[stordoff]

Is there any reason to think it's not a choice at some level? I doubt it's a conscious choice, and almost certainly guided by environment and habituation, but I also suspect it's malleable to at least some extent.

I'd also say that what you describe is just a more extreme version of how the world currently is - people with more popular personalities _tend_ to get further.

[dschuetz]

At some point you can consciously reflect on what those personality traits actually are, but you can't be sure what they are exactly. Personality traits are not directly observable, whereas behavior can lead to observation of trends, from which a personality trait can be deducted. So, the first and most difficult part of changing a certain trait is to identify it thoroughly. Also, it depends on who is observing whether a personality trait is actually likable or not. Extreme expressions of such traits are the most obvious. But aren't all traits to be taken into account, because the extreme ones always stem from myriads of nuanced trends in behavior? See, it's not at all that easy to identify a certain trait, not to speak of consciously changing a certain behavior over a long period of time.

Why are some traits more likable than others? Which ones are real and which ones are faked or biased (actors, salespeople, etc)? This paper goes far deeper into those questions than I intended to do. My point was, that there are people out there (and also here) who will take this paper, read the abstract, assume that changing one's personality traits is as easy as drinking a beer and go tooting that misinterpretation of actual facts as alternate facts. It's not a yes or no choice. It's not as quantifiable as a beer. It's an expression of behavioral trends.