Personality Flashcards
Personality is all about who you are. Who are you? Why are you different from your friends? Why do different people behave differently? You should think of personality as the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others.
There are a number of ways to measure one’s personality. But I am not going to introduce them all. One of the best and well-known approaches is “The Big Five Factors”, representing five dimensions of personality, which encompasses (180) most of the significant variations (181) in human personality. In other words, these will determine WHO YOU ARE based on five factors.
Here are the BIG FIVE you have to remember.
- Extraversion (182) - are you sociable or quiet?
- Agreeableness (183) - are you warm/welcoming or cold?
- Conscientiousness (184) - are you trusting and reliable or not?
- Emotional Stability (185) - are you calm or anxious?
- Openness to experience (186) - are you more open or conservative?
These are the big five categories or dimensions. They are independent of one another. If you can answer definitely these five questions. You basically know who you are. Let me explain it to you.
If you are very sociable, meaning you like to be surrounded by your friends. You have high extraversion or you are extrovert. But when it comes to arguing, you tend to disagree with others rather than agree with them to make them happy. This suggests that you have low agreeableness OR you are not agreeable. When it comes to working and studying, you are very serious and never meet a deadline, people can place trust on you. This means that you have a high level of conscientiousness or you are very conscientious. You consider yourself a calm person. You are not afraid of public speaking and well able to handle stress. This suggests that you have a pretty high level of emotional stability. But you don’t like to travel or be creative. You tend to stick to the traditional values and play it safe all the time. What does it mean? It means you have a low level of openness to experience. Now are you more clear about this five factor model?
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
- Emotional stability
- Openness to experience.
Now look at your best friend or anyone that comes to your mind. You can now assess them based on these five dimensions.
- Is she extrovert or introvert? => YES/NO
- In most cases, does she tend to agree or disagree with people? => YES/NO
- Can you rely on her in doing her job? Does she usually arrive late at work or school? Does she usually meet deadline? etc.
- Is she calm or anxious most of the time?
- Does she like new things or new experience?
Again you can think of millions of behavioral questions. But they all revolve around ONLY 5
dimensions I just introduced you. Now let’s go through one of each so you can gain a good insight.
EXTRAVERSION-INTROVERSION
Extraversion is a relatively strong predictor of leadership in groups; extraverts are more socially dominant (187), “take charge” sorts of people, and they are generally more assertive (188) than introverts. One downside is that extraverts are more impulsive (189) than introverts; Extroverted people are more sociable, gregarious (190), outgoing, friendly, affable (191) and easy to talk to.
Introverted people are more quite, reserved, uncommunicative. Having a high level of introversion does not necessarily implies it’s bad. Introverted people can be likeable just as extroverted because they tend to listen more and less emotionally expressive (192).
AGREEABLENESS
Agreeableness is quite high in collectivistic cultures like Vietnam, China or Japan. Japanese people tend to agree almost all the time. Their goal is to maintain the harmony of the group rather than disrupt them. Americans, on the other hand, are more frank and expressive in their opinions. If they disagree, they will disagree openly. Overall, Americans have lower levels of agreeableness than the Japanese counterparts.
That explains why Japanese are very likeable and more obedient to order, conforming to social norms and compliant to law (lowest crime rate in the world). Sometimes, being agreeable is good to get what you want. Like you agree with your boss anyway to make him like you although you might disagree. Sometimes, being a disagreeable jerk is good for important project. You can’t just say “YES, It’s good it’s true” all the time. You have to disagree and point out the mistakes to make things better. Imagine what would happen if everyone agrees to a shitty idea, like destroying the world, just to keep the group in harmony?
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
This is so important and key to success. People with a higher level of conscientiousness are more hard-working, persistent, reliable, selfdisciplined, trusting, and achievement-oriented. Interestingly, conscientious people live longer because they take better care of themselves (they eat better and exercise more) and engage in fewer risky behaviors like smoking, drinking and drugs, and risky sexual or driving behavior.
Still, probably because they’re so organized and structured, conscientious people don’t adapt as well to changing contexts. They are generally performance oriented and have more trouble learning complex skills early in the training process because their focus is on performing well rather than on learning. Finally, they are often less creative than less conscientious people, especially artistically. All in all, I, myself, am in favor of having high level of conscientiousness.
Conscientious: Hard-working, reliable, trusting, achievementoriented, self-disciplined, dedicated
assertive: self-confident
gregrarious: sociable, outgoing
affable: friendl, easy to talk to
impulsive: pushy (without thinking)
emotional expressive: say exactly what you think
ambiguity : unclearness, uncertainty
EMOTIONAL STABILITY
Emotional stability is most strongly related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and low stress levels. This is probably true because high scorers are more likely to be positive and optimistic and experience fewer negative emotions. They are happier than those who score low. If you tend to focus on the problems and stress that make you nervous, let’s say you have a presentation tomorrow, and you feel nervous rather than excited. You probably are a low scorer of this dimension.
OPENNESS TO EXPERIENCE
Individuals who score high on openness to experience are more creative in science and art than those who score low. Of course you may love traveling but that is not an indication of a high level of openness to experience. Why? Who doesn’t love traveling? But how you travel and what kind of travel you are going to are much better indicators. If you score high on this dimension, you are more comfortable of ambiguity (193), change and uncertain and you are more adaptable to changing contexts.
From now on, almost all personality traits that you see can be put under one of these categories or dimensions. There are a few more special ones.
MACHIAVELLIAN (adj) (194)
If you are machiavellian, you can do ANYTHING to get ahead or to get what you want, even deceit, lying or faking. Anything. You are very pragmatic (195). You can play on other people’s emotions to get what you want. You have your own tactics to manipulate others. You can say you are dangerous if you have high Mach. If you consider yourself you have high Mach (or you are machiavellian), you can almost work in any jobs. The best position might be more like negotiation-related.
NARCISSISTIC (196).
If I am not wrong, you heard of this word before. If someone is a narcissist, he or she wants to be the center of attention or looks at the mirror a lot. He or she has a strong sense of self-importance (197), requires excessive admiration, has a sense of entitlement (198), and is arrogant. Evidence suggests that narcissists are more charismatic (199) and thus more likely to emerge as leaders, and they may even display better psychological health. Despite having some advantages, most evidence suggests that narcissism is undesirable. Because narcissists often want to gain the admiration of others and receive affirmation of their superiority, they tend to “talk down” to those who threaten them, treating others as if they were inferior (200). Narcissists also tend to be selfish and exploitive and believe others exist for their benefit.
MACHIAVELLIAN (adj) (194)
If you are machiavellian, you can do ANYTHING to get ahead or to get what you want, even deceit, lying or faking. Anything. You are very pragmatic (195). You can play on other people’s emotions to get what you want. You have your own tactics to manipulate others. You can say you are dangerous if you have high Mach. If you consider yourself you have high Mach (or you are machiavellian), you can almost work in any jobs. The best position might be more like negotiation-related.
NARCISSISTIC (196).
If I am not wrong, you heard of this word before. If someone is a narcissist, he or she wants to be the center of attention or looks at the mirror a lot. He or she has a strong sense of self-importance (197), requires excessive admiration, has a sense of entitlement (198), and is arrogant. Evidence suggests that narcissists are more charismatic (199) and thus more likely to emerge as leaders, and they may even display better psychological health. Despite having some advantages, most evidence suggests that narcissism is undesirable. Because narcissists often want to gain the admiration of others and receive affirmation of their superiority, they tend to “talk down” to those who threaten them, treating others as if they were inferior (200). Narcissists also tend to be selfish and exploitive and believe others exist for their benefit.
pragmatic: very very realistic
charismatic: very charming and magnetic
entitlement: having the rights to recieve (things) from others
inferior (to): the oppositite of superior to
