As the academic year draws to a close and many of you approach graduation, you may find yourself in the midst of trying to figure out who you are, what makes you tick and where you want to be in 10 years. Moreover, you may be wondering why you answer these sorts of questions so differently each time you ask them.

Though I’m probably the last person you want advice from, I’ve learned a thing or two as an undergrad (which, in turn, has informed my existential angst), and, in my last column of the year, I’d like to share some of my wisdom with you.

Let’s start with the facts.

In 1968, then-Stanford Professor Walter Mischel published his groundbreaking work, “Personality and Assessment,” in which he cast doubt upon the most fundamental tenet of prior personality theories and our folk psychology. Instead of finding that individual behavior was the result of intrinsic personality traits, Mischel’s research demonstrated that extrinsic situational cues were by far the most powerful determinates of action. In other words, how a person behaves in a given context has much more to do with that particular context than with her inner “self.”

To be fair, Mischel did find that individuals exhibited unique and predictable patterns of variability across situations. Even though his subjects didn’t prove to be consistently “conscientious” or “curmudgeonly,” they would act similarly in similar settings. For instance, Mischel administered tests to his subjects in a variety of contexts, and, in each one, he gave them the chance to cheat. When the subjects took the same form of the test in the same environment, their behavior was extremely consistent. When they were placed in diverse settings with dissimilar tests, however, the correlation of their scores dropped significantly. Thus, whether or not someone broke the rules to further her own self interests was less a function of her essential “honesty” and more of a function of the situational dynamics.

Why does this matter? Well, on a personal level, I think that the non-existence of stable personality traits is both encouraging and humbling. It is a cause for hope because we can try to mitigate our worst habits simply by modifying our environment. For instance, as was demonstrated by a recent study by researchers at UC-San Diego and Harvard Medical School, whether or not someone successfully quits smoking has as much to do with the behavior of those around her as her own personal gumption: smokers in the study who surrounded themselves with non-smokers, or with friends who had also quit, had a significantly easier time giving it up themselves.

At the same time, we must acknowledge that the better parts of ourselves are also heavily dependent on external conditions. For example, in their classic 1973 study “Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping People,” J. Darley and C. Batson found that students at a Seminary, a place where one would hope to find moral exemplars, exhibited drastically different attitudes toward an injured man they encountered, depending on whether they were in a hurry or not. Most alarmingly, when they were in a hurry, the Seminarians ignored the stranger even when they were on their way to deliver a sermon on the virtues of being a good Samaritan.

If we take seriously the contextual character of our behavior, we emerge with a certain fluid notion of human nature that can fruitfully inform our life decisions. Maybe when we consider what career we want, where we want it and with whom, we can give utmost priority to who we are in those contexts and how that compares to the person we’d most like to be. Although there’s no essential “you” that persists forever, when it comes to your personality, your whole is no greater than the sum of your parts.

Vishnu’s had a great time writing a column for you this year. Keep in touch at vishnus "at" stanford.edu.