I know what it’s like to be a fish swimming against the current. On my first day of middle school, I walked in wearing an outfit I had carefully pieced together from the clearance racks: a bright colored t-shirt and jeans that had gone out of style a year ago, I thought I was going to fit right in. But as I walked into my new middle school all of the other 11-year-old girls were draped head to toe in lululemon. There was a silent yet unquestioned understanding that I didn’t belong. I just wanted to transform into a version of myself that anyone could accept. And so I did, I became a chameleon.
Famous English philosopher John Locke once said, “We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character from those who are around us.”
This results in the chameleon effect, a subtle but powerful instinct to mirror those around us. Sometimes, it’s harmless — automatic, even. We laugh when others laugh, cross our arms when they do and slip into shared speech patterns without realizing it. But sometimes, it’s deeper. Sometimes, we shift parts of ourselves — our humor, our confidence, even our opinions — to fit into the spaces we find ourselves in.
That balance — between being yourself and being what others want you to be — is a tightrope. And some people, like Eddie Mobilio Breck, feel like they live on that tightrope.
“I hyper-analyze people based on their facial expressions, their body language, their tone,” Mobilio Breck said. “I try to alter myself in a way that makes them want to be around me.”
It makes sense — people like people who make them comfortable. But at what cost? If you spend so much time molding yourself to what others want, do you even know what you want? At some points in my life, I have felt like I don’t truly know who I am. I have wondered if my favorite color is a fad, or if the way I dress is just because I see the other girls in my school wearing those clothes. Most of the time, I wanted someone’s first impression of me to be a good one, to stick.
“First impressions to me are like the most important thing in the world,” Mobilio Breck said. “And then I’m always scared that my good first impression is gonna wear off.”
The fear of losing people’s approval — of slipping out of the mold you created for yourself — can feel suffocating. And it’s not just about personality; sometimes, it’s about language, about perception.
Klava Alecia first felt this when doing a semester abroad in Spain, it was the first time that everything surrounding her was foreign, sometimes who she was could even be foreign to herself.
“When I was in Spain, I think people just perceived me as childlike because of how I spoke. And in some ways, I think I played into that. It made me realize how much language shapes how people see you,” Alecia said. “I had a friend from Paraguay in fourth grade, and she didn’t speak English very well, and I just thought she was very little, like, ‘Oh, she’s so cute.’”
The way we present ourselves changes how people see us. And sometimes, when the world tells you who you are, you start to believe it. Alecia wasn’t a different person in Spain, but she was a different version of herself — one shaped by the way others treated her. And she isn’t alone in that.
“People thought I was different, less smart maybe, just because I wasn’t as fluent,” Alecia said. “It really changed the way I thought about how people interact with each other.”
Research has shown that people naturally shift their personalities in different social settings. A study published in “Social Psychological and Personality Science” found that people unconsciously adapt their personalities depending on their environment and the people they are with. It’s not always calculated; most of the time, it’s just instinct. We absorb the energy of a room. We adjust, we blend in, we survive.
But there’s a difference between adapting and losing yourself entirely.
“Sometimes I live for other people’s appeasement,” Mobilio Breck admitted.
Maybe that’s the heart of it. Maybe that’s the real danger. It’s not just that we change — it’s that we can become so consumed by pleasing others that we forget who we are outside of them and how we are perceived by the outside world.
“Sometimes you do have to do a little bit of a switch-up because if you want to fit in, you have to live up to those people’s standards,” Breck said. “Maybe that’s what I do by accident, but I don’t realize it.”
That’s the trick of the chameleon effect, most of us don’t realize how much we change and how fast we alter ourselves. Maybe changing who you are is harmless when it’s small— when it’s a shift in humor, a softening of edges. But when it becomes a full-body transformation, you start to feel like you’re performing every breathing moment instead of just being.
“I don’t think anyone really knows who they are because you’re so different in every setting,” Alecia said. “Who’s to say, ‘Oh, this is exactly who I am,’ when that version of you only exists with one person?”
At the end of the day, we’ll never be just one thing. We’ll never be just one person. But we can choose what parts of us are real, and fit each piece of us together like a puzzle. And little by little all the pieces make a picture of who you are, not just a chameleon but a combination of everything you are and wish to be.
