Types Of Personality

Personality is a “dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations (Americcan Psychological Association, 2014).” Psychologists have been trying to understand the complexity of personality and how it affects us for many years. One portion of this understanding is gaging what traits are associated with what personality types. In other words, defining the many types of personalities there are. The human mind is not so easily generalized but many psychologist agree to set broad categories on personality. This is evident in the types of personality tests commonly taken. Two of these tests are the Big Five and the MBTI, both of which I took.
The Big Five is system of testing personality by fitting the person’s traits to a system of categories. The five categories are extroversion versus introversion, neuroticism versus emotional stability, agreeableness versus antagonism, conscientiousness versus impulsiveness, and openness to experience versus resistance to new experience. Extroversion versus introversion measures the social aspect of personality. Extroversion on the extreme is when a person totally depends on social contact while introversion is where a person totally avoids it. Neuroticism versus emotional stability measures a person’s natural outlook on life. A neurotic person suffers from anxiety, depression, and guilt while the emotionally stable person is able to experience a variety of emotions that appropriately fit the situation. The third factor is agreeableness versus antagonism. Agreeableness is simply how prone the individual is to accept information in cooperation. Too much agreeableness leads to gullibilit...

... middle of paper ...

...y, the strongest in fact, it helps to simplify the results of the test to think of it as a type.
Both the MBTI and the Big Five were designed to organize many different types of personalities into more general models or types. Though the two tests do cover the majority of personality traits, they are not perfect. One of the purposes of personality typing is understand personality disorders. After establishing a norm for personality, you can examine oddities such as obsessive compulsive disorder or bipolar disorder. Many of these disorders can’t be explained using MBTI or the Big Five (Thalmayer, 2011). Through more research, physiologists hope to find a model for personality even though there is a possibility that this will never occur. There may be too many factors to account for, when considering personality, to build a model that covers absolutely everything.