Understand Yourself: The Big Five Personality Framework
There may be many benefits to knowing yourself: you might find a job which supposedly fits your personality type, you can be careful in choosing a life partner who is not completely different at all levels from you, or you could simply benefit from knowing yourself in the day-to-day life, with self awareness and intentionality in whatever you do. Knowing yourself can also be beneficial in communicating with others in a more empathically honest way (I included this last sentence just because I wanted to link to that good Ted Talk on empathic vs. brutal honesty eheh).
One thing is to know yourself, another thing is to see yourself as a close, unchanging individual. Knowing yourself is powerful; considering yourself fixed is, one may argue, powerless. Considering yourself a fixed entity corresponds to having a mostly external locus of control, which means that you do not perceive yourself as a constantly changing, flowing, adaptable, constantly improving person, but you regard yourself as a static, external-events-driven human being.
Especially when we are young, trying to understand our personality can be truly helpful. It can provide us with the realization that we can choose our own destiny to a large extent, and it gives us an insight on why we tend to behave in certain ways in specific circumstances. Not in a judgmental manner. Rather, in a self aware and acceptant way. Because it is through understanding ourselves that we can tap into the power of mental clarity and detachment from the ego, which means seeing ourselves as if we were analysing an external entity.
One could also argue that knowing ourselves is a solid step towards understanding other people better and with a more clear mindedness. This, in turn, can truly lead to more conscious conversations and interactions with people, as well as more elaborate choices in life, which don't just look at the immediate benefits, but take into account the bigger picture, in which our personality is factored in the choices we make. Considering that perceptions of reality vary widely among individuals, being in touch with our authentic self can be a game changer when it comes to interpersonal relationships, due to the fact that self awareness shines a light also on other people, making it possible for us to understand our limits, and possibly communicate in a more complete, truthful, empathic manner.
Knowing ourselves also opens the door to structure in our lives and daily decisions, acting as a sort of inner anchor and point of reference according to which to conduct ourselves.
A great starting point in the journey towards knowing yourself might be the Big Five Personality Framework. This is one of the most renowned assessments to measure personality, and it seems to be one of the most accurate out there.
How to know ourselves and others in an attempt to live a more examined, mindful, internally-driven existence? This post looks at this question, by presenting the Big Five Personality Framework.
The Big Five Personality Framework
As psychologist Carl Rogers would put it in his book 'On Becoming a Person', we are constantly flowing, changing, malleable creatures, and the seemingly better way to experience life is to be fully acceptant of the feelings and thoughts that arise at any moment during the day, not being resistant to them, and not making them pile up inside us, because the risk of implosion is very high at some point, triggered by seemingly innocuous inputs, especially in interpersonal relationships.
The Big Five Personality Framework, as such, is in contrast with the view of a constantly changing individual. As a framework, as a matter of fact, it acts as a point of reference for giving precise characteristics to people, and it only accounts for variation of personality to a small extent. This is because it is based on psychological traits (i.e. any persisting characteristic which influences the way personality is manifested in a relatively permanent and consistent way).
To understand this better, let's go back to the roots, all the way to the definition of psychology and personality.
Psychology is the science of understanding the human mind and the reasons behind the behaviour of people. Psychology is a science because it uses empirical evidence to study the human mind. I mean, look at this psychological study, for example.
Personality, on the other hand, is a more specific term which indicates the mental structure of a person, and his inherent characteristics as a human being. The personality of an individual is pretty much the foundations behind the way he acts, thinks, and behaves in the world.
Now, one characteristic of personality tests and frameworks is that they see people as shaped by specific traits and which are normally rather fixed to an extent, mainly for convention. As they are frameworks of reference, they need to provide as precise descriptions as possible, while taking into account the wide differences among individuals.
This is a relevant assumption of the Big Five Personality Framework too. It has a limited set of dimensions, which is as wide as possible probably, but still, we know that humans are pretty damn different and nuanced. So, one of the limitations of this test is that it may miss something about our personality. But still, it's better to know something about yourself than be oblivious to who you are.
The Big Five Personality Framework is composed of 5 traits (you guessed it), each one having 2 sub-aspects making up the final overall score in the related trait. The traits and respective aspects are shown in the image below.
Each trait aims at describing a different characteristic of personality. Extraversion is the trait responsible for identifying a person as introvert or extrovert (or a mix of the two). Introvert people need to spend time alone to feel recharged and energetic, and generally tend to not like being around other people for extended periods of time, as social interactions drain them. Extroverts are the complete opposite: they need to stay around people to feel good and they draw energy from other people. As is the case for most things in life, the distribution of extraversion is a bell distribution, with the wide majority of people falling in between the two extremes of the continuum (meaning, the majority of people are neither completely introvert nor totally extrovert, but fall in between these extremes). Extraversion is determined by aspects Enthusiasm and Assertiveness.
Conscientiousness is a measure of how industrious and orderly you are. If you are someone who likes cleanliness, structure, routines, chances are you score quite high in conscientiousness, which is however also determined by aspect Industriousness, which is how hard you tend to work, and how dominant you consider the role of work in your life. Conscientiousness is, as far as we know, the best predictor of job success in the majority of positions in which predictability and common patterns can be detected (e.g. high level of conscientiousness is a good predictor of job success in managers). This trait, however, can also be a dangerous one, due to the fact that excessive levels of conscientiousness and industriousness can easily lead to workaholism and let work jeopardise interpersonal relationships in a negative manner. That's because if all you do in life is think about work and do work, you might certainly achieve good success in terms of career success and money, but chances are you would have to give up something for that, and that something is often social life, and solid relationships.
Agreeableness is all about your tendency to care about other people and agree with them, often times not because you actually agree with them, but due to the fact that you hate conflict and would do everything to avoid it. Your score in agreeableness is determined by personality aspects 'compassion' and 'politeness'. This lecture by psychology professor Jordan Peterson is a much more accurate resource for understanding agreeableness than my beginner-level explanations.
Neuroticism is the trait responsible for identifying the level to which you tend to be dominated by negative emotions in life. The opposite of neuroticism (which you are if you score low in neuroticism) is emotional stability. So, neuroticism measures the degree to which you are influenced by your emotions in your life, versus how emotionally stable you are. It measures so by taking into account aspects withdrawal and volatility. High levels of neuroticism might make you more prone to feeling stressed, nervous, anxious, depressed.
Lastly, openness to experience: this is about creativity, open-mindedness. The final score in openness to experience is determined by aggregating the partial results of aspects openness and intellect. Openness (which is different from openness to experience) is a measure of creativity, roughly speaking. Intellect is not about your IQ, but about your interest in abstract ideas, your interest in engaging in abstract conversations and learning about abstract topics such as philosophy. People low in openness to experience tend to be more conventional and conservative, and may not like being overloaded with ideas, but seek out a more balanced, structured life.
There might certainly be benefits to knowing ourselves, and having a starting point based on which we can understand more deeply the way we are. The Big Five personality framework can be the beginning point of the journey toward living a more examined, mindful existence. But it is not the end of the journey. We can work on ourselves, particularly on those traits in which we score excessively high or low, which means we can learn something on those areas of life. So, working on improving ourselves is the ultimate process of life, which certainly benefits from an internal locus of control, and personal responsibility towards who we are, and what we do.
This post is not intended to be a comprehensive and complete overview of the Big Five Personality Framework. There is a lot to dig into. I will link to some resources to dive deeper into this psychological assessment test and the traits it accounts for, which, keep in mind, is only one of the many tests available and used out there in the world.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Understand Myself | Psychological Assessment (based on Big Five)
Job Success and Personality Types (Article)
Agreeableness (Video Lecture)
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