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You’ve got – personality!
Which one of the four basic personality types are you: average, reserved, self-centred or role model? I’d like to say I’m ‘role model’, if only because the other labels sound either bland or downright negative. But having learned what it takes to be a role model, I doubt that I’ve got the chops for it.
The conclusion that there are four (and only four) general personality types emerges from a large-data study recently conducted by Northwestern University in Chicago. The study examined the extent to which people display five character traits—neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Although it emphasized that people can and do score somewhere in between in every category, it nevertheless found ‘clusters’ of traits, or “higher densities than you would expect by chance” as one of the co-authors says.
So, for example, most people are “average”— which I suppose you can say is a tautology. An average person is fairly agreeable and conscientious, quite extroverted and neurotic, but not terribly open. A “reserved” person is fairly stable in most areas, but low on openness and neuroticism. A “self-centred” person ranks high on extroversion, but below average on openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. And lastly, a “role model” has a high quotient of extroversion, agreeable- ness and conscientiousness, combined with a low level of neuroticism.
In a finding that will come as a blinding insight to anyone who has parented a teenaged child, the study also notes that personality types can evolve over a lifetime: younger people rank high in self-centredness, while more role models emerge in the elderly. Oh, and women are more likely to be role models than men—which again should come as no surprise to anyone who has known a woman.
My first reaction is to press the panic button and say I must learn how to become more open, agreeable and conscientious. But on reflection, it would be a dreary existence if all of us were above average and everyone got to be a role model. Fallibility is more interesting than perfection. And our role models have got to have some subjects to be models to.
Whether an “average” person should ever be matched up with a “self-centred” person, or whether putting two “role models” together is a recipe for disaster is presumably the meat for another large-data follow-up study. Dating sites are no doubt waiting with bated breath for the results.
All of these findings assume that you can accurately discern a person’s personality traits. I would rank myself high on “agreeableness,” for instance, but no doubt just about everyone else on the planet would say the same about themselves. So objective methods are required. But just how do you measure someone for “conscientiousness,” for example?
Answer: cue the marshmallow test. The marshmallow test was invented by a psychologist named Walter Mischel, whose obituary was in the paper just the other day. It ranks right up there in the psychological test firmament with Stanley Milgram’s pain threshold administration experiments and B.F. Skinner’s white rat box. It measures the capacity for delayed gratification, which crudely approximates conscientiousness.
Its beauty lies in its simplicity. Give a young child a marshmallow and set it in front of her. Tell her she can eat the marshmallow if she wants, but if she refrains from doing so until the tester returns to the room, she can have two marshmallows. The assumption is that two marshmallows are better than one. The Internet is replete with videos of cute four-year olds toying with their marshmallows in as they struggle to resist temptation. I like to think of the test as a means of dividing the Homer Simpsons (little selfrestraint) of the world from the Lisa Simpsons (a lot of self-restraint), although in the Simpsons’ case I would use donuts as the bait. (I would use Bert and Ernie as alternative examples, but will not because of the recent shadow cast over their gender preferences: this column does not trade in controversy).
Supporters of the marshmallow test say it is a useful prognosticator of success. The extent to which a child can delay gratification, they argue, is an indicator of how well developed is her “executive” functioning; which in turn is a marker for future success in life. (The finding has been challenged on the basis its sampling wasn’t broad enough, and others have found that economic status plays a more decisive role in predicting future success than does self-restraint).
And whether success always goes to those who exercise self-restraint is a legitimate question; sometimes, Mr. Simpson is proven to have made a wise decision in reaching for that early donut. I wonder what personality type fits him. Anyone got a suggestion?
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