Making Sense of People: Detecting and Understanding Personality Differences

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.

Repeated testing shows considerable stabilization of a person’s Big Five scores by age 20, significantly more stabilization by age 30, and a little more stabilization until about age 50.50

routines in the face of changing circumstances.

The narcissistic pattern has other dark sides. One of the most common is

The ten patterns I described come from psychiatry’s diagnostic manual, which was designed to identify them in their full-blown and maladaptive forms, called personality disorders. But these patterns also exist in milder forms that need not be maladaptive.

• 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

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—Strengths such as self-control and prudence that protect against excess • Courage—Strengths such as bravery and persistence that help accomplish goals in the face of opposition, external or internal

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

Tranquility—Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable. • Chastity—Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation. • Humility—Imitate Jesus and Socrates.