Hey, my name is Theodore, this is Practical Psychology, and my mission is to help you improve yourself by learning how your brain works. So if I accomplish that, go ahead and leave a like, and if I don't, leave a comment so that I might be able to improve these videos. Hope you enjoy this video.
Have you ever taken a personality quiz? The results might tell you that you're the center of attention, or maybe something like you're an ENTJ. People describe personalities in different ways, and scientists still have a lot of questions about how our personalities actually influence our actions, and that make us who we are.
If you've ever been curious about what this word, personality, really means, well get comfortable. In this series, we're going to be talking about personality. So first off, what is personality?
Now, there are a ton of ways to define personality. In fact, top personality psychologist Feist and Feist says this, although no single definition is acceptable to all personality theorists, we can say that personality is a pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person's behavior. So let's zoom in.
and focus on one word here, traits. You need to know this word in and out when it comes to personality psychology. It's the center. Traits are unique characteristics that influence our behavior.
These characteristics typically set us apart from other people. For example, you might describe yourself as a respectful person or a genuine person. These are two examples of personality traits.
Now, before we talk about the big five personality traits, it's important to remember that traits influence our behavior. They don't dictate it. When you are a respectful person, you have a tendency to be respectful to other people around you.
But you might act outside of these traits due to, well, really anything. You might have a sick day, a bad history with someone, or even nervousness may cause you to act out of character. Now this is one of the reasons why traits are usually measured on a scale.
So let's move on to how personality works. We display traits through something called psychological mechanisms. You need to remember this term too, because it comes up almost as often as traits does.
Psychological mechanisms are like traits except that they are the processes of personality. Now a process has three parts. The input, the rules, the decision rules in the middle, and then the output. Our traits determine the output.
And sometimes they even determine what type of input that we encounter. Let's say you're a courageous person. The input is a dangerous situation, so you have rules in the middle, right? Decision rules. These rules are based on your traits and they make decisions on how you act.
So the output, if you're a courageous person, is to face danger. Now, if you're not a courageous person, the output will be you fleeing the scene. So let's go over these two again. Traits are characteristics and are the individual words that we use to describe people.
Mechanisms are the processes that people follow based on these traits. So I want to talk a little bit about the three levels of personality analysis. So how do psychologists measure personality? Well, for the answer, we look to Cluckold and Murray.
In 1953, they published Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture. In the book, they say that Every man is in certain respects like all other men, like some other men, and like no other man. So think about it. There are universal traits and mechanisms that make humans unique to other species. Like, for example, think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
We all belong to one big group, the human race. But within our species, we separate ourselves into other groups. We might call ourselves introverts, Americans, messy people, go-getters.
These smaller groups share personality traits. At the most specific level, We all have things that make us unique. Maybe you have a special talent or a strange behavior that confuses your friends. Habits, routines, and emotional connections to people are all types of things that make us different from the person next to us.
So here's three examples of ways that you're like all other humans. You have a need to belong. You want a feeling of purpose.
All humans want this. And you might tear up if I smack your nose. That's actually called the nasociliary nerve reflex. Now here's some examples of ways that you're like some other humans.
You might be introverted. You might be really good at doing your taxes. And maybe you wince whenever you watch someone give themselves a paper cut. And lastly, you're like no other humans.
Maybe you absolutely love doing your taxes. Maybe you plan your days and you set very specific goals that nobody else on this planet does. And you might cry if I show you an image of your deceased family member. That's something that might happen to you, but doesn't happen to anyone else. So these similarities and differences don't just give us a group to belong to.
They're the cornerstone of predicting behavior. So As you can see, a lot of personality is understanding the similarities and the differences of different people and how they act. So, let's move on to where does personality come from. You might hear your family members tell you that you have a similar personality to your mother or to your father.
Now, does this mean our personality is inherited? Do we get it from our family? How do we adopt the personality traits that make us like all other people, like some other people, and like no other people? Well, there are a ton of different explanations that explain this, or attempt to explain this.
Genetics is one. But environment, the experiences you have, biology, and trends going on in your culture may also explain where you get your personality traits. One interesting thought is that we co-create our personalities and the personalities of the people we interact with, so they're all changing. Now here are some common personality theories that I'm- I'm going to be going in depth in the future videos. So if you haven't already and you already like this style of video, go ahead and click the subscribe button.
Number one is trait theory, then behavioral theory, then humanistic theory, then biological theory and psychoanalytic theory, which is basically from Freud. Now, not all personality traits are positive, but we usually prefer to talk about positive personality traits. We tend to reward people that show positive personality traits, maybe like being respectful or genuine.
Now, if someone is kind, we usually reward that type of behavior by being kind back. Right? Now already you might find some arguments against this idea.
Not everyone characterizes the same traits to be positive or negative. Someone may think that respectfulness is a top-tier personality trait that you need to have in culture to succeed. Someone else who has a lot of distrust and authority, or the so-called system, they might view respectfulness as a negative personality trait. So, how do people form their personalities when they're both rewarded and chastised for the same trait in different situations?
Well, these are some of the questions that psychologists are trying to answer. So at this point, you might be thinking, why is personality psychology important? Well, there are tons of other questions that can only be answered with research and the study of personality psychology.
And I'm going to go over a few of the big ones. The first one is freedom versus determinism. So this is basically asking, do we really choose our behavior? And if we wanted to change as humans, could we actually change or are we determined to become a specific type of person? Question number two is hereditary versus environment.
So in reality, where do our personality traits actually come from? Nature. or nurture? Number three is unique or universal.
Some psychologists say humans are very unique, while others agree that we're pretty fairly universally the same. So what are we? Lastly, is proactive versus reactive? Now as humans, do we act on our own initiative or do we simply respond to stimuli?
So as we continue to move forward in this video, you should know why are personality psychologists so determined? Why is it so important to answer these types of questions? Well, they can use it to predict your future behavior.
If you had the ability to predict who was on track to becoming a criminal, wouldn't you want to steer them in a different path? And maybe even save someone's life from a life in prison. Look at Ted Bundy's personality.
Psychologists generally agree that he had a classic sociopathic personality. But where did it come from? Well, some people say that he started forming a sociopathic personality when he was rejected by the love of his life at a young age.
Others believe his failure to become a lawyer sparked these personality traits. And other psychologists trace the root of his personality to the shame of never knowing his real birth parents. Well, we do know that his sociopathic behaviors did start early, and some argue his killings could have been statistically predicted. How crazy is that?
Predict that someone would kill someone else. He was a pyromaniac and he had tortured animals as a child. Some psychologists point to his early bedwetting as a sign that he was on track to becoming a sociopath. In fact, These three traits form the sociopathic personality. Number one, being amused and playing with fire, which would be like a pyromaniac.
Number two, bedwetting when you're a child. And number three, torturing animals. We don't really know why this happens, but it seems to happen throughout time.
And because of that, we can use it to predict sociopathic personalities. Now, being adopted or wetting the bed obviously doesn't mean that you were born to become a sociopath, but But these theories and discoveries are the first steps in determining how we actually form our personalities and how those personalities influence our behavior. If psychologists can get a good idea of a map that leads us to certain behaviors, then maybe we can redraw that map and develop a co-creation process that influences more positive personality traits and less sociopathic ones.
The psychology of personality isn't just important for determining the future of humans. Scientists, in fact, and artificial intelligence look at massive amounts of data relating to personality traits and their behaviors. Artificial intelligence can help us in our efforts to predict future behavior from specific personalities and possibly prevent bad things from happening. Since analyzing personality data involves looking at massive amounts of information, you know, the history of people, what they're like, recognizing traits, organizing traits.
Well, artificial intelligence is really good at organizing and looking at massive amounts of data. Now, right now. data currently just shows correlations between different levels of personality traits and future behaviors or classifications. For example, there's a correlation between conscientiousness and good grades in school. There's also a correlation that exists between extroverts and car accidents.
Now, personality psychologists say that this could be due to extroverts'need for constant stimulation. Now, data also links low agreeableness to competitive behaviors. So, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you probably want to have a little bit lower agreeableness. Also, high neuroticism may predict the presence of a mental illness.
In fact, high neuroticism is very closely linked to mental illnesses. Now this list of examples goes on and on, but this data still isn't perfect yet. And I'll talk about all kinds of predictions you can make from your results of a personality test in future videos.
So again, hit that subscribe button and that bell icon if you haven't already. Psychologists use a lot of different sources to collect this type of data. They use studies, surveys, crime data, and all kinds of other sources of information.
And I'm going to attempt to explain all of this to you in an easy to understand format in the rest of this series. The results from data and studies of personality can help improve humankind, there's no doubt about that. But what have we actually collected so far?
As I end this video, I want to let you know about something called the unifying theory of personality. So far you've heard a lot of names and theories mentioned in this video. Well, you might be wondering who can we look to for the end-all be-all theories of how we actually develop personality traits and how we use them to make decisions.
Well, it doesn't work like that yet. We have grand unifying theories that explain a lot of our questions. For example, the theory of evolution by natural selection is a grand unifying theory in the world of biology. We're still looking for a theory like that in personality psychology. Think of a grand unifying theory of personality like a bunch of blind men trying to feel an elephant.
One man walks up to the elephant from the front, and it feels its long nose. This blind man says the elephant is much like a snake. Another man walks up to the elephant from the side. He says the elephant is very much like a large cow because that's what he can feel. The last blind man walks up to the elephant and feels his ear.
He says, Much like a land-dwelling stingray this is. Now each man is only touching one part of the elephant, so they don't fully understand what a whole elephant looks like. Similarly, the theories that we use to describe personality are much like this. They only touch a specific part of our personality. An elephant is a combination of a large round body, a long snake-like nose, and big flappy ears.
Personality is likely made up of biological, behavioral, and cognitive aspects. So you should know that we do have a grasp on different elements of personality psychology. And again, in this series, I'll take you through the elements of trait theory, behavioral theory, humanistic theory, biological theory, and the infamous psychoanalytical theory.
Right now, we believe that those theories may play a part in the grand unifying theory of psychology, but there's still a lot of research to be done. And lastly in this video, I want to talk about the big five personality traits. So trait psychologists have been trying to create a concise list of personality traits that can be used to describe the basics of anyone's personality. After coming up with lists of thousands of words, and then 16 words, and then three, well, top psychologists have settled on a happy medium, five traits.
You should keep these big five traits in mind as you start to evaluate your own personality. Many people use an acronym to remember the big five, ocean or canoe. The big five personality traits are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
And I'll explain more of these in depth in another video. Each of these traits has a polar opposite. The opposite of extroversion is introversion. Now, trait psychologists believe that we all lie somewhere along a scale between each of these big five traits and its opposite.
So example, you're not an introvert and you're not an extrovert, but maybe you're 25% extroversion and 75% introversion. Now, here's a little bit of my own thoughts. There's not very much research on this, but I think one of the main things in self-improvement is learning to push the boundaries of your personality. So you might be a 0.7 introverted.
Well, over time, as you improve yourself, you can extend your range from 0.5 to 0.9. And depending on your situation, you can change. You can become a chameleon and push your boundaries. So as I end this video, I want to let you know that this research is really exciting.
I had a ton of fun going through all these textbooks and learning all this type of stuff. Imagine what could really happen if we fully understood self-esteem or trust or even leadership traits. If you want to watch the rest of the videos in this series to learn how predictable that you really are. and if you can actually change your personality or if your future is set in stone.
If you enjoyed this video, feel free to watch some of the other videos in this personality series. And if you want to learn more about your own personality, check out my free 3-in-1 personality quiz in the description below. It basically combines three of the major personality quizzes into one quiz that you can take in under 10 minutes. It also predicts some things about you, like your political stances, your relationship style, your health. Anyways, the link is in the description below if you're interested in that.
And I just wanted to thank you guys for watching. This was a longer video than normal. and I hope you have a great day.