We like to think of ourselves as having relatively fixed character traits, but that's not actually true. For example, I act like an extrovert when giving talks. I act up, I'm not nervous at all - indeed, I get a lot of energy from an audience, and the bigger the better. But people who know me in person usually tag me as an introvert: I don't speak all that much in small groups, and I find working closely with people (especially more than one person) draining.
I am not (just) a weirdo. There was a study in 1929 that looked at boys at a boys school. Their teachers classified introversion/extroversion by watching their behavior. For example, they looked at who played alone and who didn't. They looked at who talked the most and least at the dinner table. And so on.
They found knowing one boy acted extroverted in the sandbox had almost no value when predicting his behavior at the dinner table. (You did know that a boy who acted one way in one place today would probably act the same way tomorrow, but you couldn't extrapolate to new situations.)
The effect of environment has repeatedly been shown to be huge. In one study, researchers randomly put dimes in pay phone coin-return slots, so some people who checked the slots found a dime and some didn't. (The experiment was in the early 70's, so a dime was worth about $1.50 in today's money.) Successful or not, the people who checked the slot would soon run across a woman carrying a bunch of file folders, and she would drop them as they came near. Whether or not they helped pick up the folders depended enormously on whether they'd found a dime. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but it was something like 17/20 of dime-finders helped, but only 1/20 non-finders did.
Another example: seminary students were given something to do in building 1, then sent to building 2 to have a discussion on - I think - the story of the Good Samaritan. Along the way, they'd discover someone by the path in obvious distress. Whether they stopped to help him was highly dependent on whether, before leaving, they were told they had plenty of time, looked to be right on time, or were running a little late.
Seminary students. Rehearsing talking points about the parable of the Good Samaritan. Ignoring the stranger by the side of the road.
My conclusion is that, while there may be core character traits, they are so overwhelmed by the environment that worrying about them has no ROI. Instead, you should worry about your environment, about arranging it so that it pushes you in the direction you'd like to go. Also, you need to train yourself to get automatically sensitive to cues from your environment.
That was the point of the tango demo. Tango is an extremely improvised dance (mostly by the leader). At any moment, the leader has several moves he (usually) can make. Followers who try to anticipate moves don't fare well: too many possibilities, not enough time. Instead, they have to learn to "let the leader move you" - to, as I put it, adopt a "stance of reaction". (The leader also has to learn to signal the move clearly, not tentatively.)
Generally, I've been on a "the rational part of your brain is too expensive and error-prone, so train up the rest of it" kick for several years now. This is not super-compatible with "hammock-based development", which seems more geared toward "brains in a box" than embodied/social humans.
Good book on that, about structures in environment that support and favor some choices over others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)