Personality may be set by preschool

This from MSNBC:

Study finds shy kids stay shy

while rambunctious tots withdraw some

Ever wonder if that quiet girl who hid in the back corner of the classroom ever burst out of her shell? Perhaps she became a whiz at computers. And what about the class clown? Did all his attention-grabbing antics develop into a charm that would later earn him big bucks selling timeshares in Bermuda?

New research shows that in most cases the personalities displayed very early in life — as young as preschool — will stay with us into adulthood. The wallflowers will stay shy and reticent, though they will learn in time to be a little more sociable and assertive. And the average kids, the more resilient ones, will remain so.

But there is an interesting exception: The study found that as the most noisy and rambunctious kids hit their 20s, they still were more aggressive than the others yet they had become considerably more withdrawn than they were earlier in life. The researchers suspect that negative feedback from peers over the years makes these kids more self-conscious and quiet.

"At first, their impulsive behavior may appear 'cool,' gaining them social recognition," says the study’s lead author Jaap Dennissen, a professor of psychology at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. "However, as people grow up and are expected to act more mature, such impulsive behavior is increasingly rejected. Because of this expected rejection by peers, [they] may act in an increasingly shy manner.” ...