Self reflection paper-personality test

After doing the personality tests in tutorial 2, I would like to reflect something about my own personality. Also, I have some opinion about the trait theory and the behavioral perspectives of personality theories.

To start with, I would like to summarize my own personality based on the NEO-FFI personality test. According to Weiten (1995) and the results that I have obtained above, I am rather calm, relaxed and have less negative emotionality. Besides, I am a little bit conventional and not too talkative (Weiten, 1995). The results also indicate that I am not curious and creativity (Weiten, 1995). In addition, I am not too helpful and cooperative. Finally, I am dependable and productive (Weiten, 1995). Among the five aspects, I got the highest scores in conscientiousness and the lowest in neuroticism. Compared with the general college students, I have lower scores in Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, and a higher score in Conscientiousness. While for Extraversion and Agreeableness, my results are very close to the general college students’.

First, for Neuroticism, I score 19 and is lower than the norm by 3.49, which is a medium amount. For the Extraversion, I score 28 and the norm is 29.22, which means that I am slightly lower than the norm. For the Openness to Experience, I score 22 and is lower than the norm by 5.62, which is a quite large amount. For Agreeableness, I score 29 and it is very close to the norm (28.76). Lastly, for Conscientiousness, I score 35, a higher-than-norm score, while the norm is 30.21. Applying the statistics knowledge, I found that the two factors that I score near to the mean (E and A) have the lowest standard deviation (5.97 and 5.24 respectively). If the standard deviation is smaller, it means that one should score closer to the mean from a general point of view. Also, the other three factors (N, O and C) that I score not near to the mean have a larger standard deviation (7.92, 6.08 and 7.19 respectively). And this actually means that people in general have more extreme characteristics in the three factors that have larger standard deviation (N, O and C).

The above analysis is only based on my NEO-FFI personality test results and the general college students’ results. And also, personally, I think the NEO-FFI can accurately describe my personality characteristics since what the test results show is really quite near to my personality from my point of view. Therefore, in addition to the statistical and numerical analysis, I would like to use my own real life examples to further confirm my test results. One of my characteristics is that, I easily laugh. I laugh very often in many situations, take the last psychology tutorial lessons as an example, one time I laugh just because I do not know some special terms my classmates were talking about. Because of laughing so frequent, I generally feel relax and is not likely to think about something that are negative. This can confirm my test results for Neuroticism. The second distinct characteristic is that, I do not have broad interests.

Take the comparison between my and friend as an example. Although friends around me like exploring new staff, such as performing magic and shopping for fashion things, I do not have much interest in these areas. However, I like learning computer staff, watching animation and reading comics very much. My narrow interests confirm my test result for Openness to experience. Lastly, I am quite reliable and productive since Form 4 in secondary school. For example, I have been as an I.T prefect for the last three secondary years. And another example is that, I am used to be a group leader in doing projects. This can confirm my high conscientiousness. On the whole, I think what the test results tell are really near to my personality.

Besides knowing more clearly about my personality, I also know more about the personality theories after the tutorial lesson. In the lesson, I have actually learnt a lot more about trait theory, things about personality consistency, distinctiveness. Besides, I also learn the different stance between personality consistency from trait theory and the role of social situation. The role of social situation states that a person’s behavior is not rather consistent with their personality (Weiten, 1995). This opposes the trait theory’s personality consistency. I personally partly agree with personality consistency and partly aggress with the role of social situation. I think that a person’s behavior is more or less the same in many situations, but not in every situation.

Take me as an example, I easily laugh in many situations. But in some situations, say university admission interview, I will perceive that the situation is so serious that I could not laugh and so making myself a bit nervous. So, there have situations that will make me a bit nervous, and so I partly agree with both sides. Actually, I think it is not only my case, many people’s behavior is generally consistent in many situations and in some special situation they will behave a bit different. In the world, people will behave strangely that cannot be easily explained, different situation and different people will result different behavior.

For the personality distinctiveness, I agree with this very much. Personality distinctiveness states that every single individual will have at least some different personality; they will hardly find someone that has the exactly same characteristics (Weiten, 1995). Take the personalities of me and my brother as an example, although many people told me that me and my brother are very much alike, not only talking about the appearance, but also the personality. However, as I know my brother very much, I found that there are two small differences between me and him. Firstly, he is more talkative and more sociable than me. Secondly, he is even more reliable and productive than me. Though the difference is small, everyone will have his or her unique characteristics.

In conclusion, I have known a lot more about my personality and how to interpret personality issues from the psychology point of view.

References:

Weiten, W. (1995).Themes & Variations 3/e. Mexico: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.