Psychologists have discovered that our personalities differ in five major ways: we are to varying degrees introverted or extroverted, neurotic or stable, incurious or open to experience, agreeable or antagonistic, and conscientious or undirected. Most of the 18,000 adjectives for personality traits in an unabridged dictionary can be tied to one of these five dimensions, including such sins and flaws as being aimless, careless, conforming, impatient, narrow, rude, self-pitying, selfish, suspicious, uncooperative, and undependable.
- Steven Pinker, from The Blank Slate
Another Pinker reference. This excerpt from a passage about the heritability of personality characteristics made me want to do some self-evaluation based on those 5 criteria. I'll do a 1 to 5 scale for each. I see extroverted, stable, open to experience, agreeable, and conscientious as the preferable side of each category (although there are some positives of the other sides), so they'll be the 5s.
Introverted/Extroverted: 2
No doubt I'm on the introvert side. I do have some extroverted tendencies, most often when women and/or alcohol are involved. I value solitude, and when I don't get enough time to myself, it wears on me. I don't often initiate social interaction, however, when I find myself in social settings, I'm not uncomfortable and often enjoy myself. I think I'm very similar to my father in this trait.
Neurotic/Stable: 5
Very little can faze me. In fact I can really only think of 2 things that ever have - a tough breakup in college, and Melanie's death. But even at the hardest moment of dealing with those things, I was very conscious of a feeling that these tough times make me feel so alive, and I treasure that feeling. I'm a rock. I pride myself on it.
Incurious/Open to Experience: 2
I used to make fun of myself with the Wolfe about having a very small "bubble." Anything outside my comfort zone was outside the bubble. I'm naturally pretty conservative. Based on my behavior through high school, I'd call myself a 1, but I think that was more the effects of my ultraconservative parents who very set in their ways and rarely try anything new. This is a category where I have made an effort to force myself to change, and I've been steadily trying to expand the bubble, although I believe I'll always have a bubble mindset, as opposed to a 5 who wouldn't feel any bubble at all.
Antagonistic/Agreeable: 3
This category was a challenge for me to evaluate, cause there's a lot of static. On the one hand I don't have a lot of close friends, but on the other hand there are lots of people I'm friendly with. I tend to be fairly intolerant of what I see as weakness of character, but I also tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. I don't like to cause people discomfort, but I do find a strange thrill at uncomfortable situations that are less uncomfortable for me than for people around me.
I think I like to test people. I'm probably the most antagonistic with the people that I think I might like, but I'm not 100% sure yet. With people I know I don't like, I don't even give them the respect of saying or doing anything that might bother them at all, so with them I'm pretty agreeable. And with the people I'm sure I like, any antagonism is more of a game - almost a mocking of the test antagonism for the people in the middle. Actually classifying them as people I "like" or "dislike" isn't really right. I think its more about respect (although I'm starting to learn to respect certain things about almost everyone).
That all was completely incoherent, so I'll say that a I'm in the middle and let's move on...
Undirected/Conscientious: 2
This one was tricky cause I'm not sure exactly what he meant. Undirected to me implies drifting aimlessly without a goal. I can relate to that. But conscientious to me means given a goal, you clearly focus on achieving it. I think that when I have a specific goal, I'm pretty good at driving towards it, but I don't often have one. But this doesn't seem like a well-defined continuum compared to the other categories that weren't hard to interpret.
In the end I'm calling myself a 2 here, because I have no attention span and I too often fall back on my cocky belief that my half-assed efforts are better than most people's full effort. In an office setting where there's very little incentive to go the extra mile its very easy to act that way cause there isn't often any incremental reward for incremental performance, but even the fact that I continue to stay in such a situation is indication of a lack of clear goals. Maybe I'm just young and restless and I'll eventually get better at this. Definitely didn't inhert this from my mother.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (and for some reason my high school senior yearbook quote)
I'm curious how others would classify me on this kind of scale. I'd appreciate anyone's feedback with as much or little explanation as you feel like. And its all in the spirit of self-improvement, so I won't take offense if you say I'm a reclusive jackass hobo. Leave a response below this post, and if you want I'll size you up too, either publically or privately.
Just for fun we should all do Erm's as well:
Introverted/Extroverted: 5
Neurotic/Stable: 3
Incurious/Open to Experience: 4
Antagonistic/Agreeable: 2
Undirected/Conscientious: 5
3 comments:
Interesting system of personality evaluation, sort of the same ideas as the Meyers-Briggs I am used to with a slightly different scope and more sophisticated/detailed.
I/E: I would agree with the rating of a 2. You definitely need to be by yourself after periods of social activity but are at least semi-comfortable in those social situations even with new people. Alcohol probably pushes you to a 3 or even a 4 if a number is assigned in those situations, but overall a 2 is accurate.
N/S: Agree with this one too. Very self-confident in your own values and way of dealing with things. Able to give your opinions without fear of ridicule or feeling defensive. Comfortable with who you are. Alot of this plays into the later A/A category but I will get to that later.
I/O: I would say closer to a 1 than a 2 though you may be changing, albeit slowly. You pretty much know what you like and don't try many new things. Nothing wrong with it, just the way you are.
A/A: 2, Agree with the assessment of challenging/mind-fucking people. Since you are so stable in the way you know you are and the way you think, sometimes you rub people the wrong way. Even in bluntly logical situations (like we discussed Wednesday), if it opposes your plan for doing things, you end up doing your own thing. The aspect of you that is agreeable you alluded to is in mandatory work/social situations or with people you don't really care about. That fact pushes you more towards a 2 than a 3. You are able to approach interactions with a "This is the way I am, deal with it" attitude which may be more applicable to the N/S above but also plays a role here.
U/C: Don't really know how to assess this for the same reasons you mentioned. Overall, I don't think you know what you want to do but once decided, I think you could be passionate about the topic. So I say 3 if anything.
This felt like one of those pre-draft scouting reports. Lots of fragmented sentences with random words that don't make sense.
Lacks blowbyability...Runs like a 3-legged marmot, stomping on layups...Dome is too big, hindrance in jump ball situations, except in outer space...No vertical, slow release, poor decisions with shot selection results in easy swats
Prediction: MoCo C league though that might be a stretch
Feel free to grade me once I get around to writing my personality assessment. Silly
First, I think it may be erroneous to categorize one side of each set of traits as desirable. Someone may be so extroverted that they do not listen to others, open to experiences that are clearly detrimental to them or others, agreeable to the point of never voicing a legitimate counterpoint. It works better for some of the traits than others.
Keep in mind having already read your view of yourself has influenced my response. Having said, I size you up as follows:
Introverted/Extroverted: 2I think you basically nailed this one. You might be a 3 now (borderline at least). You were definitely a low 2 when I met you.
Neurotic/Stable: 5Again, I think you know yourself relatively well here. I will say that when something does manage to bother you, it seems to affect you very strongly (obviously I have only one direct example of this from our shared history, but I think that is sufficient). This relates back to my statement that being on either extreme of any of these sets may not be desirable.
Incurious/Open to Experience: 3I think you are shorting yourself a little here. In my experience, something has to pass some sort of "Sparks' stupidity test" before you are interested in it. You aren't likely to try something that you feel is stupid or trivial. Once you are interested in something, however, you tend to get pretty excited about it.
Antagonistic/Agreeable:3What you said, except I think the people in the middle get it a little rougher than you think they do. Which is why you don't have many close friends (partially), but the ones that you do have tend to enjoy your particular brand.
Undirected/Conscientious:4I too am a bit unclear on what this means, so I'll give you my take. Although at the moment it seems you feel a little bewildered by an overarching long term goal, I think you fall far closer to the driven side than the listless wanderer. I've always seen you as a goal drive person.
My Erm:
Introverted/Extroverted: 5 Attention whore.
Neurotic/Stable: 2 Emotional like a teen girl, crazy scheme fool.
Incurious/Open to Experience: 4
Antagonistic/Agreeable: 4 Erm is an asskisser.
Undirected/Conscientious: 5 I bet he has a list of 100 things he wants to do in his wallet right now.
I'm interested to see how you'd evaluate me. I'll do myself as well, but I don't want to influence your opinion, so I'll wait till I've seen your view.
assess me! i think we might be very similar tho.
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