Personality – try existing in a world without it

Ahhhh….Personality! I know therefore I am…..or something like that. There’s nothing as reassuring as the feeling that comes with knowing who you are. You’ve spent lots of time sculpting your physique and now you have worked out who you are mentally. Well not quite because just as someone who spends their life going to and from the gym, you don’t suddenly reach a point one day of working out who you are, personality-wise, because the reality is a little known secret – our personalities are not fixed.

Yes, you’ve done a million personality tests and they tell you same thing. However, there was that night you lost your cool and threw blue-moulded cheese at the TV because just as you settled down to see Gogglebox after waiting excitedly all day to see it, suddenly your least favourite sister calls around at same time with her four noisy kids. Doing a personality test right there and then might tell you something a little different!

However, that feeling that comes with a sense of who you are, how you function, how you react in certain situations, and what values, principles and beliefs you have does take a lot of work. Knowing how you are or at least how you perceive yourself to be, and more importantly, how you believe others perceive you to be is reassuring, comforting, soothing and offers more than an air of confidence.

The reality is of course, that whilst we might be consistent, most of the time, personality isn’t fixed. Some would go as far as saying we have multiple personalities that show themselves according to the situation.

I think it is fair to say that there are elements of your personality that are consistent. However, if you meet friends in a social setting for example – and you are the ‘life of the party,’ even if it’s just purely coincidental in that moment, there’s a good chance you’ll fulfil that expectation again, even if you are actually relatively quiet most of the time. Thus the question of whether or not you having certain personality traits, or certain personality traits with your friends only, or certain personality traits with your friends only in a social setting, arise.

Over the years, decades even, a plethora of studies and experiments including the development and use of personality tests has enabled a variety of researchers to test hypothesises about personality types.

I remember coming across a book only recently in Waterstones in Belfast, entitled (if I remember correctly) How Personality Tests Took Over The World, or at least something similar. It charted the rise of tests from that which was first developed by Myers and Briggs, whom to my surprise were actually a mother and daughter team! My next surprise was that they came not from an academic or research background but if I remember correctly I think from the caring profession.

Their efforts spawned a whole generation of personality-type tests thereafter and so we have, I suppose, become a little bit obsessed with personality types in order to allow us to understand humans more, and to also allow us, for example, to pick the best candidate for the job. Even I have experienced this directly – feedback of the kind that focused not on your ability to do the job but whether ‘you fit the organisation’ – this I have experienced on at least one occasion, several if truth be told.

There is broad agreement that there are five main personality traits – Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness, Extroversion and Neuroticism. That said, there is a book on my shelf at home entitled, The Ten Types of Human (which I am looking forward to reading very much) that might just throw that broad consensus out of the window.

As mentioned already, personalities are not fixed, not even on a geographical basis with differences across regions and countries. Much of the what we do is for a variety of reasons, not because it’s good or bad (although there are actions of course that are both good and bad) but simply because we think and operate in different ways. Personalities have two major traits – character and temperament – which of course is interesting to contemplate how these might manifest across the five main personality types.

And as one of the five main personality types is extroversion, it’s interesting to consider where introverts ‘fit’ in all of this. In Susan Cain’s excellent book, Quiet, she examines the introverted personality but notes that extroversion has dominated common discourse for so long that to be anything but extrovert has been viewed as being odd or different and thus having almost nothing meaningful to contribute to society. As is pointed out in her book, being the extrovert might mean having many friends, it does not necessarily make you a good friend.

An entire industry has been built up around personality, be that the examination of personality type through various tests, or countless books about various aspects of personality type to such an extent that even the term, ‘Cult of Personality’ has come to very much figure in everyday language. Designed to distinguish between those who are respected and admired for their contribution rather than those who are noted for the lure of their personality, it is used in an almost dismissive way. For example, over the last few years many British political commentators spoke of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in this way, with reference to Corbynism, Corbynites and Corbynistas - almost equating his supporters to that of belonging to a cult, thus questioning his integrity or his ability to hold the highest office in the land.

Instead, Britain chose to elect someone with an even bigger personality to the highest office in the land (to replace someone arguably who was devoid of personality), a personality that has oft been accused of rather dubious behaviour of varying degrees. Time will tell if voters really lent Boris Johnson their vote to ‘Get Brexit Done’ but the bigger personality, most certainly the more extrovert of the two, was unanimously elected to lead the UK.

Big personality does not always equate to the best candidate though, but at least understanding the nuances of different personalities is essential.