them in very different moods.
If all goes to plan, at the end of the day our identical twins
should be polar opposites.
It's seven am, the twins are awake and our experiment begins.
First, we're going to change their moods with music.
We've given Genevieve a happy tune,
it's one of her favourites and reminds her of good times
she's had while listening to it.
Scientists also believe the pumping rhythm may trick her mind into feeling upbeat.
At the same time we've given Charmagne a track with a downbeat rhythm that
she associates with sad times.
To reinforce the girls' different moods,
we've sat them down to watch two films.
Charmagne's is a sad story,
she feels for the suffering of the character's on the screen
and this has an affect on her mind.
Genevieve's experience couldn't be more different,
she's watching a comedy, which should make her feel happier.
But the most powerful way to alter mood is also the most surprising
it consists of simply reading a selection of words
which trigger associations in our minds.
Genevieve is ready a set of carefully selected uplifting sentences,
and all these influences should be changing what's happening inside her brain
They should be triggering her brain stem, at the base of the brain,
to release large amounts of a chemical called serotonin,
this creates a feeling of happiness.
Whereas Charmagne is reading depressing works,
the very opposite should be happening in her brain.
This time, instead of producing serotonin,
Charmagne's brain should be doing the opposite,
reducing the amount of serotonin that's present.
With her brain starved of the chemical that creates a feeling of happiness,
Charmagne ought to be feeling sad.
Simple manipulation should have induced two moods in our twins.
Time now to put them to the test.
Believe it or not,
scientists have discovered one of the best ways of testing mood
is by watching how people behave when they're shopping.
Usually our twins are sensible shoppers with similar tastes.
But if they behave differently today,
it will show how their personalities have been temporarily changed.
I think they really do suit me.
Genevieve is really enjoying herself
her good mood has made her go into more shops
to buy more items than she usually would,
and she's more adventurous in her taste as well.
It's just if I don't like them can I bring them back to any First Sport?
Yeah, so long as they're unworn and you've got the receipt.
Yeah, Ok, that's fine.
But Charmagne's behaviour couldn't be more different.
Her sad mood means that she doesn't really want to buy anything,
and she's only visited two shops she's just not her usual self.
I felt I had no self confidence in myself
and what I was doing, I did I felt sad I guess.
I felt great, I felt wonderful I felt yes, I'm really happy,
I'm really really happy, it was a fantastic feeling.
Sort of, I don't know, maybe impulse buying
The proof lies in the shopping basket.
but now that I've looked at them properly.
You don't like them?
I really don't like them, yeah that's it,
what did you get, what did you get?
I got loads and loads.
Oh wow.
Just to wear on the beach,
because we will be going on holiday this year.
Oh you got one for yourself.
Throughout the day,
the twins' different experiences have shown
how we have the power to make dramatic changes to our day-to-day personality.
But mood manipulation doesn't affect personality in the long term,
nor can it overcome extreme aspects of personality like anger.
Shaun Carroll has completed his intensive course of anger management therapy,
and we're going to find out if he's got what he wanted
a balanced personality he's in control of.
Ok Sunday morning, got this stupid thing on here,
stupid heart rate monitor thing.
What we're going to do is we're going to go for a little drive,
see what happens and see if anything happens with my heart.
Shaun's heart rate is a good indication of the level of stress he's under,
and how active the amygdala is being,
part of his brain involved in triggering anger.
I've just seen the sign for this roundabout,
it's a big roundabout... nervous, I don't know why,
I've done this so many times and now it's going off.
If his heart rate increases but he shows no outwards signs of anger,
the frontal lobes of his brain are in control and the therapy has worked.
The ultimate test is if he can avoid feeling angry on a route he hates taking.
To be honest I don't feel any stress at all today,
I don't feel stressed, I feel very relaxed,
I feel very calm, I feel very happy, so...
So far he's doing very well.
But something's about to happen
that just ten weeks ago would have sent him into a rage.
I'm being overtaken by Alan Partridge, I don't believe it.
He's cut me up!
I've been cut up by Alan Partridge.
Shaun has passed the test
his brain really does seem to have changed.
All the famous stars.
Angie is very surprised at the way I've changed.
I've stopped a couple of times and I said
you thought I was going to get the hump there didn't you?
and she went well I was expecting you
to like start shouting and like I've surprised her,
she said I like this new Shaun and hopefully you can keep it up
and I said well that's obviously going to be the hard thing is keeping it up.
All I can say is that I wish that I had more clients like you
who respond so quickly and have not just intellectually you know emotionally taken
on board but behaviourally has taken on board,
has been fantastic and I'm really proud of you.
Thank you very much.
Ok, and I think we're done.
It's now a month since Shaun's course of therapy finished.
What effect has it had on his relationship with his family?
I think I've changed in quite a few ways to be honest,
more relaxed, more calm, you know instead of just
shouting and ranting and raving I'm thinking more,
and especially at home as well with Ange,
you know, if I'm seeing a problem arise I'm trying to deal with Ange as well,
so, just trying to be much more in control and I feel I am much more in control
He seems a lot more calmer about just life in general at the moment,
a situation would happen and he just tends to be much more chilled out about it all.
I think it would be the best, you know,
beginning of a better relationship I think,
I mean we've had a fairly
good relationship the last four years
and you know we've done a lot of things and
a lot of things have changed in our life with obviously Samuel and the other one
the next one coming along but you know it is sort of a beginning for us so yeah.
It's come at a good time for us as well hasn't it?
Yeah, I think we need to just carry on and keep trying together so it should be
that'll be the hard part but I think we can do it.
The brain is the most remarkable organ in the body
because it can transform itself
we can use our mind to change and improve our mind
something that no other animal can do
In the case of personality,
it means we can become a little more like the person we would like to be.
But the human mind allows us to do even more
we can use it to improve the way we interact with other people.
Because, in the next programme,
we'll be finding out how our mind helps us make friends and influence people.
We'll see experiments that show the hidden potential of your mind.
We'll reveal how you can know when someone's genuinely pleased to see us,
and how an experience like this can show us who to trust.