Making Sense of People: Detecting and Understanding Personality Differences

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

Why is this so? Why do traits with a moral quality have such a powerful effect on us? Is this just a reflection of the cultural influences that Allport emphasized?

Paranoid—A pattern of distrust and suspiciousness such that others’ motives are interpreted as malevolent. “Reads hidden, demeaning, or threatening meanings into benign remarks or events.”

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

improvement. Instead of simply singing the praises of a series of virtues, Franklin wrote out a personal to-do list and a step-by-step plan for upgrading one virtue at a time.

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

“[T]hough I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted

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.

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.