Many psychology professionals define personality as the way people behave, feel or think. They refer to the character as the factors that define the person. Different psychologists have come up with various methods of understanding a person’s character. The best way for someone to know his or her personality type and the trait is by taking different personality tests that were developed by various psychologists. Further research shows that people acquire different personality traits and types from birth (Burger, 2010). On the same note, certain kinds of personality traits persist or become dominant while another face out or become suppressed, as a person grows older. This paper is an analysis of my personality traits in which I examine my character and explain the one that has persisted since childhood as well as explain those that have become dominant over time.
The retrospective analysis of my personality shows that three traits have been nurtured over time. These traits include agreeableness, openness, and extraversion (Burger, 2010). My personal study reveals that I have been able to become more open, agreeable, and an extrovert in my old age. My personal analysis reveals that as I grew up, I became more open to experiences, suggestions’ and accept how different people around me operate. I have come to accept and open up to changes as well.
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On the same note, I have also become more agreeable and seem to consider different factors even if they do not resonate with my beliefs. I have also become more extroverted and outspoken based on my part-time job that provides leadership opportunity and my academic studies that require teamwork and collaboration with other students (Burger, 2010). On the contrary, some characteristics of my personality such as neurotics and conscientiousness have remained moderately suppressed as I grew up. This is because I decide to be mindful of my moral standing and decide to create inner peace ad achieve harmony with the people in my surrounding.
In retrospect, I can say that nurture has played an important role in shaping my personality traits. For example, when I was growing, I was more of an introvert who interacted less with other peers. However, when I went to high school, I realized that I had to be more open to people suggestions and accept the fact that things will not always go, as I want them. I also became agreeable and more approachable as I learnt that I had to work with other people in teams to achieve different things in life. On the same note, I became more open to suggestions from other people and their opinion seemed to matter to me more than they did when I was young.
Similarly, I learned to be neurotic and conscious about how I approach and deal with people of different kinds. I learned to change my personality and deal with people in various ways by interacting with various types of individuals. The life I lived, the school I attended, the friends I had as well as my family members played a major role in nurturing my personality traits. On the same note, the environment in which I grew up in such as home, school, and workplaces also played a significant role in nurturing my personality. Nurture also played a significant role in shaping my conscientious character. For example, I learnt not to make promises that I could never keep. However, once I made a promise, I ensured that I kept in. On the other hand, nature played a major role in shaping my neurotic behavior. I learned that people do not think or act in the same way. Therefore, I learnt to understand and accommodate others as per given circumstances.
It is commonplace for people to have different biases while analyzing their personality. In that sense, I can report that one of the biases that affect retrospective character analysis has to do with memory (Burger, 2010). For example, implicit, selective, or distorted memories of past event may change the analysis. For example, people tend to suppress the bad memories of the things they did or happened to them; if such memory is continuously suppressed then it becomes erased completely. Similarly, the need to distort or reconstruct the memories of and things that happened to a person also lead to the wrong recollection of such memories.
On the same note, implicit memories, which refer to unconsciously stored memories, may also affect how a person gives an account of their personality traits. Therefore, if I relied on these memory issues, I would not have been able to give an accurate account or my personality. Another bias refers to misinformation that makes people perceive things that have happened differently, and this may affect the retrospective analysis of personality. Similarly, factors such intelligence quotient and IQ, which deals with a person’s ability to think properly, respond using reality based emotions and reason, also affects retroactive analysis (Burger, 2010).
The science of psychology places more emphasis on results obtained through scientific studies than on personal experiences because scientific studies provide psychologists with the ability to study and observe the behavior, reaction, and other aspects of the person as opposed to personal experiences, which do not provide results from experiences. On the same note, scientific studies look at different personal characteristics and attributes that personal experiences cannot unearth.
Reference
Burger, J. (2010). P ersonality. Belmont : Cengage Learning.
