Personality describes patterns of behavior, cognition, and emotions which stay relatively consistent for a person over long periods of time. Although everyone might feel or behave differently based on situational variables, our personalities can be characterized by unique psychological themes that can change or be intentionally shaped.
A simple way to describe personality is that it's how you interpret information, what your internal reaction is, and what actions you take in response.
Example: If you attend a party where you don't know anyone, your personality determines your experience. Are you someone who keeps to yourself and feels intimidated by so many new people? Are you someone who gets excited and moves around the room meeting everyone? Are you someone who camps out by the food and talks to people as they come around you, someone who tends to find someone to lock in with for a deeper conversation, someone who has little interest in talking but you’ll dance with anyone, or do you act a different way entirely?
Two different people could be in an identical environment and have very different experiences; the way that we interpret information from that circumstance, the way that we internally react to it, and the way that we end up acting determines our personality.
There are many different approaches to understanding and studying personality, so the descriptive terms can vary widely depending on the field or theoretical approach. You might hear terms like traits, domains, schemas, frameworks, narratives, organizations, temperaments, drives, adaptations, or others! It's important to note that people are endlessly complex, so any description of them will always be an oversimplification.
If personality is “who you are” then identity is “who you think you are.”
When you are at a party where you don’t know anyone, you may feel excited about meeting people, but you don’t think to yourself “I am a people person and I love meeting new people, so I will now talk to all of these people.” The latter is a descriptor of your identity, whereas personality is the way you tend to interpret, react, and behave.
Personality is shaped through our experiences. Ideally, our interactions with our parents help shape our personality in a positive way. The goal of parenting is largely to help children adopt their own adapted personality characteristics for interpreting, reacting, and acting in life.
Imagine you are a teenager faced with the challenge of asking your crush to go on a date and hearing “I’m not looking to date right now.” You might:
A parent who is aware of this situation could use their own developed personality to help you to...
While everyone has an intrinsic personality, it is possible to learn different ways to think and behave.
All of these traits can be worked on to move them into more constructive ways of interpreting, thinking, and behaving.
Don’t worry about having the right personality or having the wrong personality. Instead, think about your personality and find the pathways toward change which are best-suited to your strengths.
Don’t be cringe: It's possible to shape your own personality, but careful not to fall into the trap of attaching identity (ego) to your personality in the process.
Someone might have great personal traits like humility or generosity — but it's very different to identify as "someone who is humble or generous" as opposed to simply having a personality which includes those qualities. Likewise, enjoying gaming could be an aspect of your personality, but constantly telling people about how you are a gamer, expressing what games a "real gamer" like you plays, and/or mentioning how good you are at gaming conflates identity with personality and quickly becomes cringe.
Remember: personality is not identity.
If you respect parts of someone else's personality—whether this is a patient mentor, a charismatic YouTuber, or an anime character who is incredibly loyal—it’s natural and often positive to want to embody those traits yourself.
This is a natural part of being human, as well as why peer pressure is effective.
To change your personality, work on changing your interpretations, internal reactions, and actions and remember: personality is not the same thing as identity.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a useful descriptive personality assessment developed and studied by the Myers-Briggs Research Institute. However, it is a proprietary model and therefore has not been independently validated.
MBTI is based on Ayurveda — Myers-Briggs was based on the work of Carl Jung, who was heavily informed by Ayurveda.
While MBTI can be a useful lens to understand behavior, it's not a great way to make predictions about what you'll do or who you'll be. However, it can be used to plan and structure your life to accommodate strengths and weaknesses.
The Big 5 is the most validated framework for personality. This model states that most people’s personalities can be placed on five different axes:
Avoid placing moral judgments on your Big 5 traits. Neuroticism is not always a bad trait, as worrying about future consequences is an adaptive quality which can help you succeed. Those who are too low in neuroticism may become people who sit around instead of taking action. Similarly, high conscientious is not necessarily better than low conscientiousness, but different advantages and disadvantages may arise. Western society, for instance, tends to reward those with high conscientiousness.
Whatever personality classification tool you use, start by understanding what it says about you as you are right now. Then, you can use this to develop a strategy to adapt the personality traits you desire. Play to your own unique strengths.