Making Sense of People: Detecting and Understanding Personality Differences

high Neuroticism is correlated with high achievement and creativity in people whose other traits keep them from falling into the deep hole that can be dug by persistent emotional distress.

Temperance—Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation. • Silence—Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation. • Order—Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time. • Resolution—Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve. • Frugality—Make no expe

Nevertheless, we can always change, sometimes substantially. The most common impetus is a disruptive personal event such as marriage, divorce, parenthood, a new job, or a religious conversion, any of which may lead to new opportunities, expectations, and adaptations.

As a result we keep getting more and more accustomed to thinking, feeling, and acting like our familiar selves, which further strengthens the established brain circuits. Consistency is also supported as we settle into permanent relationships because the people we have become close to have also grown accustomed to our ways and expect us to stay as w

In thinking about a person’s character, it is important to pay attention to the way someone expresses both universal and culture-based values.

The result of selecting a fairly constant social environment during young adulthood is that we subsequently spend most of our time with a limited cast of familiar people. These people provide stability because they keep behaving

• Humanity—Strengths such as kindness and love that involve tending to and befriending others • Justice—Strengths such as fairness and citizenship that contribute to community life • Wisdom—Strengths such as open-mindedness and love of learning that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge • Transcendence—Strengths such as awe and spirituality t

“[O]n multiple measures of personality and temperament, occupational and leisure-time interests, and social attitudes, monozygotic twins reared apart are about as similar as monozygotic twins reared together.”

This ability of some avoidants to assert themselves is not shared by people with another high N pattern, called dependent. Instead of fighting against their deep sense of insecurity, they seek out stronger people as potential protectors. The DSM’s description of this pattern includes: “has difficulty making everyday decisions without an excessive a

In 1875, Galton reported that 35 sets of identical twins showed much greater behavioral similarities than 20 sets of fraternal twins, which he took as support for the importance of heredity.