Can you change your personality?

Are you an extrovert or an introvert? A type A or a type B? Or maybe you don't care about the categories but you would like to be less shy or more organised? Claudia Hammond and her panel of experts discuss personality in front of a live audience at Cheltenham Science Festival.

Professor Kathryn Paige Harden from the University of Texas at Austin discusses how much of our personality is down to our genes and how much is down to environment. And she explains why children can end up with such different personalities from their siblings and parents despite sharing so many genes.

Professor Anu Realo from the University of Warwick describes how important personality is for wellbeing and health, and how cultural differences in personality traits are not as pronounced as we might think.

And Professor Vincent Deary from Northumbria University has spent many years running a clinic for people who are chronically ill and who can sometimes find that their illness changes who they are. He makes the case for working to accept ourselves as we are before we think about changing.

Producer: Lorna Stewart Content Editor: Ilan Goodman Technical Producers: Emma Harth & Gayl Gordon Production Coordinator: Jana Holesworth