Making Sense of People: Detecting and Understanding Personality Differences

most Americans who lived in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shared the view that character was the most significant part of personality—and the part that could be improved through conscious effort.

those who are low in Agreeableness are more likely to rise to the top of their fields.

Scores of genetically unrelated children who were adopted and raised in the same family also show no effect of this shared environment.

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

Galton that if the characteristic behaviors

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.

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

psychologists who wish to keep the actual structure and functioning of personality free from judgments of moral acceptability….

in ways that we have come to expect. They also elicit stability because they keep us behaving in ways that they have come to expect. This mutual stabilization of our social environment plays a big part in the creation and maintenance of the two overarching aspects of personality that I now turn to: character and sense of identity.