We often curse other people for being "off their game", and just as often praise others for having a "lovely personality" — but what exactly is personality? Is there really such a thing as a good or bad one? And where does personality even come from?
Personality can be defined, in the broadest terms, as the distinctive pattern of a person's thoughts, emotions and behaviours. These distinctive patterns set out an individual's unique style and shape how that person interacts with their environment. We can never see someone's personality directly, but we can observe their behaviour — and in fact, every action gives us some clue to the personality behind it. After nearly a century of research, psychologists broadly agree that personality has the following characteristics:
Personality is a blend of nature and nurture
Across various twin studies, psychologists have found that the personalities of identical twins (who share all of their genes) are more alike than those of non-identical twins (who share only half). Identical twins, for example, will be equally afraid of thunder and lightning. These twin findings suggest that the similarities in their personalities can be traced back to inherited, innate factors. You may still feel a flicker of doubt, wondering why the twins you know always seem so different in personality. The truth is that differences in personality are also shaped by environmental influences acquired through life — among them, the way parents treat their children, the education children receive, the influence of peers, and even the influence of social norms and culture. Each person's personality, then, can be described as a blend of their parents' genes and the influence of their environment.
Every person's personality is one of a kind
Precisely because everyone's genes are unique, and because the experiences we encounter from childhood differ too, personality is one of a kind — just like our fingerprints. As the research above shows, even twins behave differently, and we can tell them apart by their behaviour or their interests. More interestingly, many professions actually rely on "the uniqueness of personality" to do their work. Plenty of large companies, for instance, ask employees to complete a personality assessment before they start, to learn whether their personality, interests and attitudes suit the role and the company environment. Law enforcement agencies overseas, meanwhile, carry out offender profiling — understanding an offender's distinctive personality, background and methods in order to predict their next move and make more accurate arrests.
Personality is consistent
As the saying goes, "the child of three is the adult of eighty." When you look back on your own life, you may notice that your patterns of behaviour and your style always seem to be part of who you are. You may have been a chronic procrastinator over your homework in junior secondary school, for instance, and still carry a touch of that into your working life today. While you may find you have changed or improved in places, psychologists believe personality is, on the whole, consistent and stable. Research has even found some personality traits to be remarkably consistent — for example, among test-takers in junior secondary (age 13), senior secondary (age 16), and on into adulthood (ages 30–37), traits such as "dependable", "responsible" and "impulse control" all showed extremely high consistency.
Personality drives and shapes our behaviour
Although we can't see personality with our own eyes, we can observe the personality that behaviour reveals. Take a young child who could never resist the lure of sweets, and who, grown up, finds herself unable to resist the urge to splurge during the big Lunar New Year sales. We might sum this up simply as a "poor impulse control" trait that shapes her everyday behaviour. Beyond this, personality also shapes our thoughts, motivations, emotions, social lives, how we relate to a partner, our attitude to work, and so on. So to understand a person's personality completely, you would first have to grasp every part and detail of their life. To complicate matters further, people's personalities and behaviour also shift under the influence of the world around them. Truly understanding someone's personality through and through is, in all likelihood, an impossible task.
Classifying personality —— type theories vs trait theories
When it comes to classifying personality, psychology broadly divides into two major schools of thought —— type theories vs trait theories. Put simply, type theories argue that individuals can be sorted into one of several distinct types, and that these types differ from one another in their nature. This approach to classifying personality can be traced back to Hippocrates (c. 460 – 377 BC) of ancient Greece, who held that there are four basic personality types: melancholic, choleric, sanguine and phlegmatic. Even now, although we regard this four-way classification as outdated, plenty of personality assessment tools rooted in type theories are still in use in society today.
Are the 16 Personalities (MBTI) or the Enneagram psychology?
In today's business world, the 16 Personalities (MBTI) or the Enneagram test that we often hear about will sort people into different categories of employee. The MBTI uses a binary method to classify personality orientations across four different dimensions; someone with an ENTJ type, for example, is defined as "Extraverted, Intuitive, Thinking and Judging". At the same time, the MBTI treats the personality orientations within a single dimension as mutually exclusive — that is, an ENTJ person will never be an ISFP "Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving" type. In reality, we know that an ENTJ person also has an introverted side and uses feeling too; they are simply more extraverted and more inclined to thinking, which doesn't mean they show no introversion or value feeling at all. In light of this, trait theories offer another angle from which to think about personality. Trait theories view each personality trait as sitting on a continuous dimension, with every position along the dimension representing a trait. Put simply, if we quantify the introversion —— extraversion dimension from 1 to 10, then a person whose trait falls at 7 on this dimension is more extraverted than most people, while at the same time most people are more introverted than they are.
The personality inventory widely recognised in psychology —— OCEAN
As it turns out, trait theorists have found an almost limitless number of potential traits that could be used to describe personality. Yet over many years of statistical work and research, psychologists have consistently found that 5 major factors are enough to fully describe a person's personality. They are: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism — and these five major factors are abbreviated to OCEAN. To complicate matters further, each of these major factors can itself be subdivided into 6 minor factors, so there are commonly 30 factors in all that can describe personality. This shows that a person's personality profile can be laid out in fine detail across every point on 30 different dimensions, proving once again that personality is both unique and complex.
In short, you may find the MBTI's categories simple and easy to use, but they fall short of trait theories when it comes to fully capturing the complexity and variability of personality. What's more, many people who take the MBTI report getting different results each time, so even though the MBTI enjoys wide commercial use, psychologists generally believe that analysing personality by traits gives a more accurate and complete reading of a person.
To understand a person's personality, we can start from these five major personality traits. They are Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism — and these 5 major factors can be abbreviated to OCEAN:
Openness to experience
Openness to experience is one of the five major personality traits. It mainly measures how open people are to new things, and how responsive they are to music or art.
Generally speaking, people high in openness to experience tend to show the following characteristics: strong curiosity, creativity, a rich imagination, wide-ranging interests, and so on. By contrast, people lower in openness to experience, or who are "closed to experience", generally tend to prefer tradition and custom, value the practical, and have a narrower range of interests.
In the workplace, people higher in openness to experience are usually the team's "idea person": whether at work or in their free time, they put their imagination and creativity on display and bring fresh stimulation to everyone around them.
Beyond this, psychological research suggests that because people higher in openness to experience accept and enjoy exploring the unfamiliar, they generally perform better than other participants on training courses.
Of course, we should remember that those open to experience and those closed to experience are no different in terms of mental health; the two simply approach the world in different ways, and neither is better or worse than the other.
After all, everyone's personality is one of a kind, and openness to experience is just the tip of the iceberg. To understand personality in full, do stay tuned for what we have coming up.
Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness is one of the five major personality traits. It mainly describes how organised, driven and thorough people are in their goal-directed behaviour.
Generally speaking, people higher in conscientiousness tend to show the following characteristics: they are methodical in their work, careful, self-disciplined, full of perseverance, and they look before they leap. For all these reasons, such employees are generally seen as "diligent and responsible".
People lower in conscientiousness, however, are not necessarily lazy, but by comparison they lack initiative, are less goal-oriented in how they work, tend towards hedonism, and so on.
In the workplace, employees higher in conscientiousness generally share the following traits in common:
- They schedule their work in a diary or on a to-do list
- They strictly follow their superiors' instructions and the company's work rules
- They focus on the task, even noticing the smallest details, such as typos and layout
- They are hardworking and reliable, and colleagues are generally happy to hand work over to them to take care of
- Their workspace is tidy, with documents kept neatly in order
Taking all these work traits together, these employees perform better than others and are also more productive. As a result, they are usually the employees most welcomed by their bosses.
Interestingly, psychological research has found that this phenomenon is widespread across more than twenty countries in Europe and the Americas. What's more, this pattern of strong work performance shows consistency across different industries, which goes to show the pivotal place "conscientiousness" holds in the workplace.
Of course, personality is not divided into good and bad. On the one hand, employees who are extremely high in conscientiousness may become workaholics or perfectionists, both of which can harm their physical and mental health; on the other, while their work is dependable and trustworthy, they may end up lacking other important teamwork traits, such as pioneering behaviour and normal social interaction.
Extraversion
When it comes to personality, the first words we often reach for to describe someone are "extraverted" and "introverted". But does being extraverted really mean you enjoy being around people, and does being introverted really mean you only enjoy time alone?
The renowned psychologist Carl Jung defined "extraversion" and "introversion" as early as the last century. He held that extraversion and introversion are not just about the time we spend around people, but about where a person draws their energy from.
Extraverted people more readily draw their energy from the outside world — by chatting away with all sorts of people, trying out different activities, travelling to different places, and so on. In other words, extraverted people need more external stimulation to feel comfortable.
Introverted people, by contrast, tend to draw their energy from their own inner world — for example, by thinking alone, and by being more passive in social settings. Too much external stimulation, such as a noisy environment, also leaves them feeling uncomfortable.
Can we be both extraverted and introverted?
In fact, because most personality theories today favour "trait theories" — meaning extraversion and introversion belong to the same continuum — a person absolutely can hold both "extraverted" and "introverted" personality traits at the same time. So when we talk about being "extraverted", what we really mean is someone higher in extraversion, while "introverted" refers to someone lower in extraversion. .
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An "extraverted" person will also have moments when they enjoy thinking in solitude, and an "introverted" person can also talk to others non-stop. To describe this, psychologists have defined a trait known as "ambiversion". Put simply, ambiverts stand in the middle of the "extraversion" dimension, and their behaviour shifts with the environment and the situation — sometimes extremely lively, sometimes happily quiet.
Whether at work or in everyday social life, we very easily decide whether someone is "extraverted" or "introverted". From a psychological point of view, this makes it all too easy to overlook the completeness of each person's personality. Personality traits should be seen as part of different personality dimensions; labelling someone "extraverted" or "introverted" is really just a convenience for our everyday communication. .
Agreeableness
Agreeableness refers to how pleasant and accommodating a person's thoughts and behaviour are in social settings.
People higher in agreeableness generally tend to be full of compassion, understanding, helpful and generous. Conversely, people lower in agreeableness generally tend to show the following traits: they put their own interests first, are suspicious, and find it hard to build trust.
Are highly agreeable people the perfect employees?
From the description above, you might assume that highly agreeable people are the well-liked sort, the employees who enjoy being the team's "little helper".
In fact, research suggests that even though they are clearly better than others at teamwork and relationships, their work performance on its own is not all that outstanding. The reason is that they spend too much time dealing with interpersonal problems, such as smoothing over disputes between colleagues.
What's more, people who are too high in agreeableness may not be suited to certain jobs. Can you think of which ones? Some research points to two kinds of work in which the best-performing employees are not particularly high in agreeableness.
Example one: estate agents. The main reason is that they cannot show too much agreeableness to both buyer and seller at once. To earn the most commission, they need to push back on the price at the right moments.
Example two: scientists. Because people who are too agreeable accept others' suggestions and ideas too readily, an outstanding scientist always needs to apply a measure of criticism and reasonable scepticism in order to arrive at better hypotheses and research directions.
Should people low in agreeableness not be hired, then?
Equally, even though people low in agreeableness can come across as "best kept at arm's length", they are not necessarily bad employees through and through. Of course, it's worth noting that people extremely low in agreeableness are associated with certain "dark behaviours", such as manipulation and narcissism.
Neuroticism
Neuroticism, also rendered as emotional instability, refers to how readily a person's emotional state fluctuates in response to changes in the world around them.
Does being emotionally unstable mean you can't work?
People high in neuroticism are generally more prone to psychological distress, and more inclined to feel negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, anger and depression. When something negative happens — anything from being criticised by others to a career setback — they find it harder than others to adapt to, control and regulate their emotions.
It sounds as though people high in neuroticism would run into a great many difficulties in life and at work. In fact, psychological research reports that their work performance is generally weaker than others', and that they are also more likely to feel stress at work, even developing mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression.
Can emotional instability be addressed?
As we keep pointing out, there is no such thing as a good or bad personality to begin with. Like any other personality trait, emotional instability is simply a blend of our innate make-up and acquired environmental factors. We shouldn't blame ourselves for our own emotional instability.
As long as you first understand yourself, then take suitable advice and training, anyone can perform well at work. For people high in neuroticism, psychologists have found that changing the following three workplace stressors — working alone, a heavy workload, and an unhealthy work environment (such as a lack of personal space) — can also help them reduce their mood swings and work as normal.
Showing no emotion at all is just as puzzling
Some people are able to deliberately hide their emotions at work — but does that make it a healthy thing to do? People low in neuroticism rarely reveal their emotions, which can leave those around them feeling uneasy.
If a boss rarely lets their mood show on their face, their subordinates can only tread carefully, no doubt working in a state of constant apprehension.
Want to understand yourself on a deeper level? MindForest — the self-discovery app that brings together psychology and AI helps you explore your inner world and manage your emotions, anytime and anywhere.
There is no "best" or "worst" personality, only one that does or doesn't suit the job
To sum up, whatever the personality trait, it is very hard to declare anything about a person's work performance based on whether they score high or low. Besides, personality is part of who a person is to begin with; we don't need to go out of our way to change it.
Instead, by understanding our own character we can find the ways of working and the jobs that suit us, so that we can throw ourselves into our work, give full rein to our talents, and show our truest selves.
The content of this article is provided by Expivotal Work Matters | Workplace Psychology – to learn more about workplace psychology, please click the link.
Edited, compiled and published by TreeholeHK — an all-round psychology training company.
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