Personality Analysis Project

I recently completed a personality experiment (for Psychology's sake) and I will be going into the details in this post. I wanted to take someone who I have known for a while and make predictions about their personality in a variety of ways.

For this project, I interviewed a friend of mine from Hardin Simmons (who wishes to go by "Sasha" for the sake of anonymity). For starters, I asked them some straight forward questions in order to understand how they view themselves.

Questions

Sasha hides from conflict to avert
aggression.

1. What is one thing that you believe sets you apart from people your age
1. I think I am abnormally high in agreeableness for my age, to a fault even. I typically prefer to avoid conflict so much so that I will sometimes lie or concede my position when I am in an argument just to get it done and over with. The positive part of this is that I am very flexible and can work with most people I come across and I consider beyond the bottom line when people fail, like that someone may just be having a bad day or something along those lines.
2. What are some traits that you believe you share with your parents or your siblings? What are some traits that you don't share with them?
1. Much like my father I am quite carefree and friendly as we both will often become familiar with random people around town, however I am not as assertive as my father. In fact, I have basically inherited everything about my stature from my father. I got my deep voice from my mother (no she does not have a deep voice, her father did) and my nose likely comes from her. Beyond that I am uncertain what exact physical traits I have inherited from her. I can say that my sister is a lot like my mother, in that both are introverted unlike me, although both me and my mother enjoy being alone from time to time. I am a good student like my sister but not nearly as good of a student as my sister. 
3. What is one social/emotional problem that you faced during childhood? Do you have a similar struggle in the present?
1. When I was in elementary school I was bullied by the other kids, I was only able to find friends amongst a select group of people who unfortunately moved away one by one. I remember the other kids be quite unkind to me but of course I also remember being rather annoying little boy in some ways so I sometimes think I understand why they were not exactly kind to me. Another trait that I had was a short, I would sometimes become so angry that I would scream at the other kids. But I by no means have a similar struggle today. The remnants of that may still remain. For instance, I would not be surprised if my agreeableness came from the bullying, but I am certainly not bullied today and like I said I get along with most people.

Other Accounts

A friend of both me and Sasha, Nora, gave her two cents about Sasha:

"For starters, they're definitely one of the friendliest people I have ever met. The strange thing is that they are also introverted. When I see them, they are very friendly, but they're usually doing solitary activities. They also have an interesting taste in music.. Weird Al Yankovic?"

Sasha is known for their warmth and their cheer.

I can say that Sasha's answers and Nora's account seem to be true as far I can tell for as long as I have known them. In addition to the previous observations, I would like to include some information about their life choices. Sasha is a psychology major who hopes to have their own private clinic someday. I have personally known them to be very objective and logical, even in social settings (also possibly correlated with their inclination towards a scientific field of study). Sometimes, however, they can expose their goofy side. They are cheerful most of the time. Sasha will avoid social interaction if they are in a bad mood. 

There are some aspects of Sasha's personality that I can infer from these statements. I will make some predication of what Sasha could possibly score on certain personality tests based on my research. If you are unfamiliar with  the following test, click on the title of the section to find out more information.

Five Factor Model

There are the obvious aspects that would correlate with a high score in agreeableness. For starters, Sasha is not assertive or aggressive, even to the point of avoiding conflict entirely. This makes for great social skills, yet it doesn't help with problem solving skills if a problem does occur in a friendship/relationship.

They could possible score moderate-high in openness. The avoidance of conflict could make them more susceptible to a variety of experiences because they are not grounded to a specific view strongly enough to object an opposing one, therefore, they are more willing to try new things.

Sasha has a free spirit, flowing through life like the ocean.

I would say that their extroversion is about average with a slight lean to introversion. Caroline Beaton, journalist for the Psychology Today website has stated that numerous psychological studies have concluded that the majority of the population is neither extroverted nor introverted (they would be called ambiverts). It is clear that my friend has social tendencies because their agreeableness makes it easier for them to get along with people. They have also stated, however, that they do enjoy having alone time (which is also backed up by Lane's statement).  

As far as Neuroticism and Conscientiousness are concerned, I have little evidence to support either side of those spectrums. I could guess that Sasha has a moderate-low Neuroticism level considering their statement about being "carefree" (although saying that they have a low score is a stretch simply because there is not enough evidence to support an extreme association with the trait). Conscientiousness is possibly moderately-low for the same reason (being "care-free").

Conclusion

I found that analyzing the personality of someone close to me has made me more mindful of other people's uniqueness. I enjoyed getting to know my friend on a more analytical level than before. 


Sources

"The Big Five Personality Traits" by Kendra Cherry

"The Majority of People are not Introverts or Extroverts" by Caroline Beaton

Personality Psychology

Personality has been a subject of mystery to mankind since the beginning of the earth. It has been the subject of debate as early as the time of ancient Greece with Hippocrates theory of Humors (polar opposite traits balance on a scale) and Plato's four personality type model.

In modern times, there are hundreds of systems that have been designed with the task of defining what makes someone unique and different from others. Today I would like to focus on the most widely used test in the world and what my opinions of this test are.

Five for All

Even through traits have different levels of
strength, in balance together they create personality

The Five Factor model (or the "Big Five" as it is more commonly known) is considered by most
psychologists to be an accurate model for defining personality. It was built off of centuries of research, from Hans Eysenck's inventory to Freud's psychoanalytic theories. What the predecessors to the Five Factor model offered was multiple personality traits, allowing for the dimensions of personality to be fleshed out properly.

The Five Factor model uses five personality traits, each with varying degrees of applicableness:

1. Openness [to experience]: Synonymous with intellect or imagination; high scores indicate creativity, abstract thinking skills, complexity of thought and an acceptance of variety; low scores indicates routine oriented, narrowminded, and traditional
2. Conscientiousness: Synonymous with self-control; high scores indicate discipline, good work ethic, enduring, and organized; low scores indicate procrastinative, dislike of commitment, and impulsive
3. Extroversion: Related to social interactions; high scores indicate an assertive demeanor, social confidence, and outgoing; low scores indicate reservation, thoughtfulness, and introspection
4. Agreeableness: How you get along with other people, high scores indicate altruism, optimism, kindness, and selflessness; low scores indicate a cold heart, bluntness, and ill-temper
5. Neuroticism: Related to Confidence; high scores indicate shyness, anxious, pessimism, and over sensitivity; low scores indicate adventurous, confident, and comfort in their own skin 

My Results

To test the Five Factor model, I decided to take the assessment for myself and analyze the results to see if they are in fact applicable to me. I took three varieties of the test and have posted the results in the images down below. The percentages are based on the percentile of the participants of each assessment.

"Big Five Personality Test" by Similar Minds

• Extroversion: 18%
• Orderliness (Conscientiousness): 72%
• Emotional Stability (Neuroticism): 48%
• Accommodation (Agreeableness): 34%
• Inquisitiveness (Openness): 62%

"The Big Five Project Personality Test" by Out of Service

• Open Mindess: 64%
• Conscientious: 63%
• Extroversion: 4%
• Agreeableness: 16%
• Negative Emotionality (Neuroticism): 95%

"Big Five Personality Test" by OpenPsychometrics

• Extroversion: 1%
• Emotional Stability (Neuroticisim): 26%
• Agreeableness: 1%
• Conscientiousness: 57%
• Intellect/Imagination (Openness): 59%

Opinions...

Through the three tests, Extroversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness seemed to remain consistent (or at least in the same range of scores). There is some discrepancy in Neuroticism because the first test states that emotional stability is average while the other two test deem this trait is incredibly high (the third test has inverted Neuroticism into "Emotional Stability", meaning that a low ES score is equal to a high N score and vice versa).

Overall, I find the Big Five personality test to be fairly accurate. The statistics could be compared to the results of other types of personality tests (respected ones at least) that I have taken and the results of both would be fairly similar. For example, my "Myers-Briggs type indicator" code is INTJ, and I find the description of that code to fit the statistics of the Five Factor model tests. 

I find this personality test to be helpfully in understanding myself a little bit more. I like that there's room for both positive and negative personality trait evaluation (instead of just patting the back of the test taker and giving them a huge ego). 

Catch you later!

Sources

Chapter 11 pdf 1 class resource (from Saylor Books)

"INTJ Personality" by 16 personalities

"The Big Five Personality Theory" by Positive Psychology Program

Developmental Psychology

For this week in my Psychology course, we have been studying Developmental Psychology. This is
"a branch of psychology that studies changes in human behavior from early life to death" according to Dictionary.com. Although Developmental psychology isn't an interest of mine, I will do my best to provide some good information concerning this topic.

What is the relationship between you and your mother?

This will mostly be a Q&A post, unlike my traditional lecture-style writings because of the requirements for this week's blog. Feel free to add your own thoughts about the questions and my answers in the comments! The following articles about developmental psychology provide some
questions that pertain to my analysis of my own experience with the field:

"The Developing Parent" by Marissa L. Diehner

1.Reflect on the way you were raised. Consider the parenting behaviors (e.g., rules, discipline strategies, warmth, and support) used in your household when you were a child. Why do you think your parents behaved this way? How do these factors fit with the influences on parenting described here? Provide specific examples of multiple influences on parenting.

My mother spent a lot of time with my sister and me. She wanted to bond with us because she never had that experience of bonding positively with her parents. Her strong sense of unity has influenced me to be careful about my possible future relationships with my potential spouse because I want to have a husband that will be fiercely loyal to me so that we will be bonded for the rest of our lives. 

As far as parental factors go, my mother exhibited mostly positive ones such as low anxiety and low negativity through her encouragement for us to pursue our academic goals. On the flip side, however, she doesn't care for socializing very much which I believe is a major cause of my own introverted nature. 

3.What type of parent do you envision yourself becoming? If you are a parent, how do you parent your child/children? How do you think this is similar to or different than the way you were raised? What influences exist in your life that will make you parent differently from your own parents?

I believe that I am most likely to be a stricter parent than most if I do get the chance to have children. I would make sure that my children understood the consequences of certain actions, but I would also make sure that they could have a consistent and stable environment to live so they could feel safe in a community. I want them to be able to have that structure in their lives so that they can build a future for themselves before they leave home to go to college. 

The fact that I am focusing heavily on my school work seems to predict that I will be late in having a romantic relationship of any sort, thus setting me apart from my mother (who didn't go to college for an extended amount of time and married my biological father at the age of 21). If I do become a parent, I will be much older and have more experience than my mother did when she had us (I was born when she was 23 years old). 

Every interaction is important to the bonding process.

"Attachment Through the Life Course" by R. Chris Fraley

1.What kind of relationship did you have with your parents or primary caregivers when you were young? Do you think that had any bearing on the way you related to others (e.g., friends, relationship partners) as you grew older?

I never had a strong relationship with a father figure growing up because my biological parents divorced when I was 2 years old and my stepdad (when I was 2-10 years old) was never emotionally close with me or my sister. My current stepdad does his best to fill in the role of a care provider and a father, and I appreciate it. On the other hand, I've lived with my mother for most of my life. She always made sure that we were taken care of and that we spent a lot of time together. 

I don't necessarily believe that the relationship I had with my parents in childhood impacts my friendships now. I have friends who are guys, and I have friends who are girls. I do think that I'm more independent than most people when it comes to relationships, however, because I was never anchored to a father in my early childhood. I have yet to be in a serious romantic relationship, so I am not sure how that whole scenario would play out. 

4.Some people, despite reporting insecure relationships with their parents, report secure, well-functioning relationships with their spouses. What kinds of experiences do you think might enable someone to develop a secure relationship with their partners despite having an insecure relationship with other central figures in their lives?

I think that the people who don't have secure relationships with their parents are actively trying to find secure relationships with other people, and they work hard to make it happen. Someone can develop secure relationships with their partner if they go through bonding experiences together (like disaster situations, hardships, and doing activities together). The reason why someone might not have been close with their parents could be that these bonding experiences were either always negative or they were none existent. Having positive bonding experiences will lead to secure relationships. 

Bye for Now!


Sources

Attachment Through the Life Course

Dictionary.com

The Developing Parent

Sensation and Perception

Our realities are designed by the stimuli that interact with us every moment of every day. Our world is made of the sensations that we feel and the perceptions that we hold. Even though these are the tools that we are given at birth to navigate life, these tools don't necessarily showcase the absolute truth to us. In this post, I will be focusing on how our brains experience our own specific types of realities through sensation and perceptions, particularly how it affects people with synesthesia.

The Senses

Our realities are clouded by how our senses perceive the world

.

Human beings have five basic sensors: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting, and Touching. Without
these sensations, we would be helpless to the world around us, being completely unaware of what is going on around us.

The Difference

Synesthesia is a condition where a person's senses are mixed together to create abnormal sensations. It is estimated that 4% of the general population has some form of Synesthesia. Neuroscientist David Seeing Sound, Tasting Color: Synesthesia" that Synesthesia is a blending of the senses in any way imaginable. Dr.Eagleman says that a Synesthete might not even suspect that they have Synesthesia because their reality has been shaped by this anomaly, so they accept it as an ultimate truth.
Eagleman explains in the Big Think video "


Some types of Synesthesia include:

• Grapheme-Color: To see a certain letter, number, or a different kind of character in a certain color 
• Chromesthesia: To see certain colors when certain sounds are heard
• Lexical-Gustatory: To experience certain tastes when reading/hearing certain words
• Mirror-Touch: To experience the same sensation that another person feels by looking at them
• Number-Form: To see numbers arranged in three-dimensional structures
• Ordinal-Linguistic Personification: To have certain personalities associated with certain characters
• And many more...

Stories of Synesthetes

Although I am not sure if I have synesthesia, I know that my mother is a synesthete. She has Ordinal-Linguistic Personification Synesthesia, specifically with letters of the alphabet. This explains part of the reason why my name has such an odd spelling. She believes that "A" should not be at the beginning of girl names because "A" is more masculine than feminine to her, hence why my name isn't spelled "Amelia". She also doesn't like "Y"'s personality, so she often replaces the "Y" in words with "I" or "IE". This is why my sister's name is "Marijane" instead of "Mary Jane".

Letters can be altered by Synesthesia

Another synesthete that I know about is Adam Neely, a popular music theory channel producer on YouTube. He has Grapheme-Color Synesthesia. Whenever he sees letters or numbers, they automatically are perceived in a certain color ("A" is seen in red, "B" is black/blue, "C" is a bright yellow, etc...). For Neely, the color of Arabic letters also correlates to the notes on a staff. For example, if there is a note on the staff that is called "A", he will see that note in red.

As Adam points out in his video, many musicians throughout history have coincidently had Grapheme-Color Synesthesia and Chromesthesia because of how those types of Synesthesia relate to music. To see the colors of the notes or to see the colors of sound gives songwriters a more tangible perception of the music and allows them to more quickly understand the notes that are being played.

In a stark contrast, however, Neely also proves that it is possible for everyone to have some form of Synesthesia in varying degrees of intensity. In his video | s y n e s t h e s i a | , Neely displays the "Bouba/Kiki effect", a classic game of linking shapes to sounds. In this experiment, participants are given two drastically different shapes and asked to identify one shape as "Bouba" and the other as "Kiki". One shape is distinctly sharp and jagged while the other is smooth and waved. The majority of participants in this experiment will choose the sharp shape as Kiki and the smooth one as Bouba.

Which one is "Kiki" and which one is "Bouba"?

I realize that this point may debunk my whole post, but I believe it needed to be included. There are people who have obvious signs of Synesthesia, but this doesn't mean that there's a definite YES or NO answer for everyone concerning Synesthesia.

Your Turn
On the talk show Good Mythical Morning, Link Neal and Rhett McLaughlin explore different types of Synesthesia in their episode titled "Can You Hear Colors? (TEST)". They provide some tests for Grapheme-Color, Chromesthesia, Lexical-Gustatory Synesthesia, and Mirror Touch Synesthesia. Feel free to watch the video and see for yourself if you have major signs of Synesthesia!

In conclusion, Synesthesia is one of the most fascinating topics pertaining to sensation and perception. I hope that there will be more answers as to what causes this phenomenon in the future. 

Sources

Seeing Sound, Tasting Color: Synesthesia

| s y n e s t h e s i a |

Can You Hear Colors? (TEST)

Biochemistry of Love

With Valentines day coming next Wednesday, I thought it would be a great idea to explore exactly
what happens to people when they experience Love and seeing what they understand about Love.

For this project, I decided to interview Lydia Page and Arturo Garcia. I got a taste of some of their personal experiences with their relationship and I explained to them the biological processes that occur when we are "in love" and the mystery of what goes on in the brain. I've included a video of the interview down below:

I based my interview on some of my own research (although I am one to admit that I was a little loose with the script!). The following notes may provide you with some more insight to the topic as you watch the video.

INTERVIEW NOTES:

"In my research, I have found a truth that the creatures of Earth are at their core social beings. Living organisms, from the largest whales to the most microscopic bacteria, tend to grow in communities, rely on each other for reproduction, and invest in each other for the future of their species. This truth is applicable to humans as well.

Lydia Page, Arturo Garcia, and myself. We
are the stars behind the hand puppets!

"There are many processes that occur in the human brain when “love” is experienced. Most of the sensations and emotions connected to love are generated in the interior parts of the brain, or the “primitive brain”, according to evolutionary terminology. The Vagus Nerve (or the 10th cranial nerve) transmits sensory input to this part of the brain and begins this cycle of unimaginable elation. The key player in this process is the Amygdala, an almond shaped part of the brain that controls love, fear, anger, desire, and other important emotions. These emotions become more permanent as the Hippocampus and the Cingulate Gyrus “save” these emotions to memory, thus causing you to repeatedly recall in your mind the person that you love.

"This love becomes more permanent with the neuropeptide known as Oxytocin. Oxytocin is responsible for the process of emotional bonding. The more time you spend with someone and the more you go through stressful situations with them, the more Oxytocin is released in your system and the more attached you will become to that person. In this light, it’s not surprising that the relationships between mothers and their children are some of the strongest in the entire human race because the children were in the mother’s womb for a significant amount of time, resulting in long periods of bonding.

"There is also a surge of Dopamine, the “feel good” neurotransmitter. Dopamine is the ultimate hormone for pleasure and feeling rewarded because it enhances movement and provides a surplus of energy when it is released. When two people first fall in love with each other, they experience a downpour of dopamine and become hyped with pleasurable sensations similar to taking cocaine, hence why some psychologists call this initial interaction the cocaine rush phase.

"In essence, the structure of your brain and the hormones in your body contribute to emotional development and changes in people’s behaviors."

Have a Happy Valentines!

Sources

Biochemistry of Love

Falling in Love is Like Smoking Crack Cocaine

Love and the Brain

What Parts of the Human Brain correspond to emotion or love?

Brain and Behavior

For our assignment this week, we got an in-depth look at how the condition of the brain affects a person's behavior and their reactions. Dr.Selvaraj (my introduction to psychology professor) assigned a series of TED talk videos that correlated with the weekly objective. The one that I would like to delve into in this post is "How your Brain decides what is beautiful" by cognitive neurologist Anjan Chatterjee.

The final face of Galton's experiment is
surprisingly charming despite the
original images used. 

Chatterjee began his speech by sharing a story of Sir Francis Galton, the father of modern eugenics. In 1878, Galton spoke to the scientists at the anthropological institute of Great Britain and Ireland about his new technique for creating composite photographs from the combination of multiple portraits. He was trying to find the "face of criminality" by combining the pictures of criminals, but he accidentally created a portrait of beauty and normality instead. The reason why the final image is visually attractive is because it complies with two factors that are considered beautiful: 

• Average: The face includes the traits of several faces to cancel out anomalies
• Symmetry: The face can be almost been vertically mirrored perfectly

Social constructs can define
the meaning of beauty and
mold people to be different
from their true selves.

There are a few theories to explain why these factors (along with the influence of hormones) make up the criteria for the standard of beauty. The Evolutionary Theory states that these traits can be a sign of health or sexual fitness and that we are biologically inclined to be looking out for these signs. When someone sees an attractive person, without even consciously thinking about it, their visual cortex (the part of the brain that registers sight) and their amygdala (the part of the brain associated with emotion and pleasure) are both stimulated, suggesting that they find the person desirable and more worthy of their attention.

There is also the theory that social constructs define the standard of beauty. Samantha Tamburello, writer for The Odyssey website, says that your idea of beauty is most likely an "idea of a default human being that you have in your mind, and you're just not quite fitting the quota". This idea is integrated into the subconscious by advertising, social media, television productions, and other influences. These influences are repeated over and over again until the neurons in our brains that are dedicated to these social constructs have been reinforced and an underlying thought has been made semi-permanent. It takes conscious effort to undo it's effects.

This is applicable to both the negative and the positive side of beauty. While in most media, a smooth and symmetrical face is given to the protagonist, the face of the antagonist is often distorted. This creates the connotation that beauty should always be associated with good people and anything less than that is from evil. This leads to less opportunities for less attractive people because the more attractive ones are given special treatment and advantages.

Should we let our subconscious thoughts distort our
view of ourselves and other people?

Despite the premise of these theories, it's quite clear that beauty has an impact on our cognitive states and how we act towards other people. We should all do our best to consciously choose to judge people on their character rather than their appearances because their looks alone cannot contribute to a safer society, loving others, or even maintaining a steady job performance. Just as the world around us changes, so should our approach to beauty and how much we let our instincts control us.

Adios!

Sources

Why Beauty is a Social Construct
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/beauty-social-construct

The Neuroscience of Pleasure and Addiction
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201405/the-neuroscience-pleasure-and-addiction

Composite Photos

http://galton.org/composite.htm

Psychology and Neuroscience Beta

https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/5740/are-there-recent-theories-on-physiognomy

Composite Types

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/ncc375/galton/index.html