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BRAD COPE tries on a new personality to become a Master of the Universe. But can you change identities to get ahead? And should you?

A LITTLE-KNOWN GROUP called ESTJs rules the business world. Let me explain. For those who haven’t mastered the alphabet soup of the Myers-Briggs personality test, ESTJs are Extroverted, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging. Their opposites are Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving INFPs. But don’t worry about INFPs. They don’t rule the business world. ESTJs do.

“More executives and managers are ESTJs than any other personality type,” says Rich Thompson, divisional director of research for CPP Inc., the organization that publishes the Myers-Briggs test. “ESTJs are the preferred personality of America’s business culture.”

This fact sets up this month’s Idea—or Question on a way to an Idea. Here’s the Question: Supposing you’re not an ESTJ, can you change your personality to advance your career? Since I happen to lack that personality myself, finding the answer would entail some serious difficulty. In pursuit of ESTJ-ness, I ended up going toe-to-toe with a pumice stone, whooping it up with a robot mouse, and facing off against a professional basketball team.

But first we need to define terms. “Personality” means your innate orientation to the world. “Behavior” means the way you act in the world. This distinction makes my project harder.

Since ESTJs corner the market on corner offices, then ambitious people should try to become ESTJs, right? Maybe not. Some jobs favor other personality types. For instance, if you change Thinking in the über-business type to Feeling, you get ESFJs. People who fit this personality type might not take over the C-suite, but they make inspiring teachers.

A Google search will yield dozens of websites devoted to matching careers with Myers-Briggs types. Which kinds of personalities succeed in your field? If you fit the description, congratulations. If you don’t, you could try to change yours. But would that work?

To find out, I asked personality experts like CPP’s Thompson. At the same time, I needed to see whether a personality change was even possible—whether, in other words, I could flip my Introversion to Extroversion. I would go to places where extroverts gather and act like them in pursuit of becoming them. Why focus on Extroversion? Because I’m an ISTJ. And if I could change my slight Introversion to full Extroversion, I could rule the business world.

“YOU’VE NEVER had a pedicure before, have you?” the salon specialist asks, giving my toenails a wary glance.

“Uh, no,” I say. “How could you tell?”

The truth is, I already know the answer. My toenails have never brushed up against an Emory board, and it shows.

No matter. I’m really at the Boardroom for the camaraderie. The Dallas outpost of the upscale men’s salon franchise looks like an English club: dark wood, leather upholstery, pool table, and complimentary beers. While I had imagined going into full extrovert mode, starting conversations with the strangers getting buffed and trimmed next to me, I have the place to myself. So I turn my newfound gregariousness on my pedicurist.

We talk so freely that I’m beginning to think I might actually be an extrovert—until she pulls out a pumice stone. From that point on, I can’t speak. I’m either laughing at the tickle-torture or gritting my teeth as my skin shears away. Halfway through this ordeal, I realize that I’m not resting my foot on the stool; I’m holding it in midair in a continual flinch. I wonder, How do women handle this?

I realize my bigger mistake later. If the Boardroom staffer didn’t buy my chatterbox persona, she would be far too professional to let on. I need a place where I can act like an E with amateurs. I need Chuck E. Cheese’s.

MY SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN have long raved about classmates’ birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese’s: the kid-friendly (aka nondescript) pizza, the keyboard-pounding animatronic rodent, and the dads whooping it up on video games. The whoopers sound like amateur extroverts to me. Plus, just showing up at this garish cacophony of a pizza joint would give my quiet-seeking, curl-up-with-a-good-book personality a good shaking.

So I drive my delighted twin 8-year-olds to the Chuck E. Cheese’s in Lubbock, Texas. I seek out the parent I most want to copy by listening for the loudest whoops in the arcade. The tattooed 20-something stands—probably illegally—on a Yamaha watercraft race simulator called “WaveRunner” that his young son is playing. The two of them lean left and right to dodge obstacles on the video screen while Dad roars out advice and encouragement.

Game over, they clear out. I call my son over. Ethan gives me a strange look when I climb up behind him on the simulator. His expression means, What’s wrong with you? He shoots me the same mystified look when I loose a war cry. Then we’re off, with me barking away like a maritime Vince Lombardi. Ethan loves the new me, and we race our way into extended playing time. I begin thinking about how many waves I’d have to run before I become a full-time extrovert.

My Cheese epiphany lasts until I talk with Brent Roberts. The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign psychology professor publishes papers with titles like, “Is Character Fate, or Is There Hope to Change My Personality Yet?” He sees my triumph at Chuck E. Cheese’s as a classic case of changing behavior instead of personality. “You can’t change basic personality traits like extroversion and agreeableness overnight,” Roberts says. “You have a better chance over a long period, like a decade.”

Roberts’ research suggests that the personalities of many people do change over time, usually for the better, and especially between the ages of 20 and 40. One key reason: The environment changes, and young adults fall into line. Roberts calls the catalyst in this metamorphosis the “invested life,” a term that includes the social forces—from careers to marriage to parenthood—that whip us into shape.

That my son’s approval sways me to act like an extrovert doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is that I never had a choice.

SINCE DR. ROBERTS rejects the idea of quick personality change, I’m tempted to give up. But I can’t. I’m only one trait shy of being a Master of the Universe. So I invent the hardest test yet: dancing at a trendy nightclub. If that sounds easy, you’re probably young, coordinated, undernourished, and extroverted—all the things I’m not. I settle on a boutique Dallas club called Candleroom and enlist a regular named T.J. Glendenning. My one rule for the night: Just do what he does.

We step out of our cab at 10 p.m. Eight minutes later, Glendenning literally drags me out of my comfort zone. “Look,” he says, tugging on my arm. “It’s the Mavs. Let’s go.”

I’d like to tell Glendenning that I have no desire to meet the Dallas Mavericks, especially since they just booted my beloved San Antonio Spurs out of the NBA playoffs. But I say nothing because my host can’t hear me over the thump of the sound system.

Glendenning plunges into the cluster of basketball players and hangers-on like a neutron into the nucleus of an atom bomb. Recalling my follow-him rule, I greet Mavs center DeSagana Diop right after Glendenning does. When he shakes hands with Jose Barea, I forget about team loyalty and grip the hand of the Mavs’ point guard.

After our brief sojourn in NBA world, Glendenning and I return to our table and climb up to our “perch,” sitting on the leather banquette with our feet on the cushions. He is in his element. An ambitious commercial real estate broker, he looks and acts more than a little like Tony Romo, the laid-back Dallas Cowboys quarterback. A dozen of his similarly ambitious and stylish friends—real-estate developers, an actor, two models (one blonde, one brunette), a documentary producer—talk, gyrate, and toss around ice cubes from the bucket chilling our vodka.

For a while, I believe that I’ve gone native, an extrovert in an extroverted land. But as the hours tick by, I realize that none of this matters unless I do that extroverted—even exhibitionistic—thing called dancing. Hey, I can dance. I know the foxtrot, the samba, the waltz, the tango, even the merengue. But, strange as it seems, these dances don’t work at Candleroom.

I take a last swig of vodka and Red Bull and request a dance with Vodi Cook. She’s the perky slender blonde Glendenning calls his “unofficial social planner.” Cook agrees and we start dancing to a bass-heavy number. She encourages me as I flail about. I glance over at our group. Mercifully, they’re looking elsewhere. I ask Cook to teach me “a move.” She does, one that ballroom dancers call a “sugar push.” The partners face each other holding hands, and then sort of lunge toward each other stretching out their arms, first to one side, then the other. After a few tries, I look a little more respectable. But only a little.

I can place the exact time I gave up my quest to become an ESTJ: 2 a.m. That’s when Glendenning and I close down Candleroom. Though I did better in his world than I had expected, a few sugar pushes do not an extrovert make.

WHEN I DESCRIBE my forays into extroversion to CPP’s Thompson, he recommends a different approach: “You might make good money going against your personality, but you’ll probably find work exhausting. The best way to get ahead in business is not to fight your innate preferences but to work with them.”

Not long afterwards, I take a personality test called the MBTI Step 1 on CPP’s website. After a short wait, I receive the results via e-mail. After noting that Myers-Briggs still classifies me as an ISTJ, I scroll down to see the top three occupations for my type: nuclear engineer, power plant operator, and environmental engineer. Maybe I can snag the corner office of a nuclear plant.

Brad Cope is the executive editor of Spirit.