In this book, Nettle begins with an overview of how the ‘Big Five’ (extraversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness, openness to experience) were determined and describes how different behavioral people have different characteristics. One of the main points Nettle addresses is the difference within characteristics that make a single human being different from the other. He also points the theory of how these traits have evolved over time. From my particular interest is the question of why population? Why aren’t we all roughly the same? According to Nettle, the answer is that there is not a single optimum personality that it is always beneficial to have.
The heart of the book is five chapters that investigate each trait of the ‘Big Five’. Each term is described in how it relates to the brain’s mechanism or function that it expresses. For example, people that characterize themselves high in extraversion are usually energized and enjoy being social. Professors, politicians, and entrepreneurs are all considered to be extrovert people. In the other hand, neurotic people tend to experience feelings such as guilt, panic, anger, sadness, and sometimes depression. Nettle also defines conscientiousness as the state of being comprehensive, careful, or cautious. This trait also implies the desire to seek perfection when doing tasks. Agreeableness refers to individuals whose concerns are associated with cooperation and social harmony. These individuals are often identified as friendly, considerate, generous, and kind when it comes to interacting with others. Lastly, openness to experience applies to the drive of exploring new adventures, as well as seeking to engage in new challenges. People who are high on openness to experience ...
... middle of paper ...
...luences include learned responses, unconscious thought processes, and expectations and interpretation, social-cultural influences are made of childhood experiences, influence of the situation, cultural expectations, and social support. Again, this relates back to Freud’s theory of a developing personality, stating that there are several components and influences that help shape one’s unique personality.
In the last chapter of the book, Nettle explains that if these traits are constantly applied to our life, we are capable of changing our lives more than we can imagine. Yet, there are several shifts that happen during a lifespan. As we grow and mature, conscientiousness and agreeableness tend to increase within our personality, while neuroticism, openness, and extraversion decrease. This reflects changes from the desire of achieving goals to relations with others.
Applied Neuropsychology: Adult, 21(2), 1-8. Paunonen, S., & Ashton, M. (2001). Big five factors and facets and the prediction of behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(1), 524-539. Pittenger, D. (2005).
These different traits of personality have an impact on each individuals’ lives and also how they behave. For instance, according to the text, “The neurotic person might be anxious a lot, but this might protect her from being a knucklehead who chases tornadoes.” (Twenge & Campbell, 2016) Each trait can have a negative effect or a positive effect. Personality can be shaped by genetics and the environment. The environment plays a big role in influencing who you are and how you may behave. Which brings us to the movie I Heart Huckabees written by David O. Russell. It talks about existentialism, which is a type of philosophical theory that articulates the existence of an individual as having free will. Free will is the idea that you go about life, choosing your course of action freely instead of living by a code or believing that God has placed you in this universe with a purpose. Free will sort of demonstrate how individuals will react differently from one another in the same situation. The movie I heart Huckabees is about a guy named Albert Markovski. Albert seeks help from two existential detectives, Bernard and Vivian Jaffe, in order to figure out why he has run into the same stranger 3
To humans, life appears to be a dynamic, unpredictable environment to which diversity they react and behave in a certain particular way best suiting to their respective preferences introducing the notion of personality; Psychologists, over time, after various studies, have come along with a series of standardized characteristics that tend to be the mostly manifested while examining personalities and finally came up with the popularly known as The Big Five Theory. On this paper I will get into a description of myself according this theory’s 5 aspects which are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, agreeableness and Neuroticism;
These scales are commonly alternatively represented by the OCEAN acronym Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion/Introversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. The Big Five structure captures, at a broad level of abstraction, commonalities among most of the existing systems of personality description, and provides an integrative descriptive model for personality research. (Oliver& Sanjay 1999)
Klimstra et al. (2009), explains how certain traits may hinder or benefit lifespan development “Extraversion refers to dominance and activity in interpersonal situations; Agreeableness refers to the willingness to maintain positive and reciprocal relationships with others; Conscientiousness refers to organizational and motivational aspects of a person’s behavior; Emotional Stability indicates the ability to deal effectively with negative emotions; and Openness to Experience refers to how a person deals with new information at a personal and experiential level”. Extraversion is seen in the beginning; Cady is a very introvert person when she eats lunch by herself. Agreeableness is portrayed when she begins to agree to do anything to fit in and gain acceptance. Conscientiousness, she had a very good conscientious from starting off as a good daughter, student, and friend but she begins to lose sight of it all. However, gains recognition of her conscientiousness, self-identity, and overall self-worth in the end. Her emotional stability is weak because she gives in to her social norms that change her character. Cady’s openness to experience is high because she is not shy to new experiences out of the ordinary. Her experiences throughout the film hindered and benefited her moral character and her development. However, she gained a whole new perspective from her experience with
A person’s personality has been the subject of psychological scrutiny for many years. Psychologists have drawn up several theories in an attempt to accurately predict and determine one’s personality. Foremost amongst these, is the “Big Five Trait Theory” which stemmed from Raymond B. Cattell’s theory.
A Parallel Analysis and SPSS Component Analysis was also conducted. Five items were then taken from each of the Five IPIP (Goldberg, 1993) scales “(Extraversion, Neuroticism, Openness, Agreeableness & Conscientiousness)”;
Personality is massive part of an individual’s identity. Our personalities dictate our patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. An individual’s personality exposes them to predispositions and habits that influence their actions and lives. Early on, personality assessments consisted of physical features ranging from head shape and facial characteristics to body type. In today’s world, personality assessments are mainly based around traits. Traits are simply descriptions of one’s habitual patterns of behavior, thought and emotion. The most popular personality assessment is the Five-Factor Model, also known as The Big Five. This model allows us to describe people based on the five main traits/dimensions. These traits are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Each of these five traits measures a different aspect of one’s personality. Extraversion is based on one’s level of engagement with the world,
The Big Five personality factors are the modern way of describing someone’s feelings, actions, and traits. This new factor map, improving Hans and Sybil Eysenck’s two-dimensional map which consisted of a stable/unstable axis and an introverted/extroverted axis, has five different factors. They are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism and everyone can be described using these five criteria. This paper will discuss and interpret my results from a Big Five personality test including how accurate I believe it is and how this might change in the future.
Confucius said that by personality, human beings are born with comparatively the same faculties and needs. Apparently there are exemptions at either tremendous and of the continuum, but in common human beings are all very comparable at birth. Based upon the actions of human beings, the feedback that humans receive in reaction and change in their behavior in response to the feedback, they each begin to undertake a different pathway. This deed feedback change process shapes the experiences of humans, creating their unique personal lives (Van and Bryan 11). In the illustration above, Confucius reveals that what humans have in common by personality is their potential for devel...
The openness to experience trait refers to someone who is active in intellectual activities and is correlated with Typical Intellectual Engagement (Goff & Ackerman, 1992). Extraversion’s relationship to academic performance can be seen in two ways because it can give someone that is introvert a greater ability to consolidate learning, less distractibility, and they create better study habits than someone that is extravert who under-performs because of their social abilities, distractions, and impulsiveness. Neuroticism has a more negative correlation with academic performance because people are not able to handle stress and anxiety, which effects their performance. Some people are able to work better under stress but most people have a hard time focusing while making a test or an exam. Conscientiousness is also seen as the will to achieve (Digman, 1989), which results in very successful education measures. Last, agreeableness is focused on friendliness, social conformity, and love from and with the people around you. The last two personality traits from the Big Five have most of the time a positive effect on academic performance because people feel good in their skin when they are loved, which increases their willingness to achieve their academic goals. According to the study of Cost &McCrae (1992) the result of these Big Five traits is that they can be very helpful to find out if someone’s personality is most likely to result in academic success or failure. This means that each of the Big Five personality traits has their own influence on academic
The Five-Factor Model of Personality is a system used in order to describe an individual’s personality traits. By requiring said individual to answer a series of questions, this test is able to decipher the traits that are most likely evident within their life. The Five-Factor Model of Personality test gives the test subject a series of situational options. Using the subject’s responses, psychologist match the answers to the personality in which best relates. A highly accurate description of ones’ personality can be easily configured by using the Five-Factor Model of Personality by testing either high or low in the following areas; openness to experience, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
During an individual’s progression from childhood into adolescence researchers suggest that agreeableness and conscientiousness increased, while extraversion, neuroticism, and openness dropped (Srivastava, John, Gosling, and Potter, 2003). The fall in extraversion, neuroticism, and openness can be due to an individual’s increased responsibilities and time constraint. Individuals later in life tend to be more mature and experienced with emotional feelings and are able handle themselves well in emotional settings, hence getting a low score on
Our personalities are what distinguish us from each other beyond our appearance; without them, we would all behave and react in the same way. Personality is the reason we are outgoing or introverted, persistent or blaze, and anxious or calm. We each have different levels of these competing characteristics that make us unique. But why are personalities so varied? Personality is determined by an array of factors from genetic and biological to the personal experiences and decisions we have faced from the day we are born. The complexity of our personalities cannot be simply explained, and for this reason there exists many different theories of how it’s developed and personality is still deeply under study. I went into this subject with an open-mind
Personality is the expression of a person’s traits according to ones feelings, mentality and behavior. It involves understanding individuals’ traits such as withdrawal and willpower and how various parts of an individual link together to form personality. Personality expresses itself from within an individual and is comparatively regular throughout in an individual’s life. Different people have different personalities dependent on factors such as environment and genetic composition. Our personality is dependent on the success or failure of our development in the eight stages of life. This is proposed by Erik Erikson. Success in the development stages lead to virtues while the failure leads to malignancies.