personality traits meaning essay

Personality Traits Essay

The study of personality traits has always been a fascinating subject for researchers. In this personality traits essay, the author dives into the personality theories that explain an individual’s unique personality. From extroversion to conscientiousness, this essay on personality traits will explore the different elements that shape our behavior and interactions with the world. The paper aims to comprehensively understand the complexity of human personality and its impact on our daily lives.

Introduction

Research/theories.

Different individuals are characterized by different physiological and psychological characteristics or values. Collectively, these factors contribute significantly to the nature of the behavior of these individuals. The term personality trait refers to these intrinsic differences in individuals that remain outstanding and stable throughout the life of the individuals.

In many individuals these intrinsic differences remain a personal and constant aspect that explains why the individual behave or react towards situations the way the do. Personality theories explain that individuals have distinctive and characteristic behavior which remains distinctive throughout a variety of situations.

Humans are in one way or another compelled to articulating a certain behavioral pattern and to identify or note differences in the way other people behave. (Emotional Competency, 2009).

Personality trait theories try to explain the differences in behavior patterns that are displayed by different personalities in similar situations. They as well try to explain why individuals behave differently in such situations. An individual can be said to be cheerful, talkative, cold, compulsive, and intelligent.

It can be noted that these personality traits remains more or less consistent over a long period of time or probably they last over a life time. What brings continuity in a person’s behavior characteristic is described as his or her personality.

Lexical hypothesis has found it extended application in describing personality traits. According to the hypothesis, people become used to characteristic differences more and more until they finally get engrossed into their languages of communication.

The hypothesis argue that the more important a difference is, the more people will notice it and the more they will talk about it and consequently they will invent a word for it. (Emotional Competency, 2009).

Researchers extracted from a list of 18000 words and came up with the Big Five Personality Factors. There factors happens to be very similar to the Five Factor Model of Personality. These Five Personality Factors includes:

Extraversion. Examples include talkative, extroverted, aggressive, bold, assertive, unrestrained, shy, quiet, untalkative and confident.
Agreeableness. Examples include sympathetic, kind, warm, considerate, cold, unsympathetic, unkind, helpful, affectionate and truthful.
Conscientiousness. Examples include organized, orderly, neat, disorganized, disorderly, careless and sloppy.
Emotional stability. Examples include relaxed, unenvious, unexcitable, patient, moody, temperamental, touchy, envious irritable and self-pity.
Intellect. Examples include creative, intellectual, imaginative, philosophical, unimaginative, uncreative, unsophisticated and imperceptive. (Emotional Competency, 2009).

As earlier stated, personality traits last for long period of time and in many cases they extend throughout the life of the individual. Sources have shown that it is these personal attributes that form integration web among our communities. In the process of understanding oneself, it becomes substantially important for one to understand, accept and apply his or her personality traits. (Emotional Competency, 2009).

Social unacceptability is connected to social inclusion or exclusion from certain social groupings. The issue of exclusion or inclusion is a major decision the humans as social animals have to take care of. An individual is either included or excluded from certain social entities.

A different approach on defining personality trait aimed at identifying descriptive nouns. From this research, there was development of the Eight Factor Model of Personality traits. According to this model, the eight factors that are a part and parcel of people personality tarts are; social unacceptability, intellect, egocentrism, ruggedness, delinquency, attractiveness, liveliness and disorientation.

According to this development, characteristic traits such as lawbreaker, alcoholic, rebel, comedian, speculator, daydreamer, tough, dummy, moron, poet, aggressor and many others were developed. (Emotional Competency, 2009). The above eight factors can be seen to correlate with people primal concerns as follows:

Intellect refers to the level of enlightenment in matters that affect the community at large. The levels of intelligency place humans at different social orientations. Sometimes the level of intelligence is seen as the levels of evolutionary advancement and therefore distinguishes humans that belong to a certain generational grouping.
Egocentrism on the other hand relates to lack of empathy and concern for others. It sometimes can be presented as a false self-image or someone being overzealous.
The fourth factor, ruggedness relates to aggression, dominance and hunger to attain power.
Delinquency is more or less similar to cheating. The importance and effectiveness of cheater detectors within the society cannot be overemphasized as explained in the theory of reciprocal altruism.
Sex and procreating are bonded together in this sixth factor of personality trait.
Factor seven is related to attracting attention. This factor is termed as important in attracting attention especially from mates of the opposite sex.
Disorientation relates to reliability and competence of a person. (Emotional Competency, 2009).

According to the developed theories, personality trait understanding are very critical if understanding different behavior patterns that are displayed by different persons is anything to go by.(Emotional Competency, 2009).

It is therefore important to understand ones personal trait so that if there is anything negative about how e behave, one can consider the possibility of averting from it. This is necessary because some of these traits are detrimental in the way we live and relate with those who live with us. (Emotional Competency, 2009).

Emotional Competency. (2009). Personality Traits . Web.

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How to Masterfully Describe Your Personality in an Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide 2023

Introduction

Step 1: self-reflection and introspection, step 2: identifying core values and beliefs, step 3: gathering evidence and examples.

Step 4: Show, don't tell

Step 5: Structuring your essay effectively

Step 6: balancing self-awareness and humility, step 7: seeking feedback and editing.

Describing your personality in an essay is not simply an exercise in self-expression; it is a transformative process that allows you to artfully communicate and convey the intricate nuances of your character to the reader. By delving into the depths of your self-awareness, personal growth, and the values that serve as the compass guiding your actions and decisions, you embark on a journey of self-discovery and introspection. In this comprehensive step-by-step guide , we will navigate the intricacies of crafting a compelling personality description in your essay, providing you with the necessary tools to masterfully articulate your unique qualities, experiences, and perspectives.

At its core, the act of describing your personality in an essay is an opportunity to authentically showcase who you are. It is a platform to illuminate the multifaceted nature of your being, unveiling the layers that make you distinct and individual. Through self-reflection and introspection , you delve into the recesses of your soul, gaining a deeper understanding of your own personality traits and characteristics. This process of self-exploration allows you to unearth the strengths that define you and the weaknesses that provide opportunities for growth.

Identifying your core values and beliefs is another essential step in effectively describing your personality. By exploring your fundamental principles and ideals, you gain insight into the motivations behind your actions and the driving force behind your decisions . These values serve as the undercurrent that weaves together the fabric of your personality, giving coherence and purpose to your thoughts and behaviors. Understanding how your personality traits align with your core values enables you to articulate a more comprehensive and authentic depiction of yourself.

To breathe life into your personality description, it is crucial to gather evidence and examples that showcase your traits in action. Recall specific instances where your personality has manifested itself, and examine the behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that were present. By drawing on these concrete examples, you provide tangible proof of your personality claims, allowing the reader to envision your character in vivid detail.

However, it is not enough to simply tell the reader about your personality traits; you must show them through vivid and descriptive language. By employing sensory details and evocative storytelling, you paint a vibrant picture that engages the reader’s imagination. It is through this artful depiction that your personality comes to life on the page, leaving a lasting impression.

Crafting an effective structure for your essay is also paramount to conveying your personality in a coherent and engaging manner. A well-structured essay captivates the reader from the outset with an engaging introduction that sets the tone and grabs their attention. Organizing your essay around key personality traits or themes creates a logical progression of ideas, enabling a seamless flow from one aspect of your personality to the next. This careful structuring enhances the readability and impact of your essay, allowing the reader to follow your journey of self-expression with ease.

In describing your personality, it is essential to strike a delicate balance between self-awareness and humility. While it is important to acknowledge your strengths and accomplishments, it is equally crucial to avoid sounding arrogant. Honesty about your weaknesse s and areas for growth demonstrates humility and a willingness to learn from experiences, fostering personal growth and development.

Also, seeking feedback and diligently editing your essay play a vital role in refining your personality description. Sharing your work with trusted individuals allows for constructive criticism, providing valuable insights into how effectively your personality is being portrayed. By carefully incorporating this feedback and paying attention to grammar, punctuation, and clarity, you can ensure that your essay is polished and ready to make a lasting impression . Below are the step by step guide on how to masterfully describe your personality in an essay

How to Masterfully Describe Your Personality in an Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide

Before diving into writing, take the time to deeply understand your own personality traits and characteristics. Reflect on your strengths and weaknesses , considering how they have influenced your actions and interactions with others. Additionally, contemplate significant life experiences that have shaped your personality, providing valuable insights into who you are today.

Your core values and beliefs are the guiding principles that define your character. Explore what truly matters to you and the ideals that drive your decisions . By connecting your personality traits to these fundamental values, you create a more comprehensive understanding of yourself, providing a solid foundation for your essay.

To effectively describe your personality, draw upon specific instances where your traits were on display. Recall experiences that highlight your behavior, thoughts, and emotions. By utilizing concrete examples, you lend credibility to your claims about your personality, allowing the reader to envision your character in action.

Step 4: Show, don’t tell

Avoid falling into the trap of generic and vague descriptions. Instead, use vivid language and sensory details to bring your personality to life. Engage the reader’s imagination by painting a clear picture through storytelling. Let them experience your traits firsthand, making your essay more engaging and memorable.

Crafting a well-structured essay is crucial for conveying your personality in a coherent and engaging manner. Begin with an attention-grabbing introduction that captivates the reader’s interest. Organize your essay around key personality traits or themes, ensuring a logical progression of ideas. Maintain a smooth flow between paragraphs, enhancing the overall readability of your essay.

While it’s essential to highlight your strengths, be careful not to come across as arrogant. Emphasize your accomplishments and positive attributes without boasting. Simultaneously, be honest about your weaknesses and areas for growth , demonstrating humility and a willingness to learn from experiences. This balance showcases maturity and self-awareness.

Sharing your essay with trusted individuals can provide valuable perspectives and constructive criticism. Seek feedback from mentors, teachers, or friends who can offer insights into your essay’s strengths and areas that need improvement. Revise and refine your essay based on this feedback, paying close attention to grammar, punctuation, and clarity.

Incorporating these steps and techniques will allow you to masterfully describe your personality in an essay, capturing the essence of who you are in a compelling and authentic manner. Whether you are writing personality essays, an essay about personalities, or an essay on personality, the introduction of your personality essay should create a strong impression. It serves as a gateway for the reader to delve into your unique characteristics and perspectives. By effectively integrating these steps and maintaining a balanced approach, you can create a personality essay introduction that sets the stage for a captivating exploration of your individuality. So, how would you describe yourself? Use these guidelines and examples to express your personality with confidence and authenticity in your essay.

Mastering the art of describing your personality in an essay allows you to authentically express yourself and connect with readers on a deeper level. By embracing self-reflection and emphasizing personal growth, you create a c ompelling narrative that showcases your unique qualities. So, embark on this journey of self-expression and let your personality shine through your writing. Embrace authenticity, as it is through effective self-expression that personal growth and understanding can flourish.

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How to Write a Character Analysis Essay

A character analysis essay is a challenging type of essay students usually write for literature or English courses. In this article, we will explain the definition of character analysis and how to approach it. We will also touch on how to analyze characters and guide you through writing character analysis essays.

Typically, this kind of writing requires students to describe the character in the story's context. This can be fulfilled by analyzing the relationship between the character in question and other personas. Although, sometimes, giving your personal opinion and analysis of a specific character is also appropriate.

Let's explain the specifics of how to do a character analysis by getting straight to defining what is a character analysis. Our term paper writers will have you covered with a thorough guide!

What Is a Character Analysis Essay?

The character analysis definition explains the in-depth personality traits and analyzes characteristics of a certain hero. Mostly, the characters are from literature, but sometimes other art forms, such as cinematography. In a character analysis essay, your main job is to tell the reader who the character is and what role they play in the story. Therefore, despite your personal opinion and preferences, it is really important to use your critical thinking skills and be objective toward the character you are analyzing. A character analysis essay usually involves the character's relationship with others, their behavior, manner of speaking, how they look, and many other characteristics.

Although it's not a section about your job experience or education on a resume, sometimes it is appropriate to give your personal opinion and analysis of a particular character.

What Is the Purpose of a Character Analysis Essay

More than fulfilling a requirement, this type of essay mainly helps the reader understand the character and their world. One of the essential purposes of a character analysis essay is to look at the anatomy of a character in the story and dissect who they are. We must be able to study how the character was shaped and then learn from their life.

A good example of a character for a character analysis essay is Daisy Buchanan from 'The Great Gatsby.' The essay starts off by explaining who Daisy is and how she relates to the main character, Jay Gatsby. Depending on your audience, you need to decide how much of the plot should be included. If the entire class writes an essay on Daisy Buchanan, it is logical to assume everyone has read the book. Although, if you know for certain that your audience has little to no knowledge of who she is, it is crucial to include as much background information as possible.

After that, you must explain the character through certain situations involving her and what she said or did. Make sure to explain to the reader why you included certain episodes and how they have showcased the character. Finally, summarize everything by clearly stating the character's purpose and role in the story.

We also highly recommend reading how to write a hook for an essay .

Still Need Help with Your Character Analysis Essay?

Different types of characters.

To make it clear how a reader learns about a character in the story, you should note that several characters are based on their behaviors, traits, and roles within a story. We have gathered some of them, along with vivid examples from famous literature and cinema pieces:

Types of Characters

Major : These are the main characters; they run the story. Regularly, there are only one or two major characters. Major characters are usually of two types: the protagonist – the good guy, and the antagonist: the bad guy or the villain.
Protagonist (s) (heroes): The main character around whom most of the plot revolves.

For example, Othello from Shakespeare's play, Frodo from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, Harry Potter from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, and Elizabeth Bennet from 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen.

Antagonist (s): This is the person that is in opposition to the protagonist. This is usually the villain, but it could also be a natural power, set of circumstances, majestic being, etc.

For example, Darth Vader from the Star Wars series by George Lucas, King Joffrey from Game of Thrones, or the Wicked Queen from 'Snow White and Seven Dwarfs.'

Minor : These characters help tell the major character's tale by letting them interact and reveal their personalities, situations, and/or stories. They are commonly static (unchanging). The minor characters in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien would be the whole Fellowship of the ring. In their own way, each member of the Fellowship helps Frodo get the ring to Mordor; without them, the protagonist would not be a protagonist and would not be able to succeed. In the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, minor characters are Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger. They consistently help Harry Potter on his quests against Voldemort, and, like Frodo, he wouldn't have succeeded without them.

On top of being categorized as a protagonist, antagonist, or minor character, a character can also be dynamic, static, or foil.

Dynamic (changing): Very often, the main character is dynamic.

An example would also be Harry Potter from the book series by J.K. Rowling. Throughout the series, we see Harry Potter noticing his likeness to Voldemort. Nevertheless, Harry resists these traits because, unlike Voldemort, he is a good person and resists any desire to become a dark wizard.

Static (unchanging): Someone who does not change throughout the story is static.

A good example of a static character is Atticus Finch from “How to Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. His character and views do not change throughout the book. He is firm and steady in his beliefs despite controversial circumstances.

Foils : These characters' job is to draw attention to the main character(s) to enhance the protagonist's role.

‍ A great example of a foil charact e r is Dr. Watson from the Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle.

How to Analyze a Character

While preparing to analyze your character, make sure to read the story carefully.

Pay attention to the situations where the character is involved, their dialogues, and their role in the plot.
Make sure you include information about what your character achieves on a big scale and how they influence other characters.
Despite the categories above, try thinking outside the box and explore your character from around.
Avoid general statements and being too basic. Instead, focus on exploring the complexities and details of your character(s).

How to Write a Character Analysis Essay?

To learn how to write a character analysis essay and gather a more profound sense of truly understanding these characters, one must completely immerse themself in the story or literary piece.

Take note of the setting, climax, and other important academic parts.
You must be able to feel and see through the characters. Observe how analysis essay writer shaped these characters into life.
Notice how little or how vast the character identities were described.
Look at the characters' morals and behaviors and how they have affected situations and other characters throughout the story.
Finally, observe the characters whom you find interesting.

Meanwhile, if you need help writing a paper, leave us a message ' write my paper .'

How Do You Start a Character Analysis Essay

When writing a character analysis essay, first, you have to choose a character you'd like to write about. Sometimes a character will be readily assigned to you. It's wise to consider characters who play a dynamic role in the story. This will captivate the reader as there will be much information about these personas.

Read the Story

You might think that if you already have read the book, there is no need to do so again; however, now that you know the character you would like to focus on, reading it again will have plenty of benefits. It will give you an opportunity to be more precise while reading the scenes that relate directly to your character and are important for his/her analysis. While reading the book, pay attention to every tiny detail to make sure you grasp the whole array of your character's traits.

Consider the following things:

What specific descriptions does the author provide for each character?

For example, when J.K. Rowling describes Harry Potter for the first time, she describes his clothes as old and oversized, his hair untidy, and his glasses as broken. It might seem just like a simple description, but she expresses compassion and pity for an orphan neglected by his only relatives.

What kinds of relationships does your character have with others?

Think about how Harry builds up his friendships with others. First, he and Ron do not like Hermione because she acts like a know-it-all, but when she gets stuck in the dungeons with a horrendous troll, he rushes to save her regardless.

How do the actions of the character move the plot forward?

In 'The Philosopher's Stone,' Harry is very observant of any events taking place at school. He analyzes people's actions, which builds up the plot around the stone and its importance for the magical world.

Get help with your character analysis from our experts.

Choose a Dynamic Character

Choosing a dynamic character is a great idea. This does not necessarily have to be the protagonist, but a character that undergoes many changes has grown throughout the story and is not boring and/or static. This gives you a perfect advantage to fully show the character and make your paper entertaining and engaging for the reader. If you choose a character that is not very dynamic, your essay might seem monotonous because your character will not end up doing much and will not be very involved in the story.

While you are reading, it is useful to take notes or highlight/underline any of the critical elements of the story. This will add depth to your character description(s). By providing vivid and specific examples, you connect your reader to the character, and the character comes alive in their eyes. Review your notes and formulate the main idea about your character when you're finished reading with your character in mind.

Make an initial draft while taking note of the character analysis essay outline provided by your instructor. You may follow the recommended character analysis essay format if you have not been provided with a sample.

Choose a Main Idea

While reading the story, make sure you keep track of your notes. It is a good idea to look at them, choose the ones that are the most representative of your character and find patterns. This will be your thesis. Then, you must support this idea with examples and situations involving your character.

If your character were Jem Finch from 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee, the main idea would be how his personal character is shaped through racial conflicts, social inequalities, and internal struggles between public opinion, his own views, and what is actually right. Essaypro offers you history essay help. Leave us a notice if you need to proofread, edit, or write your essay.

Character Analysis Questions

Now that you have jotted down some main concepts about your character, here is a list of questions that can help you fill in the blanks you might still have:

Where do the events involving your character take place?
What are the relationships between your character and other significant characters?
What is the primary change your character has gone through throughout the story?
What is your character's background?
What is your character's occupation?
What kind of emotions does your character go through?
What are your character's values?
What is your character's value?
Does your character have friends?
Is there a lesson your character has learned by the end of the story?
Does the character achieve the goals he/she has set for himself/herself?

Make a Character Analysis Essay Outline

When you're unsure how to write a character synopsis, remember that creating a literary analysis outline is one of the most critical steps. A well-constructed character analysis outline will keep your thoughts and ideas organized.

Character Analysis Essay Introduction:

Make the introduction to your paper brief and meaningful. It should hold together your entire essay and spark your audience's interest. Write a short description of the character in question. Don't forget to include a character analysis thesis statement which should make a case for the character's relevance within the narrative context.

Character Analysis Essay Body:

Subdivide your body paragraphs into different ideas or areas regarding the character. Look at your professor's rubric and ensure you'll be able to tackle all the requirements. You should also be provided with questions to be answered to formulate your analysis better. The body should answer the following questions:

What is the character's physical appearance, personality, and background?
What are the conflicts the character experiences, and how did he/she overcome them?
What can we learn from this character?
What is the meaning behind the character's actions? What motivates him/her?
What does the character do? How does he/she treat others? Is he/she fair or unjust?
What does the character say? What is his/her choice of words? Does he/she have a rich vocabulary?
How does the character describe themself? How do others describe him/her?
What words do you associate with the character? Perhaps a word like 'hope,' 'bravery,' or maybe even 'freedom'?

Character Analysis Essay Conclusion:

It's time to master the secrets of how to write character analysis essay conclusions. Your ending should also hold your ideas together and shape a final analysis statement. Mention things about the character's conflicts that we could experience in real life. Additionally, you can write about how a character should've reacted to a certain situation.

Character Analysis Essay Example

Read our blogs ‘Character Analysis of Jem Finch', 'The Great Gatsby Book Through Daisy Buchanan Character,' 'Analysis of Characters in Beowulf,' or simply use these character analysis essay examples to reference your paper. You might also be interested in a synthesis essay example .

Now that you know what is character analysis, it might be time to choose a character to write about. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to type ' do my homework for me ,' you should contact our writers. You also get a free plagiarism report, formatting, and citing when buying an essay from us!

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How To Write A Character Analysis Essay?

How to start a character analysis essay, how to write an introduction for a character analysis essay.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

How Long Should a College Essay Be: Simple Explanation

Personality & Character Traits: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The world we live in is different from what it was 10, five, or even one year ago. Thanks to social media, easy-to-use communication tools, and globalization, the pool of possibilities and available information are constantly expanding.

Without a clear idea of one’s own preferences, making the right choice can be extremely difficult and confusing. Everyone’s personality is unique, and knowing what makes us who we are, can lead to more life satisfaction, better life choices, and overall success in both personal and professional spheres.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Strengths Exercises for free . These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients realize your unique potential and create a life that feels energized and authentic.

This Article Contains:

Character and personality traits defined, character trait theories.

The Big Five or OCEAN Model

The PEN Model

Examples of positive and negative characteristics, character traits worksheets for kids and adults (pdfs), the character traits anchor chart and other graphic organizers, a take-home message.

While character and personality are both used to describe someone’s behaviors, the two examine different aspects of that individual. One’s personality is more visible, while one’s character is revealed over time, through varying situations.

In more concrete terms:

“Personality is easy to read, and we’re all experts at it. We judge people [as] funny, extroverted, energetic, optimistic , confident—as well as overly serious, lazy, negative, and shy—if not upon first meeting them, then shortly thereafter. And though we may need more than one interaction to confirm the presence of these sorts of traits, by the time we decide they are, in fact, present, we’ve usually amassed enough data to justify our conclusions. “Character, on the other hand, takes far longer to puzzle out. It includes traits that reveal themselves only in specific—and often uncommon—circumstances, traits like honesty, virtue, and kindliness .” Lickerman, 2011

While personality is easier to spot, it’s largely static and slow to evolve. Character, on the other hand, takes longer to discern but is easier to change. That’s because character is shaped by beliefs, and with enough effort and motivation, changing one’s perspective and view of the world can lead to a shift in one’s character.

The malleability of character makes sense when you look at human evolution. In order for our ancestors to survive, they had to adapt to new environments and change with the times—and this remains true in the modern era.

If an individual deems a change in their surroundings to be significant, then their beliefs will transform to accommodate the change.

For instance, an individual who might have a shy personality can learn to switch their attitude toward public speaking when stepping into the role of a teacher. The new social and external demands lead to an internal shift that changes their demeanor.

In this way, even if an individual’s inborn preference is to shy away from the public, the beliefs and values that shape their behavior can evolve to reflect the values of their immediate groups and communities. Such awareness and adaptability help with survival (Kurtus, 2011).

The bottom line is, despite the significance of our inborn personality traits, we can overcome them as required by personal or cultural demands.

TED Talk: Who Are You, Really? The Puzzle of Personality by Brian Little

In this talk, personality expert Brian Little explains the phenomenon of overcoming one’s inborn traits and explores how our character is modified by the core projects we work on.

Tools for identifying personality traits have never been more plentiful. “ In the U.S. alone, there are about 2,500 personality tests ” to choose from (Ash, 2012). Yet, quantity does not imply quality.

Due to immense variations in personality, it is difficult to divide people neatly into different classifications. Instead, assessing individuals by the most common personality traits can empower us to deduce a person’s behavior by looking at the average of their choices (Pappas, 2017).

Below are two of the most widely used personality tools that can identify your personality traits. Some pros and cons of each are also highlighted.

A quick note is that we have reviewed only scale-based personality assessments, rather than profile-based assessments. The difference is that scale-based assessments treat personality traits as existing on a continuum, whereas profile-based assessments classify individuals according to binary categories (e.g., an introvert or an extrovert).

Common profile-based assessments that you may be familiar with include the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Enneagram. While these tools can be a fun way to gain some self-insight, they are often critiqued by scientists (Grant, 2013).

A key criticism is that the results of profile-based assessments pigeonhole individuals into particular categories (e.g., labeling someone as an extrovert or introvert; a thinker or a feeler), but few things in life are so black and white. In reality, it is believed that our personality traits exist on scales with opposite poles, and all of us will fall somewhere between either end of that continuum (e.g., the introversion-extroversion scale).

Put differently, “ if the MBTI measured height, you would be classified as either tall or short, even though the majority of people are within a band of medium height ” (Krznaric, 2013). Hence, we’ve limited this review to only scale-based assessments, which are more scientifically backed.

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The Big Five, or OCEAN Model

Perhaps the most comprehensive and science-backed, personality test available is the Big Five .

Goldberg’s Five Factors of Personality (OCEAN)

Unlike the popular (but disputed) Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), this assessment does not divide people into personality profiles but rather analyzes an individual based on the most common traits found within the global community. The traits are easy to remember, as they spell out the acronym OCEAN.

OCEAN stands for:

Openness : This describes an individual’s love for novelty experiences. Those with high scores tend to be more creative . Individuals with lower scores tend to be more conservative and prefer routines.
Conscientiousness : This shows someone’s tendency for organization. Those with high scores are seen as motivated, disciplined, and trustworthy. Lower scores indicate someone less responsible and more likely to get distracted.
Extroversion : This factor indicates how cheerful and communicative a person can be. If someone scores highly in extroversion, they tend to be social and likely to accomplish their goals . Low scores indicate someone who is introverted and more submissive to authority.
Agreeableness : This trait describes how someone interacts with those around them. High scores indicate that someone is warm and friendly. Those who tend to be more egocentric and suspicious (or even shy) tend to score lower.
Neuroticism : Emotional stability can reveal a lot about the likelihood of someone developing moodiness and anxiety. High scores on neuroticism indicate someone who is less-assured, and low scores describe a person who is calm and confident (Westerhoff, 2008).

These categories serve as an umbrella that influences other personality areas, such as:

Openness: imagination, feelings, actions, ideas, values, adventurousness, artistic interests, etc.
Conscientiousness: order, self-discipline, competence, achievement striving, etc.
Extroversion: warmth, friendliness, assertiveness, activity level, positive emotions, etc.
Agreeableness: trust, compliance, modesty, altruism, sympathy, cooperation, etc.
Neuroticism : hostility, depression, impulsiveness, anger, vulnerability, self-consciousness, etc. (ETS, 2012)

Take the test

Those wishing to know their OCEAN results can take any of the following quizzes:

The Big Five Personality Test
(Another) Big Five Personality Test
Personality Test at 123test.com
Ten Item Personality Measure (available in different languages)

Again, we’ll explore the benefits and drawbacks of the OCEAN model.

Unlike the MBTI, which tries to categorize people into one of 16 personality profiles, the Big Five understands that individuals possess certain traits, which need to be measured on a continuum. It is rare to be only on one or the other side of the spectrum.

For instance, saying that extroverts absorb energy when interacting with others and that introverts expend energy when interacting with the outside world is false, as both get energy from their interpersonal relations (Grant, 2015).

“The Big Five structure captures, at a broad level of abstraction, the commonalities among most of the existing systems of personality description, and provides an integrative descriptive model for personality research” (John & Srivastava, 1999).

Thanks to its results that provide scales of different traits rather than profiling the individual, this personality assessment tool can provide a degree of flexibility and versatility, which has enabled researchers to use the assessment to examine the influence of these traits on different areas of life, like mental health , finances, and relationships.

And for the most part, these traits have been shown to be relatively stable. Specifically, in a nine-year study, there was “moderate to high [stability], ranging from 0.73 to 0.97 in men and from 0.65 to 0.95 in women. The highest gender-equal stability was found for openness to experience and the lowest for conscientiousness” (Rantanen, Metsäpelto, Feldt, Pulkkinen, & Kokko, 2007).

More specifically, men showed more stability in traits like neuroticism and extroversion, while women showed more stability in traits like openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

Despite its stability and usefulness, the tool does have its flaws.

Here are a few:

1. Too big to fail

As mentioned earlier, the beauty of this tool is its big-picture view of personality traits, but it’s also a limitation. A good analogy to explain this is the categorization of living organisms into plants or animals. While it’s helpful for certain distinctions, it is not helpful for “value predicting specific behaviors of a particular individual” (John, Naumann, & Soto, 2008).

2. Not so universal

While there has been evidence-based research to support the validity of the tool in more than 50 countries, flaws in translation and applicability to non-English-speaking cultures can be found. This results in skewed scores, as was demonstrated by research conducted with a small South American tribe (Dingfelder, 2013).

Developed by Hans and Sybil Eysenck in 1975, this model looks at the biological factors that trigger or influence personality. The three focal traits examined by this model are psychoticism, extroversion, and neuroticism (Waude, 2017).

The origins of this model date back to the 1960s, but it didn’t originally measure psychoticism (which relates to measures of compassion , morality, as well as creativity). The older model used the Eysenck Personality Inventory to gather and analyze results.

With the addition of psychoticism, the questions were updated and the tool for gathering these results was renamed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.

Each of the trait categories explores the following human behaviors:

Psychoticism : People who score high in this measure often participate in hostile, reckless, inconsiderate, nonconforming, tough-minded, and impulsive behaviors. Higher levels of testosterone are associated with higher scores in this area.
Extroversion : Individuals with a high level of extroversion are more outgoing and talkative, and they desire external stimuli. Higher stimulation usually occurs as a result of increased cortical arousal and can be measured through skin conductance, brain waves, or sweating.
Neuroticism : Those with a high level of neuroticism are more prone to depression and anxiety. The trait is activated by the sympathetic nervous system, which is also responsible for the fight-or-flight response. This can be measured through heart rate, blood pressure, cold hands, sweating, and muscular tension.

Based on these measures, there are four possible quadrants that individuals can fall into:

Stable extroverts: recognized by their talkative, easygoing, lively, and carefree natures and their leadership qualities
Unstable extroverts: seen as touchy, restless, impulsive, and irresponsible
Stable introverts: recognized by their calm, reliable, peaceful, thoughtful, and passive traits
Unstable introverts: seen as reserved, pessimistic, rigid, anxious, and moody

Those interested in taking the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire can do so here .

Once more, we’ll explore the pros and cons of this personality model.

The model looks at both descriptive and causal effects. It examines three specific dimensions, making it easy to understand. And it has demonstrated test–retest reliability.

In fact, when specifically examining the pattern of moods, this assessment is able to predict certain outcomes. For instance, the questionnaire can predict significant associations with anxiety, according to a 2012 study.

“Focusing on the item of ‘Does your mood often go up and down?’ showed a statistically significant association with melancholia and anxiety for patients with a positive score on this item.” Bech, Lunde, & Moller, 2012

Through twin studies, researchers have also found that some of the personality traits measured with the PEN model “exhibit significant genetic variance” (Heath, Jardine, Eaves & Martin, 1988). For traits related to extroversion, researchers “found both additive gene action and dominance,” while “neuroticism items appeared to show purely additive genetic inheritance” (Heath, Jardine, Eaves & Martin, 1988).

Some factors, though, were shown to be influenced by the subjects’ environments, including the psychoticism scale, though for psychoticism the “environmental effects appeared to be largely restricted to males” (Heath, Jardine, Eaves & Martin, 1988).

Like most personality trait assessments, the PEN model is unable to predict future behaviors of individuals, even using the model allows for a better understanding of individuals’ personalities.

And there are certain limits to the model. In a study of both imprisoned and non-imprisoned people, researchers found that the samples often studied in research using the PEN model could create misleading results.

While past studies had shown high rates of extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism in criminals, researchers Rebolla, Herrera, and Collom found that this correlation might be linked as much to a person’s environment as inherited traits. They argue that extroverts “are less prone to conditioning. And this tendency increases with high [neuroticism] scores” (Rebollo, Herrera, & Colom, 2002).

The researchers argue that in order to build a conscience, conditioning is required (something that neurotic and extroverted people resist), which may lead to greater degrees of antisocial personalities among people who are highly extroverted and neurotic but don’t have social support while growing up (Rebollo, Herrera, & Colom, 2002).

The findings demonstrate that since personality traits are influenced by heredity, it is mainly through character and conditioning that a change can be developed in an individual. For instance, those who are more prone to fear and shyness can be taught coping techniques that are more congruent with social norms, allowing for better communication and integration into society.

Having explored the differences between personality and character, we can dive deeper and examine the broader characteristics associated with positive and negative traits.

The collective research on personality has helped clarify the behaviors that are more conducive to wellbeing , with a majority of those behaviors helping to cultivate resilience toward external stimuli.

Another way to interpret this is with the concept of mental strength. This ability is acquired by focusing on things under personal command, which reinforces the internal locus of control.

The behaviors that lead to mental strength are identified below (Morin, 2013):

Mentally strong people don’t feel sorry for themselves; instead, they take responsibility for their own life.
They don’t give away their power to others and thus maintain control over their emotions.
Individuals with mental toughness embrace change and are open to being flexible.
Control is placed on things under the person’s influence, such as their attitude.
Pleasing everyone is not a priority. While being kind and fair is important, making everyone happy is not.
There is a motivation for making calculated risks.
Mentally strong people focus on the present and make plans for the future.
Mentally strong people try to make better decisions in the future and try not to repeat previous missteps.
They demonstrate an ability to appreciate and celebrate the success of other people.
They don’t give up after a failure; instead, they keep trying until they get it right.
Mentally strong people tolerate being alone and staying in silence.
They don’t feel that the world owes them something; instead, they create opportunities for themselves by utilizing their own talents and merits.
Real change takes time, and mentally strong individuals understand this, so they’re patient.

These behaviors are positively supported by characteristics such as:

Tenacity: not giving up when things get tough or when problems arise
Confidence : belief in personal ability to find solutions to challenges
Optimism: the perception that the odds are in one’s favor
Adaptability: openness to new inputs and ideas
Self-Awareness : the ability to shift perspective
Reliability: following through with promises and goals
Responsibility: owning up to personal mistakes and errors
Wellbeing: making personal mental and physical health a priority

These and other characteristics help contribute to strong mental health (Half, 2016).

Half’s Characteristics of Mental Strength

This supports the idea that openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness provide the foundation on which changes and challenges are welcomed, not shunned. In turn, this helps open doors to new possibilities and opportunities.

Specifically,

“Those whose personality tendencies tend toward empathy, cooperation, trust, and modesty (Costa & Widiger, 2002) are found to be more intrinsically motivated and find enjoyment through efforts they exert in the completion of tasks or in problem-solving. Possessing a proclivity toward mastery-approach orientation, these individuals will not shy away from challenging situations, and their desire to tackle challenges is greater than their fear of appearing unknowledgeable in front of others. In other words, they approach challenges with the full intent of mastering them.” Watson, 2012

The opposite of open-minded, calm, conscientious, and agreeable characteristics are those defined by judgment, neuroticism, and an external locus of control. Some behaviors that fall into this category are:

Inability to accept setbacks
Lack of clarity and decision-making
Low capacity for critical thinking
Failing to build strong interpersonal relations
Always staying in the comfort zone
Helplessness and absence of persistence
Tendency to lean toward pessimism
Weak imagination and an inability to visualize desired outcomes (Cardone, 2011)

Individuals with high scores in neuroticism often display narcissism, have inflated egos, and are emotionally distant, angry, hostile, and inflexible. These people tend to display the behaviors above.

Yet one key preventer of such negative traits, according to some studies, is self-control. “The more conscientious or prudent people are–no matter their other characteristics–the less likely they’ll be drawn toward harmful or illegal activities” (Chamorro-Premuzic, 2016).

Therefore, by increasing one’s self-awareness, individuals can spot their shortcomings and adopt habits to help balance out their personality traits. In turn, this helps them thrive.

Examples of Positive and Negative Characteristics

Cultivating positive character traits can lead to greater success.

This is explained well by this excerpt from an article differentiating between character and personality:

“There is a direct link between positive character traits and a happy and successful life. Negative character traits that have been ‘strongly and long’ ingrained usually do cause strife at some point. But a focus on positive change can and does work.” Bell, 2010

Understanding one’s character traits and cultivating a strong desire and motivation for change can lead to better outcomes.

Here are some worksheets that can help get you and the people in your life started on this process.

There are plenty of tools for explaining character traits to kids. Here are some options for students ranging from first-graders to eighth-graders.

Fill in the Blank Worksheet

Perfect for kids in grades two through five, this worksheet can be utilized during lessons on English, vocabulary, and writing.

Character Trait Analysis and Development

Here are 12 different worksheets designed for students in first through eighth grade. The worksheets introduce the idea of character traits and help students analyze and develop their character traits.

Lesson Plan on Character Traits

Those who teach third grade can utilize this entire lesson plan (which includes worksheets) to introduce character traits to the young students.

For Adults:

While it’s especially helpful to learn about character traits at a young age, adults can benefit from becoming more familiar with their positive and negative character traits.

Positive Traits Worksheet

At times, adults may be unable to recognize good qualities in themselves, which can prevent them from developing self-compassion and self-esteem. This worksheet describes 58 positive traits. You can the positive traits that describe yourself, which strengthens your belief in yourself and can lead to transformative conversations.

Visual of Character Traits

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Clients who are unable to verbalize their feelings or thoughts can use these handy infographics that display the opposite pairs of various character traits.

Positive and Negative Traits Quiz

Taking a test can sometimes be very enlightening. Those wishing to fill out a questionnaire rather than identify their own positive and negative character traits can respond to these 25 questions and determine their individual traits.

17 Exercises To Discover & Unlock Strengths

Use these 17 Strength-Finding Exercises [PDF] to help others discover and leverage their unique strengths in life, promoting enhanced performance and flourishing.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

Introducing the concept of character to a younger audience can be difficult. But, utilizing easy-to-understand vocabulary and an interactive, visual, and fun process can assist in bringing the message home.

Teachers wishing to use the process in the classroom can take advantage of these freely available resources:

Character Traits Anchor Chart

Explaining the difference between internal and external character traits to children can be tough. By utilizing an “outside” and “inside” chart, students can begin to categorize their physical and personal traits. This technique can also be utilized to identify the differences between emotions (how a character feels) and traits (describes the personality).

Building Character in the Classroom

A rowdy classroom often leads to many impatient and distracted kids. In addition, students, especially those who live in lower-income areas, can carry a lot of emotional baggage, making it hard to stay motivated and concentrated on the subject at hand. For such situations, this is a great resource that suggests several ways for creating an inviting and an education-focused classroom.

The above research suggests that while personality traits are often hereditary and beyond our control, the things we value and believe in can reshape our character.

Expanding self-awareness is likely the first step in gaining control over one’s life. So it’s no wonder that “the most successful people are the most self-aware people” (Rosenfeld, 2016).

Awareness of others’ personalities can also be helpful, especially in situations like hiring someone for your company. And while there are many personality assessment tools to choose from, some are more consistent than others.

Cultivating an open, agreeable, and conscientious environment, whether in the office or at home, can help create values that are more conducive and supportive of growth and success. Using visualization tools to inspire, motivate, and spark interest in change is vital when aiming to align individuals and corporations toward a specific goal or mission.

Here is a great TED Talk by Dan Gilbert that summarizes this message:

Like Gilbert highlights in the video, it’s true that our personality traits are hereditary, but we still have the power to change. Our beliefs and values, which influence character, are not black or white—they adapt to our experiences and are heavily influenced by the different interactions and situations we engage in.

We are not static creatures, and just like nature, we are constantly changing. It is up to us to decide who we want to grow into. The best way to do that is to take note of where we currently are and then imagine where we want to go.

If change is the only constant, then the most successful people are those who control their own transformations.

We’d love to know your thoughts about personality and character. Have you ever taken a personality assessment, and if so, how accurate do you think it was? Do you think people can change their character? Let us know in the comments section.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Strengths Exercises for free .

Ash, L. (2012, July 6). Can personality tests identify the real you? Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18723950
Bech, P., Lunde, M., & Moller, S. (2012, September 4). Eysenck’s Two Big Personality Factors and Their Relationship to Depression in Patients with Chronic Idiopathic Pain Disorder: A Clinimetric Validation Analysis . Retrieved from https://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2012/140458/
Bell, J. (2010, March 26). Is There a Difference Between Character and Personality? Retrieved from https://insights.inneractiveconsulting.com/is-there-a-difference-between-character-and-personality/
Cardone, G. (2010, September 18). The 10 Traits of Failure . Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/grant-cardone/the-10-traits-of-failure_b_722036.html
Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2016, July 19). Entrepreneurs? Four Worst Personality Traits And The One That Can Redeem Them . Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/3061922/entrepreneurs-four-worst-personality-traits-and-the-one-that-can-redeem-them
Costa, P. T., Jr., & Widiger, T. A. (2002). Introduction: Personality disorders and the five-factor model of personality. In P. T. Costa, Jr. & T. A. Widiger (Eds.), Personality disorders and the five-factor model of personality (p. 3–14). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Dingfelder, S. (2013, March). New study throws into doubt the universality of the Big Five. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/03/big-five.aspx
ETS. (2017) Retrieved from https://www.ets.org/s/workforce_readiness/pdf/21332_big_5.pdf
Grant, A. (2013, September 18). Goodbye to MBTI, the Fad That Won’t Die . Retrieved from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-grant/goodbye-to-mbti-the-fad-t_b_3947014.html
Grant, A. (2015, November 17). MBTI, If You Want Me Back, You Need to Change Too. Adam Grant. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@AdamMGrant/mbti-if-you-want-me-back-you-need-to-change-too-c7f1a7b6970
Half, R. (2016, March 4). 30 Character Traits of Mentally Strong People . Retrieved from https://www.roberthalf.com/blog/management-tips/30-character-traits-of-mentally-strong-people
Heath, A., Jardine, R., Eaves, L., & Martin, N. (1988, June 13). The Genetic Structure of Personality -II . Retrieved from https://genepi.qimr.edu.au/contents/p/staff/CV080.pdf
John, O., Naumann, L., & Soto, C. (n.d.). Paradigm Shift to the Integrative Big Five Trait Taxonomy . Retrieved from https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/%7Ejohnlab/pdfs/2008chapter.pdf
John, O., & Srivastava, S. (1999, March 5). The Big-Five Trait Taxonomy . Retrieved from John, O., & Srivastava, S. (1999, March 5). Retrieved from http://moityca.com.br/pdfs/bigfive_John.pdf
Krznaric, R. (2013, May 15). Have we all been duped by the Myers-Briggs test? Retrieved from http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/have-we-all-been-duped-by-the-myers-briggs-test/
Kurtus, R. (n.d.). Character versus Personality by Ron Kurtus – Understanding Character: School for Champions . Retrieved from http://www.school-for-champions.com/character/character_versus_personality.htm#.Wh2ivaOZNPO
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Rebollo, I., Herrero, O., & Colom, R. (2002, March 15). Personality in imprisoned and non-imprisoned people: evidence from the EPQ-R . Retrieved from http://www.psicothema.es/pdf/762.pdf
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Westerhoff, N. (2008, December 17). The “Big Five” Personality Traits . Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-big-five/

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What our readers think.

I’m 65 years old. Female. I just had a huge aha moment. I’m easily annoyed. That trait destroyed my career as a public school teacher, I’m pretty sure of that. Two people I care about are becoming increasingly hard to deal with. My roommate is in constant pain and does nothing but complain about his life. My sister is in early stages of cognitive decline. It has become work to talk to her. I want to switch my knee jerk reaction of annoyance to one of compassion. Any ideas?

Thank you for your vulnerable comment! I realize it’s a complex and brave thing to admit that you want to change how you respond to others.

Of course, I cannot give you an exact course of action, but I believe that taking the step to make this comment shows that you are committed to learning how to respond compassionately. While we offer several tools that aid in fostering self-compassion and positive communication, you might want to look into other resources that can help promote compassion-centered communication. You might want to look into The Compassionate Mind Foundation or these free Mindfulness & Compassion resources.

I hope this helps and good luck!

Kind regards, -Caroline | Community Manager

Interesting, sounds spot on to me, similar to Myers Briggs test results

Truly enjoyable. Covers the broad-spectrum. Well researched and informative. Thank you Johan de Wet

It’s interesting to note that we can be more joyful in the future by developing our character in a positive manner. It follows that our personality will be happier as well. Like bees to honey, we attract people we strive to be. Virtues, such as humility, honesty, peace, and gratitude are much better than vices, such as pride, greed, dishonesty, sloth, etc. Virtues give us hope for our future and are our greatest assets.

Fantastic information! This is very useful. Thank you!

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Overview of Personality Psychology

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Ann-Louise T. Lockhart, PsyD, ABPP, is a board-certified pediatric psychologist, parent coach, author, speaker, and owner of A New Day Pediatric Psychology, PLLC.

Assessments

Personality psychology is the study of how personality develops. One of the largest and most popular psychology branches , researchers in this area also strive to better understand how personality influences our thoughts and behaviors.

Your unique personality makes you who you are; it influences everything from your relationships to the way you live. Learn more about what personality is, the theories surrounding its development, how personality is tested, and what it means to have a personality disorder.

Importance of Personality Psychology

Personality psychologists often look at how personality varies from one individual to the next, as well as how it may be similar. These professionals may also be tasked with the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of personality disorders.

Understanding personality also allows psychologists to predict how people will respond to certain situations and the sorts of things they prefer and value. To get a sense of how researchers study personality psychology, it will be helpful to learn more about some of the most influential personality theories.

The Basis of Personality Psychology

What is it that makes you who you are? Many factors contribute to the person you are today, including genetics, your upbringing, and your life experiences.

Many would argue that what makes you unique is the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make up your personality . While there is no single agreed-upon definition of personality, it is often thought of as something that arises from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life.

Personality encompasses all of the thoughts, behavior patterns, and social attitudes that impact how we view ourselves and what we believe about others and the world around us.

Theories of Personality Psychology

A number of theories have emerged to explain the aspects of personality. Some are focused on explaining how personality develops, while others are concerned with individual differences in personality.

Trait Theories of Personality

The trait theories of personality center on the idea that personality is comprised of broad traits or dispositions. Various theories have been proposed to identify which attributes are key components of personality, as well as attempts to determine the total number of personality traits .

Psychologist Gordon Allport was one of the first to describe personality in terms of individual traits. In his dispositional perspective, Allport suggested that there are different kinds of traits: common, central, and cardinal.

Common traits are shared by many people within a particular culture. Central traits are those that make up an individual's personality. Cardinal traits are those that are so dominant that a person becomes primarily known for those characteristics.

An example of a cardinal trait is Mother Teresa. She was so well-known for her charitable work that her name became almost synonymous with providing service to those in need.

Allport suggested that there were as many as 4,000 individual traits. Psychologist Raymond Cattell proposed that there were 16. Cattell also believed that these traits exist on a continuum and that all people possess each trait in varying degrees. A psychologist named Hans Eysenck would narrow the list of traits further, suggesting there were only three: extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism.

Today, the "Big Five" theory is perhaps the most popular and widely accepted trait theory of personality. The theory proposes that personality is made up of five broad personality dimensions:

Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Extroversion
Neuroticism

The Big Five theory states that each trait exists as a broad continuum. An individual's personality will fall somewhere on the spectrum for each trait. For example, you might be high in extroversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness, but somewhere in the middle for openness and neuroticism.

Research published in 2018 analyzed studies involving the Big Five and, based on their findings, suggests that these traits contribute to four types of personality: average, reserved, self-centered, and role model.

Theories of Personality Development

Freud's theory of psychosexual development is one of the best-known personality theories—but also one of the most controversial. According to Freud, children progress through a series of stages of personality development.

At each stage, libidinal energy (the force that drives all human behaviors) becomes focused on specific erogenous zones. Successful completion of a stage allows a person to move on to the next phase of development. Failure at any stage can lead to fixations that can impact someone's adult personality.

Erik Erikson, another psychologist, described eight psychosocial stages of life. With Erikson's theory, each stage plays a significant role in the development of a person's personality and psychological skills.

During each psychosocial stage, an individual will face a developmental crisis that serves as a turning point in their development. Successfully completing each stage leads to the development of a healthy personality.

While Freud's theory suggested that personality is primarily formed and set in stone at an early age, Erikson believed that personality continued to develop throughout life. Erikson was also more interested in how social interactions influenced the development of personality and was primarily concerned with the development of what he called ego identity.

Other major personality theories include biological theories, behavioral theories, psychodynamic theories, and humanistic theories.

Assessments in Personality Psychology

To study and measure personality, psychologists have developed personality tests, assessments, and inventories. The tests are widely used in a variety of settings. For example, the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is frequently used as a pre-employment screening assessment.

Other assessments can be used to help people learn more about different aspects of their personalities. Some tests are used as screening and evaluation tools to help diagnose personality disorders.

Gaining a better understanding of your personality can be helpful in many aspects of your life. For example, relationships with friends, family, and coworkers might improve when you become aware that you work well with others or that you need to make time to be alone.

You have probably encountered a selection of personality tests online (for example, an online quiz that tells you whether you are extroverted or introverted ). Some of these tests purport to reveal the "real you," while others are clearly meant only for entertainment.

Personality assessments that you take online should be taken with a grain of salt. Informal tools can be fun and might offer some insight into your preferences and characteristics, but only personality tests administered by trained and qualified professionals should be used as formal assessments or to make a diagnosis.

Disorders Involving Personality Psychology

Personality psychologists are also interested in studying problems with personality that may arise. Personality disorders are characterized as chronic and pervasive mental disorders that can seriously impact a person's thoughts, behaviors, and interpersonal functioning.

The current edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM-5 ) lists 10 personality disorders, including antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) reports that approximately 9.1% of the adult population in the United States experiences symptoms of at least one personality disorder each year.

Being diagnosed with a personality disorder can be distressing, but you should know that there are treatments. Working with a mental health professional, you can learn to recognize the difficulties that these disorders can cause and explore new coping strategies.

It is OK to feel frightened and concerned about what the future might hold but remember that you do not have to face it alone. There are people who are trained, skilled, and ready to help you take the next steps in your treatment.

Depending on your specific diagnosis, your doctor might recommend psychotherapy, skills training, medication, or a combination of all three.

Work closely with your healthcare team to develop a treatment plan that focuses on your needs and goals.

A Word From Verywell

Personality is a broad subject that touches on nearly every aspect of what makes people who they are. There are many ways to think about personality. There are some theories that focus on individual traits and those that consider the different developmental stages that take place as personality emerges (and sometimes changes) over time.

Psychologists are not only interested in understanding normal human personality, but in recognizing potential personality disturbances that might lead to distress or difficulty in key life areas. By being able to identify problems people have at home, school, work, or in their relationships, psychologists are better able to help people develop skills to cope with and manage the symptoms of personality disorders.

Gerlach M, Farb B, Revelle W, Nunes Amaral LA. A robust data-driven approach identifies four personality types across four large data sets . Nature Human Behav . 2018;2:735-742. doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0419-z

McCrae RR, Costa PT. Validation of the Five-Factor Model of Personality Across Instruments and Observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . 1987;52: 81-90.

National Institute of Mental Health. Prevalence: Any Personality Disorder .

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Essay on personality: meaning, nature and determinants.

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Read this article to learn about the meaning, nature and determinants of personality.

Meaning of Personality:

The term ‘personality’ has been derived from the Latin term ‘persona’ OF which means to ‘speak through’. The Latin word denotes the masks worn by ancient Greece and Rome. Therefore a very common meaning of the term personality is the role which the person (actor) displays to the public. Personality is a very frequently used word but still there is no consensus about its meaning. There is a great deal of controversy about the meaning of the word personality.

A few definitions of personality are as given as:

According to Gordon Allport, “Personality is the dynamic organisation within the individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment.”

According to Floyd L. Ruch, “Personality includes external appearance and behaviour, inner awareness of self as a permanent organizing force and the particular pattern or organisation of measurable traits, both inner and outer.”

According to Fred Luthans, “Personality means how a person affects others and how he understands and views himself as well as the pattern of inner and outer measurable traits and the person-situation interaction.”

According to Salvatore Maddi, “Personality is a stable set of characteristics and tendencies that determine those commonalities and differences in the psychological behaviour (thoughts, feelings and actions) of people that have continuity in time and that may not be easily understood as the sole result of the social and biological pressures of the moment.”

In Psychology, personality is interpreted in different ways by different theorists. For example Carl Rogers views personality in terms of self, an organised, permanent, subjectively perceived entity which is at the heart of all our experiences. Freud describes the structure of personality as composed of three elements the id, ego and super ego. In addition the social learning aspects of personality are also emphasized by some theorists.

Taking all the aspects together, personality represents the sum total of several attributes which manifest themselves in an individual, the ability of the individual to organize and integrate all the qualities so as to give meaning to life, and the uniqueness of the situation which influences behaviour of an individual.

Nature Characteristics of Personality:

Bonner provides six propositions to classify the nature of personality within the context of change and development:

(i) Human behaviour is composed of acts.

(ii) Personality visualized as a whole actualizes itself in a particular environment.

(iii) It is distinguished by self consistency.

(iv) It forms a time-integrating structure.

(v) It is a goal directed behaviour and

(vi) It is a process of becoming.

From the above, it becomes very clear that personality is a very diverse psychological concept.

Determinants of Personality:

Now that we have understood the meaning of personality, the next question is what determinants go into the development of personality? Was the individual born with that personality or was it developed afterwards as a result of his interaction with his environment? Generally the consensus is that heredity and environment jointly affect the individual’s personality development.

The factors affecting personality development are illustrated as follows:

The impact of these factors is explained in detail as follows:

(A) Heredity :

The concept that heredity is a determinant of personality is embedded in our minds. In our day to day life, so many times we use the term “Like father like son” as “Like mother like daughter.” When we use these terms we generally refer to the traits like physique, eye colour, hair colour, height, temperament, energy level, intelligence, reflexes etc. However, the importance of heredity varies from one personality trait to another. For example, heredity is generally more important in determining a person’s temperament than his values and ideals.

According to S.P. Robbins, the heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes. Three different streams of research lend some credibility to the argument that heredity plays an important part in determining an individual’s personality. The first looks at the genetic underpinnings of human behaviour and temperament among young children. The second addresses the study of twins who were separated at birth and the third examines the consistency in job satisfaction over time and across situations.

(B) Environment :

If all personality traits are determined by heredity, they would be fixed at birth and would not be changed throughout the life. But this is not so. The personality traits are not completely dictated by heredity, environment also plays a very important role in the development of personality of a person.

Environment comprises of culture, family, social and situational factors:

1. Culture:

According to Hoebel, “Culture is the sum total of learned behaviour traits which are manifested and shared by the members of the society.”

“It is a unique system of perceptions, beliefs, values, norms, patterns of behaviour and a code of conduct that influences the behaviour of individuals in a given society.”

Culture establishes norms, attitudes and values that are passed along from generation to generation and create consistencies over time. Every culture expects and trains its members to behave in the ways that are acceptable to the group. Persons belonging to different cultural groups generally have different attitudes towards independence, aggression, competition, cooperation, artistic talent etc.

While growing, the child learns to behave in ways expected by the culture of the family in which he was born. Most cultures expect different roles from males than from females. Similarly, every culture has its own sub cultures with different views about such qualities as moral values, style of dress, etc.

Although culture has significant influence on personality development, a linear relationship cannot be established between culture and personality due to the following reasons:

(i) Individuals within the same culture can differ in their behaviour and personality formats because of the existence of several sub systems within the same culture.

(ii) The workers are not influenced by the same culture as managers are. Moreover, skilled workers have different behaviour patterns than unskilled workers.

Management must recognize and understand these differences while dealing with the people in the organisation.

One of the very important determinants of the personality of a person is his immediate family. Families influence the behaviour of a person especially in the early stages.

The nature of such influence will depend upon the following factors:

(i) Socio-Economic level of the family

(ii) Family size

(iii) Birth order

(v) Religion

(vi) Parent’s educational level

(vii) Geographic location.

To elaborate, a person brought up in a rich and prestigious family has a different personality as compared to the people who belong to a poor family. The family size will also affect the behaviour of a child. The personality of a single child is different from the personality of a person who is brought up in a family of more than two siblings.

Similarly, the personality of a person brought up in a nuclear family will be different from that of a person brought up in a joint family. Studies have also shown that first born children are more responsible, rational, independent, ambitious and more sensitive to social acceptance. Empirical evidence also suggests that the home and family environment, created by the mother and the father as well as their own behaviour is highly influential on personality development of the child.

Every child tries to identify himself with some person whom he feels ideal in the family. Generally a child in the family tries to behave like his father or mother.

This process can be examined from three different perspectives:

(i) Firstly, identification can be viewed as the similarity of behaviour (including feelings and attitudes) between child and model.

(ii) Secondly, identification can be looked upon as the child’s motives or desires to be like the model.

(iii) Lastly, identification can be viewed as the process through which the child actually takes on the attributes of the model.

This identification process is fundamental to the understanding of personality development.

Socialization is a process by which an infant acquires from the enormously wide range of behavioural potentialities that are open to him at birth, those behaviour patterns that are customary and acceptable to the family and social groups. Initially socialization starts with the contact of the infant with the mother when he grows up.

Contacts with the other members of the family and social groups influence his socialization process. These social groups include school mates, friends, then friends or colleagues at work place, groups to which an individual belongs. Because “A man is known by the company he keeps,” all these social groups influence the behaviour of the individuals.

A lot of evidence has been accumulated which suggests that socialization may be one of the best explanations of why employees behave the way they do in today’s organisations. There are some norms and laws of every society in which the individual exists. Much of the behaviour arises out of the respect for these norms and laws. Thus, we can say that social life has a considerable impact on the individual’s behaviour.

4. Situational:

Apart from the above factors, situational factors also play a very important role in determining the personality of a person. Migram’s research study indicates very powerful role the situation may play in human personality. On the basis of his research study he states that “A situation exerts an important press on the individual. It exercises constraints and may provide push. In certain circumstances, it is not so much the kind of person a man is, as the kind of situation in which he is placed that determines his actions.”

That is why it is often said that life is a collection of experiences. Every individual goes through different type of experiences and events in his life. Some of the events and experiences can serve as important determinants of his personality.

A trauma suffered by a person in the childhood can sometime change the structure of his own personality. In addition to this, certain incidents or situations reveal a specific aspect of the personality of a person that was so far hidden. For example, a very weak and coward person may spontaneously perform heroic action in saving some one’s life without regard to his own safety.

The role of psychiatrists in personality shaping and changing is wide known. From the preceding discussion of the determinants of personality, it is clear that personality is a complex concept that reflects many influences both from within and outside the individual.

Factors that Influence Our Personality
Personality: The Characteristics, Foundations and Nature

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The Power of Personality

Brent w. roberts.

University of Illinois

Nathan R. Kuncel

University of Minnesota

Rebecca Shiner

Colgate University

Avshalom Caspi

Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College, London, United Kingdom

Duke University

Lewis R. Goldberg

Oregon Research Institute

The ability of personality traits to predict important life outcomes has traditionally been questioned because of the putative small effects of personality. In this article, we compare the predictive validity of personality traits with that of socioeconomic status (SES) and cognitive ability to test the relative contribution of personality traits to predictions of three critical outcomes: mortality, divorce, and occupational attainment. Only evidence from prospective longitudinal studies was considered. In addition, an attempt was made to limit the review to studies that controlled for important background factors. Results showed that the magnitude of the effects of personality traits on mortality, divorce, and occupational attainment was indistinguishable from the effects of SES and cognitive ability on these outcomes. These results demonstrate the influence of personality traits on important life outcomes, highlight the need to more routinely incorporate measures of personality into quality of life surveys, and encourage further research about the developmental origins of personality traits and the processes by which these traits influence diverse life outcomes.

Starting in the 1980s, personality psychology began a profound renaissance and has now become an extraordinarily diverse and intellectually stimulating field ( Pervin & John, 1999 ). However, just because a field of inquiry is vibrant does not mean it is practical or useful—one would need to show that personality traits predict important life outcomes, such as health and longevity, marital success, and educational and occupational attainment. In fact, two recent reviews have shown that different personality traits are associated with outcomes in each of these domains ( Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005 ; Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006 ). But simply showing that personality traits are related to health, love, and attainment is not a stringent test of the utility of personality traits. These associations could be the result of “third” variables, such as socioeconomic status (SES), that account for the patterns but have not been controlled for in the studies reviewed. In addition, many of the studies reviewed were cross-sectional and therefore lacked the methodological rigor to show the predictive validity of personality traits. A more stringent test of the importance of personality traits can be found in prospective longitudinal studies that show the incremental validity of personality traits over and above other factors.

The analyses reported in this article test whether personality traits are important, practical predictors of significant life outcomes. We focus on three domains: longevity/mortality, divorce, and occupational attainment in work. Within each domain, we evaluate empirical evidence using the gold standard of prospective longitudinal studies—that is, those studies that can provide data about whether personality traits predict life outcomes above and beyond well-known factors such as SES and cognitive abilities. To guide the interpretation drawn from the results of these prospective longitudinal studies, we provide benchmark relations of SES and cognitive ability with outcomes from these three domains. The review proceeds in three sections. First, we address some misperceptions about personality traits that are, in part, responsible for the idea that personality does not predict important life outcomes. Second, we present a review of the evidence for the predictive validity of personality traits. Third, we conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings and recommendations for future work in this area.

THE “PERSONALITY COEFFICIENT”: AN UNFORTUNATE LEGACY OF THE PERSON-SITUATION DEBATE

Before we embark on our review, it is necessary to lay to rest a myth perpetrated by the 1960s manifestation of the person–situation debate; this myth is often at the root of the perspective that personality traits do not predict outcomes well, if at all. Specifically, in his highly influential book, Walter Mischel (1968) argued that personality traits had limited utility in predicting behavior because their correlational upper limit appeared to be about .30. Subsequently, this .30 value became derided as the “personality coefficient.” Two conclusions were inferred from this argument. First, personality traits have little predictive validity. Second, if personality traits do not predict much, then other factors, such as the situation, must be responsible for the vast amounts of variance that are left unaccounted for. The idea that personality traits are the validity weaklings of the predictive panoply has been reiterated in unmitigated form to this day (e.g., Bandura, 1999 ; Lewis, 2001 ; Paul, 2004 ; Ross & Nisbett, 1991 ). In fact, this position is so widely accepted that personality psychologists often apologize for correlations in the range of .20 to .30 (e.g., Bornstein, 1999 ).

Should personality psychologists be apologetic for their modest validity coefficients? Apparently not, according to Meyer and his colleagues ( Meyer et al., 2001 ), who did psychological science a service by tabling the effect sizes for a wide variety of psychological investigations and placing them side-by-side with comparable effect sizes from medicine and everyday life. These investigators made several important points. First, the modal effect size on a correlational scale for psychology as a whole is between .10 and .40, including that seen in experimental investigations (see also Hemphill, 2003 ). It appears that the .30 barrier applies to most phenomena in psychology and not just to those in the realm of personality psychology. Second, the very largest effects for any variables in psychology are in the .50 to .60 range, and these are quite rare (e.g., the effect of increasing age on declining speed of information processing in adults). Third, effect sizes for assessment measures and therapeutic interventions in psychology are similar to those found in medicine. It is sobering to see that the effect sizes for many medical interventions—like consuming aspirin to treat heart disease or using chemotherapy to treat breast cancer—translate into correlations of .02 or .03. Taken together, the data presented by Meyer and colleagues make clear that our standards for effect sizes need to be established in light of what is typical for psychology and for other fields concerned with human functioning.

In the decades since Mischel’s (1968) critique, researchers have also directly addressed the claim that situations have a stronger influence on behavior than they do on personality traits. Social psychological research on the effects of situations typically involves experimental manipulation of the situation, and the results are analyzed to establish whether the situational manipulation has yielded a statistically significant difference in the outcome. When the effects of situations are converted into the same metric as that used in personality research (typically the correlation coefficient, which conveys both the direction and the size of an effect), the effects of personality traits are generally as strong as the effects of situations ( Funder & Ozer, 1983 ; Sarason, Smith, & Diener, 1975 ). Overall, it is the moderate position that is correct: Both the person and the situation are necessary for explaining human behavior, given that both have comparable relations with important outcomes.

As research on the relative magnitude of effects has documented, personality psychologists should not apologize for correlations between .10 and .30, given that the effect sizes found in personality psychology are no different than those found in other fields of inquiry. In addition, the importance of a predictor lies not only in the magnitude of its association with the outcome, but also in the nature of the outcome being predicted. A large association between two self-report measures of extraversion and positive affect may be theoretically interesting but may not offer much solace to the researcher searching for proof that extraversion is an important predictor for outcomes that society values. In contrast, a modest correlation between a personality trait and mortality or some other medical outcome, such as Alzheimer’s disease, would be quite important. Moreover, when attempting to predict these critical life outcomes, even relatively small effects can be important because of their pragmatic effects and because of their cumulative effects across a person’s life ( Abelson, 1985 ; Funder, 2004 ; Rosenthal, 1990 ). In terms of practicality, the −.03 association between taking aspirin and reducing heart attacks provides an excellent example. In one study, this surprisingly small association resulted in 85 fewer heart attacks among the patients of 10,845 physicians ( Rosenthal, 2000 ). Because of its practical significance, this type of association should not be ignored because of the small effect size. In terms of cumulative effects, a seemingly small effect that moves a person away from pursuing his or her education early in life can have monumental consequences for that person’s health and well-being later in life ( Hardarson et al., 2001 ). In other words, psychological processes with a statistically small or moderate effect can have important effects on individuals’ lives depending on the outcomes with which they are associated and depending on whether those effects get cumulated across a person’s life.

PERSONALITY EFFECTS ON MORTALITY, DIVORCE, AND OCCUPATIONAL ATTAINMENT

Selection of predictors, outcomes, and studies for this review.

To provide the most stringent test of the predictive validity of personality traits, we chose to focus on three objective outcomes: mortality, divorce, and occupational attainment. Although we could have chosen many different outcomes to examine, we selected these three because they are socially valued; they are measured in similar ways across studies; and they have been assessed as outcomes in studies of SES, cognitive ability, and personality traits. Mortality needs little justification as an outcome, as most individuals value a long life. Divorce and marital stability are important outcomes for several reasons. Divorce is a significant source of depression and distress for many individuals and can have negative consequences for children, whereas a happy marriage is one of the most important predictors of life satisfaction ( Myers, 2000 ). Divorce is also linked to disproportionate drops in economic status, especially for women ( Kuh & Maclean, 1990 ), and it can undermine men’s health (e.g., Lund, Holstein, & Osler, 2004 ). An intact marriage can also preserve cognitive function into old age for both men and women, particularly for those married to a high-ability spouse ( Schaie, 1994 ).

Educational and occupational attainment are also highly prized ( Roisman, Masten, Coatsworth, & Tellegen, 2004 ). Research on subjective well-being has shown that occupational attainment and its important correlate, income, are not as critical for happiness as many assume them to be ( Myers, 2000 ). Nonetheless, educational and occupational attainment are associated with greater access to many resources that can improve the quality of life (e.g., medical care, education) and with greater “social capital” (i.e., greater access to various resources through connections with others; Bradley & Corwyn, 2002 ; Conger & Donnellan, 2007 ). The greater income resulting from high educational and occupational attainment may also enable individuals to maintain strong life satisfaction when faced with difficult life circumstances ( Johnson & Krueger, 2006 ).

To better interpret the significance of the relations between personality traits and these outcomes, we have provided comparative information concerning the effect of SES and cognitive ability on each of these outcomes. We chose to use SES as a comparison because it is widely accepted to be one of the most important contributors to a more successful life, including better health and higher occupational attainment (e.g., Adler et al., 1994 ; Gallo & Mathews, 2003 ; Galobardes, Lynch, & Smith, 2004 ; Sapolsky, 2005 ). In addition, we chose cognitive ability as a comparison variable because, like SES, it is a widely accepted predictor of longevity and occupational success ( Deary, Batty, & Gottfredson, 2005 ; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998 ). In this article, we compare the effect sizes of personality traits with these two predictors in order to understand the relative contribution of personality to a long, stable, and successful life. We also required that the studies in this review make some attempt to control for background variables. For example, in the case of mortality, we looked for prospective longitudinal studies that controlled for previous medical conditions, gender, age, and other relevant variables.

We are not assuming that personality traits are direct causes of the outcomes under study. Rather, we were exclusively interested in whether personality traits predict mortality, divorce, and occupational attainment and in their modal effect sizes. If found to be robust, these patterns of statistical association then invite the question of why and how personality traits might cause these outcomes, and we have provided several examples in each section of potential mechanisms and causal steps involved in the process.

The Measurement of Effect Sizes in Prospective Longitudinal Studies

Before turning to the specific findings for personality, SES, and cognitive ability, we must first address the measurement of effect sizes in the studies reviewed here. Most of the studies that we reviewed used some form of regression analysis for either continuous or categorical outcomes. In studies with continuous outcomes, findings were typically reported as standardized regression weights (beta coefficients). In studies of categorical outcomes, the most common effect size indicators are odds ratios, relative risk ratios, or hazard ratios. Because many psychologists may be less familiar with these ratio statistics, a brief discussion of them is in order. In the context of individual differences, ratio statistics quantify the likelihood of an event (e.g., divorce, mortality) for a higher scoring group versus the likelihood of the same event for a lower scoring group (e.g., persons high in negative affect versus those low in negative affect). An odds ratio is the ratio of the odds of the event for one group over the odds of the same event for the second group. The risk ratio compares the probabilities of the event occurring for the two groups. The hazard ratio assesses the probability of an event occurring for a group over a specific window of time. For these statistics, a value of 1.0 equals no difference in odds or probabilities. Values above 1.0 indicate increased likelihood (odds or probabilities) for the experimental (or numerator) group, with the reverse being true for values below 1.0 (down to a lower limit of zero). Because of this asymmetry, the log of these statistics is often taken.

The primary advantage of ratio statistics in general, and the risk ratio in particular, is their ease of interpretation in applied settings. It is easier to understand that death is three times as likely to occur for one group than for another than it is to make sense out of a point-biserial correlation. However, there are also some disadvantages that should be understood. First, ratio statistics can make effects that are actually very small in absolute magnitude appear to be large when in fact they are very rare events. For example, although it is technically correct that one is three times as likely (risk ratio = 3.0) to win the lottery when buying three tickets instead of one ticket, the improved chances of winning are trivial in an absolute sense.

Second, there is no accepted practice for how to divide continuous predictor variables when computing odds, risk, and hazard ratios. Some predictors are naturally dichotomous (e.g., gender), but many are continuous (e.g., cognitive ability, SES). Researchers often divide continuous variables into some arbitrary set of categories in order to use the odds, rate, or hazard metrics. For example, instead of reporting an association between SES and mortality using a point-biserial correlation, a researcher may use proportional hazards models using some arbitrary categorization of SES, such as quartile estimates (e.g., lowest versus highest quartiles). This permits the researcher to draw conclusions such as “individuals from the highest category of SES are four times as likely to live longer than are groups lowest in SES.” Although more intuitively appealing, the odds statements derived from categorizing continuous variables makes it difficult to deduce the true effect size of a relation, especially across studies. Researchers with very large samples may have the luxury of carving a continuous variable into very fine-grained categories (e.g., 10 categories of SES), which may lead to seemingly huge hazard ratios. In contrast, researchers with smaller samples may only dichotomize or trichotomize the same variables, thus resulting in smaller hazard ratios and what appear to be smaller effects for identical predictors. Finally, many researchers may not categorize their continuous variables at all, which can result in hazard ratios very close to 1.0 that are nonetheless still statistically significant. These procedures for analyzing odds, rate, and hazard ratios produce a haphazard array of results from which it is almost impossible to discern a meaningful average effect size. 1

One of the primary tasks of this review is to transform the results from different studies into a common metric so that a fair comparison could be made across the predictors and outcomes. For this purpose, we chose the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient. We used a variety of techniques to arrive at an accurate estimate of the effect size from each study. When transforming relative risk ratios into the correlation metric, we used several methods to arrive at the most appropriate estimate of the effect size. For example, the correlation coefficient can be estimated from reported significance levels ( p values) and from test statistics such as the t test or chi-square, as well as from other effect size indicators such as d scores ( Rosenthal, 1991 ). Also, the correlation coefficient can be estimated directly from relative risk ratios and hazard ratios using the generic inverse variance approach ( The Cochrane Collaboration, 2005 ). In this procedure, the relative risk ratio and confidence intervals (CIs) are first transformed into z scores, and the z scores are then transformed into the correlation metric.

For most studies, the effect size correlation was estimated from information on relative risk ratios and p values. For the latter, we used the r equivalent effect size indicator ( Rosenthal & Rubin, 2003 ), which is computed from the sample size and p value associated with specific effects. All of these techniques transform the effect size information to a common correlational metric, making the results of the studies comparable across different analytical methods. After compiling effect sizes, meta-analytic techniques were used to estimate population effect sizes in both the risk ratio and correlation metric ( Hedges & Olkin, 1985 ). Specifically, a random-effects model with no moderators was used to estimate population effect sizes for both the rate ratio and correlation metrics. 2 When appropriate, we first averaged multiple nonindependent effects from studies that reported more than one relevant effect size.

The Predictive Validity of Personality Traits for Mortality

Before considering the role of personality traits in health and longevity, we reviewed a selection of studies linking SES and cognitive ability to these same outcomes. This information provides a point of reference to understand the relative contribution of personality. Table 1 presents the findings from 33 studies examining the prospective relations of low SES and low cognitive ability with mortality. 3 SES was measured using measures or composites of typical SES variables including income, education, and occupational status. Total IQ scores were commonly used in analyses of cognitive ability. Most studies demonstrated that being born into a low-SES household or achieving low SES in adulthood resulted in a higher risk of mortality (e.g., Deary & Der, 2005 ; Hart et al., 2003 ; Osler et al., 2002 ; Steenland, Henley, & Thun, 2002 ). The relative risk ratios and hazard ratios ranged from a low of 0.57 to a high of 1.30 and averaged 1.24 (CIs = 1.19 and 1.29). When translated into the correlation metric, the effect sizes for low SES ranged from −.02 to .08 and averaged .02 (CIs = .017 and .026).

SES and IQ Effects on Mortality/Longevity

Note. Confidence intervals are given in parentheses. SES = socioeconomic status; HR = hazard ratio; RR = relative risk ratio; OR = odds ratio; r rr = Correlation estimated from the rate ratio; r hr = correlation estimated from the hazard ratio; r or = correlation estimated from the odds ratio; r F = correlation estimated from F test; r e = r equivalent —correlation estimated from the reported p value and sample size; BMI = body mass index; FEV = forced expiratory volume; ADLs = activities of daily living; MMSE = Mini Mental State Examination; CPS = Cancer Prevention Study; RIFLE = risk factors and life expectancy.

Through the use of the relative risk metric, we determined that the effect of low IQ on mortality was similar to that of SES, ranging from a modest 0.74 to 2.42 and averaging 1.19 (CIs = 1.10 and 1.30). When translated into the correlation metric, however, the effect of low IQ on mortality was equivalent to a correlation of .06 (CIs = .03 and .09), which was three times larger than the effect of SES on mortality. The discrepancy between the relative risk and correlation metrics most likely resulted because some studies reported the relative risks in terms of continuous measures of IQ, which resulted in smaller relative risk ratios (e.g., St. John, Montgomery, Kristjansson, & McDowell, 2002 ). Merging relative risk ratios from these studies with those that carve the continuous variables into subgroups appears to underestimate the effect of IQ on mortality, at least in terms of the relative risk metric. The most telling comparison of IQ and SES comes from the five studies that include both variables in the prediction of mortality. Consistent with the aggregate results, IQ was a stronger predictor of mortality in each case (i.e., Deary & Der, 2005 ; Ganguli, Dodge, & Mulsant, 2002 ; Hart et al., 2003 ; Osler et al., 2002 ; Wilson, Bienia, Mendes de Leon, Evans, & Bennet, 2003 ).

Table 2 lists 34 studies that link personality traits to mortality/longevity. 4 In most of these studies, multiple factors such as SES, cognitive ability, gender, and disease severity were controlled for. We organized our review roughly around the Big Five taxonomy of personality traits (e.g., Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Openness to Experience; Goldberg, 1993b ). For example, research drawn from the Terman Longitudinal Study showed that children who were more conscientious tended to live longer ( Friedman et al., 1993 ). This effect held even after controlling for gender and parental divorce, two known contributors to shorter lifespans. Moreover, a number of other factors, such as SES and childhood health difficulties, were unrelated to longevity in this study. The protective effect of Conscientiousness has now been replicated across several studies and more heterogeneous samples. Conscientiousness was found to be a rather strong protective factor in an elderly sample participating in a Medicare training program ( Weiss & Costa, 2005 ), even when controlling for education level, cardiovascular disease, and smoking, among other factors. Similarly, Conscientiousness predicted decreased rates of mortality in a sample of individuals suffering from chronic renal insufficiency, even after controlling for age, diabetic status, and hemoglobin count ( Christensen et al., 2002 ).

Personality Traits and Mortality

Note. Confidence intervals are given in parentheses. HR = hazard ratio; RR = relative risk ratio; OR = odds ratio; r rr = correlation estimated from the rate ratio; r hr = correlation estimated from the hazard ratio; r or = correlation estimated from the odds ratio; r B = correlation estimated from a beta weight and standard error; r e = r equivalent (correlation estimated from the reported p value and sample size); FEV = forced expiratory volume; CHD = coronary heart disease; SES =socioeconomic status; BMI =body-ass index; ADLs =activities of daily living; MMSE =Mini Mental State Examination.

Similarly, several studies have shown that dispositions reflecting Positive Emotionality or Extraversion were associated with longevity. For example, nuns who scored higher on an index of Positive Emotionality in young adulthood tended to live longer, even when controlling for age, education, and linguistic ability (an aspect of cognitive ability; Danner, Snowden, & Friesen, 2001 ). Similarly, Optimism was related to higher rates of survival following head and neck cancer ( Allison, Guichard, Fung, & Gilain, 2003 ). In contrast, several studies reported that Neuroticism and Pessimism were associated with increases in one’s risk for premature mortality ( Abas, Hotopf, & Prince, 2002 ; Denollet et al., 1996 ; Schulz, Bookwala, Knapp, Scheier, & Williamson, 1996 ; Wilson, Mendes de Leon, Bienias, Evans, & Bennett, 2004 ). It should be noted, however, that two studies reported a protective effect of high Neuroticism ( Korten et al., 1999 ; Weiss & Costa, 2005 ).

The domain of Agreeableness showed a less clear association to mortality, with some studies showing a protective effect of high Agreeableness ( Wilson et al., 2004 ) and others showing that high Agreeableness contributed to mortality ( Friedman et al., 1993 ). With respect to the domain of Openness to Experience, two studies showed that Openness or facets of Openness, such as creativity, had little or no relation to mortality ( Osler et al., 2002 ; Wilson et al., 2004 ).

Because aggregating all personality traits into one overall effect size washes out important distinctions among different trait domains, we examined the effect of specific trait domains by aggregating studies within four categories: Conscientiousness, Positive Emotion/Extraversion, Neuroticism/Negative Emotion, and Hostility/Disagreeableness. 5 Our Conscientiousness domain included four studies that linked Conscientiousness to mortality. Because only two of these studies reported the information necessary to compute an average relative risk ratio, we only examined the correlation metric. When translated into a correlation metric, the average effect size for Conscientiousness was −.09 (CIs = −.12 and −.05), indicating a protective effect. Our Extraversion/Positive Emotion domain included six studies that examined the effect of extraversion, positive emotion, and optimism. The average relative risk ratio for the low Extraversion/Positive Emotion was 1.04 (CIs = 1.00 and 1.10) with a corresponding correlation effect size for high Extraversion/Positive Emotion being −.07 (−.11, −.03), with the latter showing a statistically significant protective effect of Extraversion/Positive Emotion. Our Negative Emotionality domain included twelve studies that examined the effect of neuroticism, pessimism, mental instability, and sense of coherence. The average relative risk ratio for the Negative Emotionality domain was 1.15 (CIs = 1.04 and 1.26), and the corresponding correlation effect size was .05 (CIs = .02 and .08). Thus, Neuroticism was associated with a diminished life span. Nineteen studies reported relations between Hostility/Disagreeableness and all-cause mortality, with notable heterogeneity in the effects across studies. The risk ratio population estimate showed an effect equivalent to, if not larger than, the remaining personality domains (risk ratio = 1.14; CIs = 1.06 and 1.23). With the correlation metric, this effect translated into a small but statistically significant effect of .04 (CIs = .02 and .06), indicating that hostility was positively associated with mortality. Thus, the specific personality traits of Conscientiousness, Positive Emotionality/Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Hostility/Disagreeableness were stronger predictors of mortality than was SES when effects were translated into a correlation metric. The effect of personality traits on mortality appears to be equivalent to IQ, although the additive effect of multiple trait domains on mortality may well exceed that of IQ.

Why would personality traits predict mortality? Personality traits may affect health and ultimately longevity through at least three distinct processes ( Contrada, Cather, & O’Leary, 1999 ; Pressman & Cohen, 2005 ; Rozanski, Blumenthal, & Kaplan, 1999 ; T.W. Smith, 2006 ). First, personality differences may be related to pathogenesis or mechanisms that promote disease. This has been evaluated most directly in studies relating various facets of Hostility/Disagreeableness to greater reactivity in response to stressful experiences (T.W. Smith & Gallo, 2001 ) and in studies relating low Extraversion to neuroendocrine and immune functioning ( Miller, Cohen, Rabin, Skoner, & Doyle, 1999 ) and greater susceptibility to colds ( Cohen, Doyle, Turner, Alper, & Skoner, 2003a , 2003b ). Second, personality traits may be related to physical-health outcomes because they are associated with health-promoting or health-damaging behaviors. For example, individuals high in Extraversion may foster social relationships, social support, and social integration, all of which are positively associated with health outcomes ( Berkman, Glass, Brissette, & Seeman, 2000 ). In contrast, individuals low in Conscientiousness may engage in a variety of health-risk behaviors such as smoking, unhealthy eating habits, lack of exercise, unprotected sexual intercourse, and dangerous driving habits ( Bogg & Roberts, 2004 ). Third, personality differences may be related to reactions to illness. This includes a wide class of behaviors, such as the ways individuals cope with illness (e.g., Scheier & Carver, 1993 ), reduce stress, and adhere to prescribed treatments ( Kenford et al., 2002 ).

These processes linking personality traits to physical health are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, different personality traits may affect physical health via different processes. For example, facets of Disagreeableness may be most directly linked to disease processes, facets of low Conscientiousness may be implicated in health-damaging behaviors, and facets of Neuroticism may contribute to ill-health by shaping reactions to illness. In addition, it is likely that the impact of personality differences on health varies across the life course. For example, Neuroticism may have a protective effect on mortality in young adulthood, as individuals who are more neurotic tend to avoid accidents in adolescence and young adulthood ( Lee, Wadsworth, & Hotopf, 2006 ). It is apparent from the extant research that personality traits influence outcomes at all stages of the health process, but much more work remains to be done to specify the processes that account for these effects.

The Predictive Validity of Personality Traits for Divorce

Next, we considered the role that SES, cognitive ability, and personality traits play in divorce. Because there were fewer studies examining these issues, we included prospective studies of SES, IQ, and personality that did not control for many background variables.

In terms of SES and IQ, we found 11 studies that showed a wide range of associations with divorce and marriage (see Table 3 ). 6 For example, the SES of the couple in one study was unsystematically related to divorce ( Tzeng & Mare, 1995 ). In contrast, Kurdek (1993) reported relatively large, protective effects for education and income for both men and women. Because not all these studies reported relative risk ratios, we computed an aggregate using the correlation metric and found the relation between SES and divorce was −.05 (CIs = −.08 and − .02), which indicates a significant protective effect of SES on divorce across these studies. Contradictory patterns were found for the two studies that predicted divorce and marital patterns from measures of cognitive ability. Taylor et al. (2005) reported that IQ was positively related to the possibility of male participants ever marrying but was negatively related to the possibility of female participants ever marrying. Data drawn from the Mills Longitudinal study ( Helson, 2006 ) showed conflicting patterns of associations between verbal and mathematical aptitude and divorce. Because there were only two studies, we did not examine the average effects of IQ on divorce.

SES and IQ Effects on Divorce

Note. Confidence intervals are given in parentheses. SES = socioeconomic status; HR = hazard ratio; RR = relative risk ratio; OR = odds ratio; r z = correlation estimated from the z score and sample size; r or = correlation estimated from the odds ratio; r F = correlation estimated from F test; r B = correlation estimated from the reported unstandardized beta weight and standard error; r e = r equivalent (correlation estimated from the reported p value and sample size); WAIS = Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale; NLSY = National Longitudinal Study of Youth; NLSYM = National Longitudinal Study of Young Men; NLSYW = National Longitudinal Study of Young Women.

Table 4 shows the data from thirteen prospective studies testing whether personality traits predicted divorce. Traits associated with the domain of Neuroticism, such as being anxious and overly sensitive, increased the probability of experiencing divorce ( Kelly & Conley, 1987 ; Tucker, Kressin, Spiro, & Ruscio, 1998 ). In contrast, those individuals who were more conscientious and agreeable tended to remain longer in their marriages and avoided divorce ( Kelly & Conley, 1987 ; Kinnunen & Pulkkenin, 2003 ; Roberts & Bogg, 2004 ). Although these studies did not control for as many factors as the health studies, the time spans over which the studies were carried out were impressive (e.g., 45 years). We aggregated effects across these studies for the trait domains of Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness with the correlation metric, as too few studies reported relative risk outcomes to warrant aggregating. When so aggregated, the effect of Neuroticism on divorce was .17 (CIs = .12 and .22), the effect of Agreeableness was − .18 (CIs = −.27 and −.09), and the effect of Conscientiousness on divorce was −.13 (CIs = −.17 and −.09). Thus, the predictive effects of these three personality traits on divorce were greater than those found for SES.

Personality Traits and Marital Outcomes

Note. Confidence intervals are given in parentheses. HR = hazard ratio; RR = relative risk ratio; OR = odds ratio; r d = Correlation estimated from the d score; r or = correlation estimated from the odds ratio; r F = correlation estimated from F test; r e = r equivalent (correlation estimated from the reported p value and sample size); MMPI = Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory; IHS = Institute of Human Development.

Why would personality traits lead to divorce or conversely marital stability? The most likely reason is because personality traits help shape the quality of long-term relationships. For example, Neuroticism is one of the strongest and most consistent personality predictors of relationship dissatisfaction, conflict, abuse, and ultimately dissolution ( Karney & Bradbury, 1995 ). Sophisticated studies that include dyads (not just individuals) and multiple methods (not just self reports) increasingly demonstrate that the links between personality traits and relationship processes are more than simply an artifact of shared method variance in the assessment of these two domains ( Donnellan, Conger, & Bryant, 2004 ; Robins, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2000 ; Watson, Hubbard, & Wiese, 2000 ). One study that followed a sample of young adults across their multiple relationships in early adulthood discovered that the influence of Negative Emotionality on relationship quality showed cross-relationship generalization; that is, it predicted the same kinds of experiences across relationships with different partners ( Robins, Caspi, & Moffitt, 2002 ).

An important goal for future research will be to uncover the proximal relationship-specific processes that mediate personality effects on relationship outcomes ( Reiss, Capobianco, & Tsai, 2002 ). Three processes merit attention. First, personality traits influence people’s exposure to relationship events. For example, people high in Neuroticism may be more likely to be exposed to daily conflicts in their relationships ( Bolger & Zuckerman, 1995 ; Suls & Martin, 2005 ). Second, personality traits shape people’s reactions to the behavior of their partners. For example, disagreeable individuals may escalate negative affect during conflict (e.g., Gottman, Coan, Carrere, & Swanson, 1998 ). Similarly, agreeable people may be better able to regulate emotions during interpersonal conflicts ( Jensen-Campbell & Graziano, 2001 ). Cognitive processes also factor in creating trait-correlated experiences ( Snyder & Stukas, 1999 ). For example, highly neurotic individuals may overreact to minor criticism from their partner, believe they are no longer loved when their partner does not call, or assume infidelity on the basis of mere flirtation. Third, personality traits evoke behaviors from partners that contribute to relationship quality. For example, people high in Neuroticism and low in Agreeableness may be more likely to express behaviors identified as detrimental to relationships such as criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling ( Gottman, 1994 ).

The Predictive Validity of Personality Traits for Educational and Occupational Attainment

The role of personality traits in occupational attainment has been studied sporadically in longitudinal studies over the last few decades. In contrast, the roles of SES and IQ have been studied exhaustively by sociologists in their programmatic research on the antecedents to status attainment. In their seminal work, Blau and Duncan (1967) conceptualized a model of status attainment as a function of the SES of an individual’s father. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin added what they considered social-psychological factors ( Sewell, Haller, & Portes, 1969 ). In this Wisconsin model, attainment is a function of parental SES, cognitive abilities, academic performance, occupational and educational aspirations, and the role of significant others ( Haller & Portes, 1973 ). Each factor in the model has been found to be positively related to occupational attainment ( Hauser, Tsai, & Sewell, 1983 ). The key question here is to what extent SES and IQ predict educational and occupational attainment holding constant the remaining factors.

A great deal of research has validated the structure and content of the Wisconsin model ( Sewell & Hauser, 1980 ; Sewell & Hauser, 1992 ), and rather than compiling these studies, which are highly similar in structure and findings, we provide representative findings from a study that includes three replications of the model ( Jencks, Crouse, & Mueser, 1983 ). As can be seen in Table 5 , childhood socioeconomic indicators, such as father’s occupational status and mother’s education, are related to outcomes, such as grades, educational attainment, and eventual occupational attainment, even after controlling for the remaining variables in the Wisconsin model. The average beta weight of SES and education was .09. 7 Parental income had a stronger effect, with an average beta weight of .14 across these three studies. Cognitive abilities were even more powerful predictors of occupational attainment, with an average beta weight of .27.

SES, IQ, and Status Attainment

Note. SES = socioeconomic status.

Do personality traits contribute to the prediction of occupational attainment even when intelligence and socioeconomic background are taken into account? As there are far fewer studies linking personality traits directly to indices of occupational attainment, such as prestige and income, we also included prospective studies examining the impact of personality traits on related outcomes such as long-term unemployment and occupational stability. The studies listed in Table 6 attest to the fact that personality traits predict all of these work-related outcomes. For example, adolescent ratings of Neuroticism, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness predicted occupational status 46 years later, even after controlling for childhood IQ ( Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, & Barrick, 1999 ). The weighted-average beta weight across the studies in Table 6 was .23 (CIs = .14 and .32), indicating that the modal effect size of personality traits was comparable with the effect of childhood SES and IQ on similar outcomes. 8

Personality Traits and Occupational Attainment

Note. SES = socioeconomic status; IHD = Institute of Human Development.

Why are personality traits related to achievement in educational and occupational domains? The personality processes involved may vary across different stages of development, and at least five candidate processes deserve research scrutiny ( Roberts, 2006 ). First, the personality-to-achievement associations may reflect “attraction” effects or “active niche-picking,” whereby people choose educational and work experiences whose qualities are concordant with their own personalities. For example, people who are more conscientious may prefer conventional jobs, such as accounting and farming ( Gottfredson, Jones, & Holland, 1993 ). People who are more extraverted may prefer jobs that are described as social or enterprising, such as teaching or business management ( Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997 ). Moreover, extraverted individuals are more likely to assume leadership roles in multiple settings ( Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002 ). In fact, all of the Big Five personality traits have substantial relations with better performance when the personality predictor is appropriately aligned with work criteria ( Hogan & Holland, 2003 ). This indicates that if people find jobs that fit with their dispositions they will experience greater levels of job performance, which should lead to greater success, tenure, and satisfaction across the life course ( Judge et al., 1999 ).

Second, personality-to-achievement associations may reflect “recruitment effects,” whereby people are selected into achievement situations and are given preferential treatment on the basis of their personality characteristics. These recruitment effects begin to appear early in development. For example, children’s personality traits begin to influence their emerging relationships with teachers at a young age ( Birch & Ladd, 1998 ). In adulthood, job applicants who are more extraverted, conscientious, and less neurotic are liked better by interviewers and are more often recommended for the job ( Cook, Vance, & Spector, 2000 ).

Third, personality traits may affect work outcomes because people take an active role in shaping their work environment ( Roberts, 2006 ). For example, leaders have tremendous power to shape the nature of the organization by hiring, firing, and promoting individuals. Cross-sectional studies of groups have shown that leaders’ conscientiousness and cognitive ability affect decision making and treatment of subordinates ( LePine, Hollenbeck, Ilgen, & Hedlund, 1997 ). Individuals who are not leaders or supervisors may shape their work to better fit themselves through job crafting ( Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001 ) or job sculpting ( Bell & Staw, 1989 ). They can change their day-to-day work environments through changing the tasks they do, organizing their work differently, or changing the nature of the relationships they maintain with others ( Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001 ). Presumably these changes in their work environments lead to an increase in the fit between personality and work. In turn, increased fit with one’s environment is associated with elevated performance ( Harms, Roberts, & Winter, 2006 ).

Fourth, some personality-to-achievement associations emerge as consequences of “attrition” or “deselection pressures,” whereby people leave achievement settings (e.g., schools or jobs) that do not fit with their personality or are released from these settings because of their trait-correlated behaviors ( Cairns & Cairns, 1994 ). For example, longitudinal evidence from different countries shows that children who exhibit a combination of poor self-control and high irritability or antagonism are at heightened risk of unemployment ( Caspi, Wright, Moffitt, & Silva, 1998 ; Kokko, Bergman, & Pulkkinen, 2003 ; Kokko & Pulkkinen, 2000 ).

Fifth, personality-to-achievement associations may emerge as a result of direct effects of personality on performance. Personality traits may promote certain kinds of task effectiveness; there is some evidence that this occurs in part via the processing of information. For example, higher positive emotions facilitate the efficient processing of complex information and are associated with creative problem solving ( Ashby, Isen, & Turken, 1999 ). In addition to these effects on task effectiveness, personality may directly affect other aspects of work performance, such as interpersonal interactions ( Hurtz & Donovan, 2000 ). Personality traits may also directly influence performance motivation; for example, Conscientiousness consistently predicts stronger goal setting and self-efficacy, whereas Neuroticism predicts these motivations negatively ( Erez & Judge, 2001 ; Judge & Ilies, 2002 ).

GENERAL DISCUSSION

It is abundantly clear from this review that specific personality traits predict important life outcomes, such as mortality, divorce, and success in work. Depending on the sample, trait, and outcome, people with specific personality characteristics are more likely to experience important life outcomes even after controlling for other factors. Moreover, when compared with the effects reported for SES and cognitive abilities, the predictive validities of personality traits do not appear to be markedly different in magnitude. In fact, as can be seen in Figures 1 – 3 , in many cases, the evidence supports the conclusion that personality traits predict these outcomes better than SES does. Despite these impressive findings, a few limitations and qualifications must be kept in mind when interpreting these data.

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Average effects (in the correlation metric) of low socioeconomic status (SES), low IQ, low Conscientiousness (C), low Extraversion/Positive Emotion(E/PE), Neuroticism (N), and low Agreeableness (A) on mortality. Error bars represent standard error.

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Average effects (in the standardized beta weight metric) of high socioeconomic status (SES), high parental income, high IQ, and high personality trait scores on occupational outcomes.

The requirement that we only examine the incremental validity of personality measures after controlling for SES and cognitive abilities, though clearly the most stringent test of the relevance of personality traits, is also arbitrarily tough. In fact, controlling for variables that are assumed to be nuisance factors can obscure important relations ( Meehl, 1971 ). For example, SES, cognitive abilities, and personality traits may determine life outcomes through indirect rather than direct pathways. Consider cognitive abilities. These are only modest predictors of occupational attainment when “all other factors are controlled,” but they play a much more important, indirect role through their effect on educational attainment. Students with higher cognitive abilities tend to obtain better grades and go on to achieve more in the educational sphere across a range of disciplines ( Kuncel, Crede, & Thomas, 2007 ; Kuncel, Hezlett, & Ones, 2001 , 2004 ); in turn, educational attainment is the best predictor of occupational attainment. This observation about cumulative indirect effects applies equally well to SES and personality traits.

Furthermore, the effect sizes associated with SES, cognitive abilities, and personality traits were all uniformly small-to-medium in size. This finding is entirely consistent with those from other reviews showing that most psychological constructs have effect sizes in the range between .10 and .40 on a correlational scale ( Meyer et al., 2001 ). Our hope is that reviews like this one can help adjust the norms researchers hold for what the modal effect size is in psychology and related fields. Studies are often disparaged for having small effects as if it is not the norm. Moreover, small effect sizes are often criticized without any understanding of their practical significance. Practical significance can only be determined if we ground our research by both predicting consequential outcomes, such as mortality, and by translating the results into a metric that is clearly understandable, such as years lost or number of deaths. Correlations and ratio statistics do not provide this type of information. On the other hand, some researchers have translated their results into metrics that most individuals can grasp. As we noted in the introduction, Rosenthal (1990) showed that taking aspirin prevented approximately 85 heart attacks in the patients of 10,845 physicians despite the meager −.03 correlation between this practice and the outcome of having a heart attack. Several other studies in our review provided similar benchmarks. Hardarson et al., (2001) showed that 148 fewer people died in their high education group (out of 869) than in their low education group, despite the effect size being equal to a correlation of −.05. Danner et al. (2001) showed that the association between positive emotion and longevity was associated with a gain of almost 7 years of additional life, despite having an average effect size of around .20. Of course, our ability to draw these types of conclusions necessitates grounding our research in more practical outcomes and their respective metrics.

There is one salient difference between many of the studies of SES and cognitive abilities and the studies focusing on personality traits. The typical sample in studies of the long-term effect of personality traits was a sample of convenience or was distinctly unrepresentative. In contrast, many of the studies of SES and cognitive ability included nationally representative and/or remarkably large samples (e.g., 500,000 participants). Therefore, the results for SES and cognitive abilities are generalizable, whereas it is more difficult to generalize findings from personality research. Perhaps the situation will improve if future demographers include personality measures in large surveys of the general population.

Recommendations

One of the challenges of incorporating personality measures in large studies is the cost–benefit trade off involved with including a thorough assessment of personality traits in a reasonably short period of time. Because most personality inventories include many items, researchers may be pressed either to eliminate them from their studies or to use highly abbreviated measures of personality traits. The latter practice has become even more common now that most personality researchers have concluded that personality traits can be represented within five to seven broad domains ( Goldberg, 1993b ; Saucier, 2003 ). The temptation is to include a brief five-factor instrument under the assumption that this will provide good coverage of the entire range of personality traits. However, the use of short, broad bandwidth measures can lead to substantial decreases in predictive validity ( Goldberg, 1993a ), because short measures of the Big Five lack the breadth and depth of longer personality inventories. In contrast, research has shown that the predictive validity of personality measures increases when one uses a well-elaborated measure with many lower order facets ( Ashton, 1998 ; Mershon & Gorsuch, 1988 ; Paunonen, 1998 ; Paunonen & Ashton, 2001 ).

However, research participants do not have unlimited time, and researchers may need advice on the selection of optimal measures of personality traits. One solution is to pay attention to previous research and focus on those traits that have been found to be related to the specific outcomes under study instead of using an omnibus personality inventory. For example, given the clear and consistent finding that the personality trait of Conscientiousness is related to health behaviors and mortality (e.g., Bogg & Roberts, 2004 ; Friedman, 2000 ), it would seem prudent to measure this trait well if one wanted to control for this factor or include it in any study of health and mortality. Moreover, it appears that specific facets of this domain, such as self-control and conventionality, are more relevant to health than are other facets such as orderliness ( Bogg & Roberts, 2004 ). If researchers are truly interested in assessing personality traits well, then they should invest the time necessary for the task. This entails moving away from expedient surveys to more in-depth assessments. Finally, if one truly wants to assess personality traits well, then researchers should use multiple methods for this purpose and should not rely solely on self-reports ( Eid & Diener, 2006 ).

We also recommend that researchers not equate all individual differences with personality traits. Personality psychologists also study constructs such as motivation, interests, emotions, values, identities, life stories, and self-regulation (see Mayer, 2005 , and Roberts & Wood, 2006 , for reviews). Moreover, these different domains of personality are only modestly correlated (e.g., Ackerman & Heggested, 1997 ; Roberts & Robins, 2000 ). Thus, there are a wide range of additional constructs that may have independent effects on important life outcomes that are waiting to be studied.

Conclusions

In light of increasingly robust evidence that personality matters for a wide range of life outcomes, researchers need to turn their attention to several issues. First, we need to know more about the processes through which personality traits shape individuals’ functioning over time. Simply documenting that links exist between personality traits and life outcomes does not clarify the mechanisms through which personality exerts its effects. In this article, we have suggested a number of potential processes that may be at work in the domains of health, relationships, and educational and occupational success. Undoubtedly, other personality processes will turn out to influence these outcomes as well.

Second, we need a greater understanding of the relationship between personality and the social environmental factors already known to affect health and development. Looking over the studies reviewed above, one can see that specific personality traits such as Conscientiousness predict occupational and marital outcomes that, in turn, predict longevity. Thus, it may be that Conscientiousness has both direct and indirect effects on mortality, as it contributes to following life paths that afford better health, and may also directly affect the ways in which people handle health-related issues, such as whether they exercise or eat a healthy diet ( Bogg & Roberts, 2004 ). One idea that has not been entertained is the potential synergistic relation between personality traits and social environmental factors. It may be the case that the combination of certain personality traits and certain social conditions creates a potent cocktail of factors that either promotes or undermines specific outcomes. Finally, certain social contexts may wash out the effect of individual difference factors, and, in turn, people possessing certain personality characteristics may be resilient to seemingly toxic environmental influences. A systematic understanding of the relations between personality traits and social environmental factors associated with important life outcomes would be very helpful.

Third, the present results drive home the point that we need to know much more about the development of personality traits at all stages in the life course. How does a person arrive in adulthood as an optimistic or conscientious person? If personality traits affect the ways that individuals negotiate the tasks they face across the course of their lives, then the processes contributing to the development of those traits are worthy of study ( Caspi & Shiner, 2006 ; Caspi & Shiner, in press ; Rothbart & Bates, 2006 ). However, there has been a tendency in personality and developmental research to focus on personality traits as the causes of various outcomes without fully considering personality differences as an outcome worthy of study ( Roberts, 2005 ). In contrast, research shows that personality traits continue to change in adulthood (e.g., Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006 ) and that these changes may be important for health and mortality. For example, changes in personality traits such as Neuroticism have been linked to poor health outcomes and even mortality ( Mroczek & Spiro, 2007 ).

Fourth, our results raise fundamental questions about how personality should be addressed in prevention and intervention efforts. Skeptical readers may doubt the relevance of the present results for prevention and intervention in light of the common assumption that personality is highly stable and immutable. However, personality traits do change in adulthood ( Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006 ) and can be changed through therapeutic intervention ( De Fruyt, Van Leeuwen, Bagby, Rolland, & Rouillon, 2006 ). Therefore, one possibility would be to focus on socializing factors that may affect changes in personality traits, as the resulting changes would then be leveraged across multiple domains of life. Further, the findings for personality traits should be of considerable interest to professionals dedicated to promoting healthy, happy marriages and socioeconomic success. Some individuals will clearly be at a heightened risk of problems in these life domains, and it may be possible to target prevention and intervention efforts to the subsets of individuals at the greatest risk. Such research can likewise inform the processes that need to be targeted in prevention and intervention. As we gain greater understanding of how personality exerts its effects on adaptation, we will achieve new insights into the most relevant processes to change. Moreover, it is essential to recognize that it may be possible to improve individuals’ lives by targeting those processes without directly changing the personality traits driving those processes (e.g., see Rapee, Kennedy, Ingram, Edwards, & Sweeney, 2005 , for an interesting example of how this may occur). In all prevention and intervention work, it will be important to attend to the possibility that most personality traits can have positive or negative effects, depending on the outcomes in question, the presence of other psychological attributes, and the environmental context ( Caspi & Shiner, 2006 ; Shiner, 2005 ).

Personality research has had a contentious history, and there are still vestiges of doubt about the importance of personality traits. We thus reviewed the comparative predictive validity of personality traits, SES, and IQ across three objective criteria: mortality, divorce, and occupational attainment. We found that personality traits are just as important as SES and IQ in predicting these important life outcomes. We believe these metaanalytic findings should quell lingering doubts. The closing of a chapter in the history of personality psychology is also an opportunity to open a new chapter. We thus invite new research to test and document how personality traits “work” to shape life outcomes. A useful lead may be taken from cognate research on social disparities in health ( Adler & Snibbe, 2003 ). Just as researchers are seeking to understand how SES “gets under the skin” to influence health, personality researchers need to partner with other branches of psychology to understand how personality traits “get outside the skin” to influence important life outcomes.

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Average effects (in the correlation metric) of low socioeconomic status (SES), low Conscientiousness (C), Neuroticism (N), and low Agreeableness (A) on divorce. Error bars represent standard error.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported by National Institute of Aging Grants AG19414 and AG20048; National Institute of Mental Health Grants MH49414, MH45070, MH49227; United Kingdom Medical Research Council Grant G0100527; and by grants from the Colgate Research Council. We would like to thank Howard Friedman, David Funder, George Davie Smth, Ian Deary, Chris Fraley, Linda Gottfredson, Josh Jackson, and Ben Karney for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.

1 This situation is in no way particular to epidemiological or medical studies using odds, rate, and hazard ratios as outcomes. The field of psychology reports results in a Babylonian array of test statistics and effect sizes also.

2 The population effects for the rate ratio and correlation metric were not based on identical data because in some cases the authors did not report rate ratio information or did not report enough information to compute a rate ratio and a CI.

3 Most of the studies of SES and mortality were compiled from an exhaustive review of the literature on the effect of childhood SES and mortality ( Galobardes et al., 2004 ). We added several of the largest studies examining the effect of adult SES on mortality (e.g., Steenland et al., 2002 ), and to these we added the results from the studies on cognitive ability and personality that reported SES effects. We also did standard electronic literature searches using the terms socioeconomic status, cognitive ability , and all-cause mortality . We also examined the reference sections from the list of studies and searched for papers that cited these studies. Experts in the field of epidemiology were also contacted and asked to identify missing studies. The resulting SES data base is representative of the field, and as the effects are based on over 3 million data points, the effect sizes and CIs are very stable. The studies of cognitive ability and mortality represent all of the studies found that reported usable data.

4 We identified studies through electronic searches that included the terms personality traits, extroversion, agreeableness, hostility, conscientiousness, emotional stability, neuroticism, openness to experience , and all-cause mortality . We also identified studies through reference sections of the list of studies and through studies that cited each study. A number of studies were not included in this review because we focused on studies that were prospective and controlled for background factors.

5 We did not examine the domain of Openness to Experience because there were only two studies that tested the association with mortality.

6 We identified studies using electronic searches including the terms divorce, socioeconomic status , and cognitive ability . We also identified studies through examining the reference sections of the studies and through studies that cited each study.

7 We did not transform the standardized beta weights into the correlation metric because almost all authors failed to provide the necessary information for the transformation (CIs or standard errors). Therefore, we averaged the results in the beta weight metric instead. As the sampling distribution of beta weights is unknown, we used the formula for the standard error of the partial correlation (√ N −k−2) to estimate CIs.

8 In making comparisons between correlations and regression weights, it should be kept in mind that although the two are identical for orthogonal predictors, most regression weights tend to be smaller than the corresponding zero-order validity correlations because of predictor redundancy (R.A. Peterson & Brown, 2005 ).

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The Creative Personality

Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals..

By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi published July 1, 1996 - last reviewed on February 22, 2021

Of all human activities, creativity comes closest to providing the fulfillment we all hope to get in our lives. Call it full-blast living.

Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives. Most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the result of creativity. What makes us different from apes—our language, values, artistic expression, scientific understanding, and technology—is the result of individual ingenuity that was recognized, rewarded, and transmitted through learning.

When we're creative, we feel we are living more fully than during the rest of life. The excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab comes close to the ideal fulfillment we all hope to get from life, and so rarely do. Perhaps only sex, sports, music, and religious ecstasy—even when these experiences remain fleeting and leave no trace—provide a profound sense of being part of an entity greater than ourselves. But creativity also leaves an outcome that adds to the richness and complexity of the future.

I have devoted 30 years of research to how creative people live and work, to make more understandable the mysterious process by which they come up with new ideas and new things. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to almost any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand to reach their goals . If I had to express in one word what makes their personalities different from others, it's complexity . They show tendencies of thought and action that in most people are segregated. They contain contradictory extremes; instead of being an "individual," each of them is a "multitude."

Here are the 10 antithetical traits often present in creative people that are integrated with each other in a dialectical tension.

1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they're also often quiet and at rest. They work long hours, with great concentration , while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm. This suggests a superior physical endowment, a genetic advantage. Yet it is surprising how often individuals who in their seventies and eighties exude energy and health remember childhoods plagued by illness. It seems that their energy is internally generated, due more to their focused minds than to the superiority of their genes .

This does not mean that creative people are hyperactive , always "on." In fact, they rest often and sleep a lot. The important thing is that they control their energy; it's not ruled by the calendar, the dock, an external schedule. When necessary, they can focus it like a laser beam; when not, creative types immediately recharge their batteries. They consider the rhythm of activity followed by idleness or reflection very important for the success of their work. This is not a bio-rhythm inherited with their genes; it was learned by trial and error as a strategy for achieving their goals.

One manifestation of energy is sexuality . Creative people are paradoxical in this respect also. They seem to have quite a strong dose of eros, or generalized libidinal energy, which some express directly into sexuality. At the same time, a certain spartan celibacy is also a part of their makeup; continence tends to accompany superior achievement. Without eros, it would be difficult to take life on with vigor; without restraint, the energy could easily dissipate.

2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naive at the same time. How smart they actually are is open to question. It is probably true that what psychologists call the "g factor," meaning a core of general intelligence , is high among people who make important creative contributions.

The earliest longitudinal study of superior mental abilities, initiated at Stanford University by the psychologist Lewis Terman in 1921, shows rather conclusively that children with very high IQs do well in life, but after a certain point IQ does not seem to be correlated any longer with superior performance in real life. Later studies suggest that the cutoff point is around 120; it might be difficult to do creative work with a lower IQ, but an IQ beyond 120 does not necessarily imply higher creativity.

Another way of expressing this dialectic is the contrasting poles of wisdom and childishness. As Howard Gardner remarked in his study of the major creative geniuses of this century, a certain immaturity, both emotional and mental, can go hand in hand with deepest insights. Mozart comes immediately to mind.

Furthermore, people who bring about an acceptable novelty in a domain seem able to use well two opposite ways of thinking: the convergent and the divergent. Convergent thinking is measured by IQ tests, and it involves solving well-defined, rational problems that have one correct answer. Divergent thinking leads to no agreed-upon solution. It involves fluency, or the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas; flexibility, or the ability to switch from one perspective to another; and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas. These are the dimensions of thinking that most creativity tests measure and that most workshops try to enhance.

Yet there remains the nagging suspicion that at the highest levels of creative achievement the generation of novelty is not the main issue. People often claimed to have had only two or three good ideas in their entire career , but each idea was so generative that it kept them busy for a lifetime of testing, filling out, elaborating, and applying.

Divergent thinking is not much use without the ability to tell a good idea from a bad one, and this selectivity involves convergent thinking.

3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility. There is no question that a playfully light attitude is typical of creative individuals. But this playfulness doesn't go very far without its antithesis, a quality of doggedness, endurance, perseverance.

Nina Holton, whose playfully wild germs of ideas are the genesis of her sculpture, is very firm about the importance of hard work: "Tell anybody you're a sculptor and they'll say, 'Oh, how exciting, how wonderful.' And I tend to say, 'What's so wonderful?' It's like being a mason, or a carpenter, half the time. But they don't wish to hear that because they really only imagine the first part, the exciting part. But, as Khrushchev once said, that doesn't fry pancakes, you see. That germ of an idea does not make a sculpture which stands up. It just sits there. So the next stage is the hard work. Can you really translate it into a piece of sculpture?"

Jacob Rabinow, an electrical engineer, uses an interesting mental technique to slow himself down when work on an invention requires more endurance than intuition : "When I have a job that takes a lot of effort, slowly, I pretend I'm in jail. If I'm in jail, time is of no consequence. In other words, if it takes a week to cut this, it'll take a week. What else have I got to do? I'm going to be here for twenty years. See? This is a kind of mental trick. Otherwise you say, 'My God, it's not working,' and then you make mistakes. My way, you say time is of absolutely no consequence."

Despite the carefree air that many creative people affect, most of them work late into the night and persist when less driven individuals would not. Vasari wrote in 1550 that when Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello was working out the laws of visual perspective, he would walk back and forth all night, muttering to himself: "What a beautiful thing is this perspective!" while his wife called him back to bed with no success.

4. Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality. Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present. The rest of society often views these new ideas as fantasies without relevance to current reality. And they are right. But the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real and create a new reality. At the same time, this "escape" is not into a never-never land. What makes a novel idea creative is that once we see it, sooner or later we recognize that, strange as it is, it is true.

Most of us assume that artists—musicians, writers, poets, painters—are strong on the fantasy side, whereas scientists, politicians, and businesspeople are realists. This may be true in terms of day-to-day routine activities. But when a person begins to work creatively, all bets are off.

5. Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted. We're usually one or the other, either preferring to be in the thick of crowds or sitting on the sidelines and observing the passing show. In fact, in psychological research, extroversion and introversion are considered the most stable personality traits that differentiate people from each other and that can be reliably measured. Creative individuals, on the other hand, seem to exhibit both traits simultaneously.

6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time. It is remarkable to meet a famous person who you expect to be arrogant or supercilious, only to encounter self-deprecation and shyness instead. Yet there are good reasons why this should be so. These individuals are well aware that they stand, in Newton's words, "on the shoulders of giants." Their respect for the area in which they work makes them aware of the long line of previous contributions to it, putting their own in perspective. They're also aware of the role that luck played in their own achievements. And they're usually so focused on future projects and current challenges that past accomplishments, no matter how outstanding, are no longer very interesting to them. At the same time, they know that in comparison with others, they have accomplished a great deal. And this knowledge provides a sense of security, even pride.

7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping. When tests of masculinity/femininity are given to young people, over and over one finds that creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers.

This tendency toward androgyny is sometimes understood in purely sexual terms, and therefore it gets confused with homosexuality . But psychological androgyny is a much wider concept referring to a person's ability to be at the same time aggressive and nurturant, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive, regardless of gender. A psychologically androgynous person in effect doubles his or her repertoire of responses. Creative individuals are more likely to have not only the strengths of their own gender but those of the other one, too.

8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. It is impossible to be creative without having first internalized an area of culture. So it's difficult to see how a person can be creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic. Being only traditional leaves an area unchanged; constantly taking chances without regard to what has been valued in the past rarely leads to novelty that is accepted as an improvement. The artist Eva Zeisel, who says that the folk tradition in which she works is "her home," nevertheless produces ceramics that were recognized by the Museum of Modern Art as masterpieces of contemporary design. This is what she says about innovation for its own sake:

"This idea to create something is not my aim. To be different is a negative motive, and no creative thought or created thing grows out of a negative impulse. A negative impulse is always frustrating. And to be different means 'not like this' and 'not like that.' And the 'not like'—that's why postmodernism, with the prefix of 'post,' couldn't work. No negative impulse can work, can produce any happy creation. Only a positive one."

But the willingness to take risks, to break with the safety of tradition, is also necessary. The economist George Stigler is very emphatic in this regard: "I'd say one of the most common failures of able people is a lack of nerve. They'll play safe games. In innovation, you have to play a less safe game, if it's going to be interesting. It's not predictable that it'll go well."

9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. Without the passion, we soon lose interest in a difficult task. Yet without being objective about it, our work is not very good and lacks credibility. Here is how the historian Natalie Davis puts it:

"I think it is very important to find a way to be detached from what you write, so that you can't be so identified with your work that you can't accept criticism and response, and that is the danger of having as much affect as I do. But I am aware of that and of when I think it is particularly important to detach oneself from the work, and that is something where age really does help."

10. Creative people's openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment. Most would agree with Rabinow's words: "Inventors have a low threshold of pain. Things bother them." A badly designed machine causes pain to an inventive engineer, just as the creative writer is hurt when reading bad prose.

Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also leaves you exposed and vulnerable. Eminence invites criticism and often vicious attacks. When an artist has invested years in making a sculpture, or a scientist in developing a theory, it is devastating if nobody cares.

Deep interest and involvement in obscure subjects often goes unrewarded, or even brings on ridicule. Divergent thinking is often perceived as deviant by the majority, and so the creative person may feel isolated and misunderstood.

Perhaps the most difficult thing for creative individuals to bear is the sense of loss and emptiness they experience when, for some reason, they cannot work. This is especially painful when a person feels his or her creativity drying out.

Yet when a person is working in the area of his of her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss. Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake. Without this trait, poets would give up striving for perfection and would write commercial jingles, economists would work for banks where they would earn at least twice as much as they do at universities, and physicists would stop doing basic research and join industrial laboratories where the conditions are better and the expectations more predictable.

From Creativity: The Work and Lives of 91 Eminent People , by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, published by HarperCollins, 1996.

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Type a Personality: Characteristics and Implications in Modern Society

This essay about Type A personalities explores their defining traits and impact in modern society. It uncovers the ambitious drive, competitiveness, and time urgency characteristic of Type A individuals, while also delving into the stress and vulnerability they may experience. From corporate boardrooms to athletic arenas, this analysis sheds light on how Type A personalities navigate success and relationships, highlighting both their strengths and potential pitfalls in a dynamic world.

How it works

In the intricate mosaic of human personality, the Type A persona emerges as a vibrant hue, distinguished by its fervor, dynamism, and unyielding pursuit of objectives. Unraveling the depths of Type A personality entails a journey through its manifold facets, decoding its defining traits, and unraveling its ramifications within the intricate tapestry of contemporary society.

At its essence, the Type A disposition is often synonymous with ambition, rivalry, and a palpable sense of urgency. Individuals embodying this archetype are propelled by an insatiable hunger for success, erecting towering aspirations and doggedly pursuing them with unwavering resolve.

They thrive amidst the crucible of high-pressure scenarios, where obstacles serve as catalysts for their relentless march towards triumph.

A quintessential hallmark of Type A individuals lies in their penchant for time efficiency and impetuosity. They exhibit an innate compulsion to maximize productivity, deftly juggling myriad tasks and striving to accomplish them within compressed timeframes. This perpetual sense of urgency manifests in a predisposition towards impatience, agitation, and an unquenchable thirst to surpass both personal and external benchmarks.

Furthermore, Type A personalities are distinguished by their competitive fervor. They revel in environments that afford them the opportunity to gauge their mettle against peers, viewing competition as a propellant for self-improvement and advancement. Whether ensconced within academic realms, professional spheres, or personal pursuits, they are propelled by an unyielding resolve to excel and emerge victorious, often setting the bar impossibly high.

However, beneath the veneer of confidence and ambition resides a vulnerability intrinsic to Type A personas. The ceaseless pursuit of objectives can exact a toll on their mental and physical well-being, precipitating heightened levels of stress, anxiety, and fatigue. The relentless pursuit of perfection may engender a sense of dissatisfaction with accomplishments, propelling them towards unattainable standards of excellence and perpetual self-critique.

Moreover, the competitive ethos of Type A personalities can strain interpersonal relations, as they may grapple with collaboration and teamwork. Their assertiveness and proclivity for leadership roles may teeter on the brink of dominance, alienating those who favor a more collaborative approach. Furthermore, the relentless pursuit of success may precipitate neglect of personal relationships and a sacrifice of work-life equilibrium at the altar of professional acclaim.

In the contemporary milieu, the prevalence of Type A personas reverberates across diverse domains, spanning boardrooms to athletic arenas. Within corporate corridors, Type A individuals often gravitate towards leadership echelons, leveraging their drive and ambition to steer organizational triumph. Yet, their relentless ethos and demanding demeanor may engender a high-stress milieu, potentially fostering employee burnout and attrition.

In the scholastic realm, Type A personalities are drawn to intellectually stimulating pursuits, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and innovation. Their pursuit of academic excellence may propel them towards seminal breakthroughs and accomplishments, yet the attendant pressure may exact a toll on their psychological and physiological well-being.

Furthermore, within the realm of sports and athletics, Type A personalities flourish in competitive arenas, pushing the envelope of their physical capabilities in pursuit of victory. Their unwavering resolve to outstrip rivals can propel them towards athletic eminence, yet the intense pressure may render them susceptible to injury and exhaustion.

In summation, comprehending Type A personality necessitates an exploration of its defining attributes and ramifications within contemporary society. While individuals embodying this archetype often epitomize drive, ambition, and competitiveness, they are also ensnared by stress, perfectionism, and susceptibility to burnout. Embracing the multidimensional nature of Type A personality is pivotal in cultivating a supportive milieu that nurtures their potential while safeguarding their well-being. Ultimately, by harnessing the strengths and ameliorating the vulnerabilities intrinsic to Type A personas, society can cultivate a culture of achievement, equilibrium, and resilience.

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