Understanding Our Personalities
A personality is astoundingly complex.
Imagine a mixture of elements that form temperament, elements that we often
know as ‘characteristics’, such as emotion/rationality, extrovert/introverted
behaviours and creativity/logicality, each with their own scale that determines
an element of our character. Each individual has a mixture of these elements to
form a personality, meaning that the structure of a personality falls under a
sort of multi-dimensional spectrum. Whilst this is hard to comprehend and measure
against the power of our individuality, apparently there is an underlying
structure regarding this that we can use to conjure what are known as
‘archetypes’ for our personalities. We all have such singular history, our own
experience of our lives are entirely solitary; even if two people existed
through the same occurrences, they would receive these happenings differently
and therefore undergo a different experience. So how can there be such defined
structure to our characteristics? And more importantly, how do we come to
develop these characteristics?
My immediate understanding is that it’s
logical for there to be a structure to our characteristics, because all of
nature operates in a logical way. The universe acts as if it has purpose; it
operates almost rationally with logical connections and formulaic occurrence.
In a sense human decision is the most complex existential action, we can
consciously think, step outside of the box and comprehend these natural
occurrences; we can decide for ourselves. This will mask the idea that human
nature is fully fathomable, but it’s actually untrue. Our personalities are
culmination not just of our own human decision, but the action by other humans
that occurs around us, formulating this environmental development. This makes
for a complex process, but that’s where all the complexity lies, in the process
rather than the present reality. Characteristic development when analysed in
its most specific progression is unfathomable, but we can easily
psychologically analyse to grasp a sense of someone’s personality. As I said,
nature is logical, and there are a limited number of elements that contribute
to our behaviour. We can mix a number of specific measurements of these
elements to find an archetype. For example, I’m an INTJ, or ‘Turbulent Logician’,
I tend to think rationally rather than emotionally, have confidence in my
ideas, am open-minded, overly analytical, judgemental, struggle maintaining
human relationships. I also share traits with the ISTP personality, however. These
archetypes very much apply a perfect logic to one of the most chaotic natures;
it’s a guide to understanding who we are. I found it somehow comforting that
there’s an underlying structure to all of our traits, I feel like I own my
space in this world.
So, specifically what forms our
personalities? In short it’s a consequence of all of our thoughts, actions, and
that of those around us. But what specifically? Its way too complex to
logically explain and provide order to the explanation, and here’s why. I
believe strong influences to our development are behavioural patterns.
Typically, the more we do something, the more we will do it. This leads us to
the question: why do we do what we do? We are influenced by our personal
judgement, for example our moral compass, or rational thought. But we develop
ideas of things such as moral sense, or logical judgement, from those around us
and happenings around us. So we essentially develop our own sense of judgement
from others’ sense of judgement, by judging the results of their judgement, and
vice versa. The way we are is very much reflected in the way we perceive others
and are influenced by others, which you can call ‘environmental factors’. This
determines how we behave, and more so how we choose to behave. I think this at least scratches the surface in
terms of environmental developments, and I’m not a psychologist so I can’t
really theorise that vastly. Maybe I should read into it more, or just stop
speculating about things on a blog that I truly have no idea about. At least
with philosophy no one else has an
idea either.
Obviously I can’t ignore genetic influence.
We do have predetermined characteristics in that we share genetic traits. This
very much applies to my personal life; as a twin I can really observe these
patterns, what traits we share from each parent and sometimes consequently
share with each other, and other traits we have developed from our behavioural development
that is very much influenced by each other. As twins we were always one unit
during our early development, because we were treated that way. For example,
when placed in social situations as a ‘unit’, I was generally the extrovert of
us two, occasionally speaking on behalf of us both, and this has affected our
development. Since and even to this day, I’m now unstable in social situations
as an introvert striving to be an extrovert, being sometimes too open and not knowing
where to draw the line with people I’ve just met. My brother, however, reserves
too many of his thoughts during conversations within social environments and is
far more hesitant to contribute. He’s also more sensitive to social
environments; more wary of the people he’s socialising with and will more
easily find a social environment severe. He’s not necessarily uncomfortable
because of this, he’s actually more comfortable observing a conversation and I
feel like this tendency has given him more empathy than me or the average
person because it’s a tendency to observe people and their character. I am however
much less judgemental of a person I’ve just met and divert my focus to keeping
that social ball rolling, making my logical judgements later on when I’m not
with them, meaning my judgements are less fresh and accurate but I’m more
likely to get on with a bigger variety of people (more socially versatile, I
guess). But this isn’t necessarily a good thing, my brother definitely likes
having his inner circle, being surrounded by people he trusts and respects,
whereas my tendency to be socially overly active leads me to make connections
with people I don’t genuinely care about and so I struggle to maintain these
connections. All of these are very sweeping statements and of course depends on
the situation, but this is generally the truth. Our genetic traits definitely
influenced these early developments, because at that point we have nothing else.
But I found this an interesting question that I conjured in my mind: are
genetic traits predetermined traits or a matter of developing in a similar way?
That I don’t know, but I’d love to ask a psychologist.
I guess my best understanding is that our
personalities are defined by our experiences. Our experiences form a
culmination of judgements, observations, choices, reactions and many more that determine
our external behaviours and internal mentality. In this sense we are very much
in control of our personalities, we exist to control ourselves and our lives,
so we can condition our lives to influence our personalities. I don’t know if a
conscious effort to change our personalities is actually effective, because it
is conscious, personalities tend to develop subconsciously by nature. Early
developments also have lasting effect and tend to determine our unchangeable
traits; we can change ourselves but we can’t press the reset button.
Ultimately, our lives are who we are and who we are is our lives. Our existence
all encompasses ourselves.
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