By Nisal Rukshan
Human Life is a unique gift we received from nature. According to the teaching of the religions, it’s explained how difficult to get this human life and the worth of life we gained.
Even though biologically we are equalized with organs, one another has unique differences in social behaviors. In psychology, it’s the so-called facts of “Nature and Nurture”. Nature explained the things you inherited from heredity or genetics. Nature called it’s all about you absorb from environment etc.
Most of the time we are taking about someone’s Personality. Actually are know the real meaning of human personality?
Among many explanations, “Personality contains all of the thoughts, patterns of behaviour, and attitudes that impact how a person interprets own selves and what He or She believes around others and the environment” can be identified as one of the best explanation of personality.
There are several personality types and theories discussed by veteran psychologists. Each theory has vivid expiations on human personality. But in the present, theory of the Big Five Personality traits are most popular and recognized by psychologists.
As human beings, the identification of personality type will help up to a greater extent in day-to-day life. Specially helps to enhance harmony, peace, collectiveness, understanding, respect and much more. Hence will go through the Big Five Personality to know it better.
Each of this five factors having two extremes as follows
Personality trait
Low end
High end
Openness
Closed
Open
Conscientiousness
Spontaneous
Conscientious
Extroversion
Introverted
Extroverted
Agreeableness
Hostile
Agreeable
Neuroticism
Stable
Neurotic
Openness is the 1st factor of this big five. It means being open to experiencing new things. Especially when it explains, tend to have a wide range of interests. When openness in a high Range is called open. Those personalities are the people very creative and like to experience new things, like facing challenges and abstract thinking etc.
When it comes to the other lower end of the Open status is the closed status of the personality. People who dislike change, not enjoying new things, resist new ideas, do not creative etc. belong to this category.
Conscientiousness is the 2nd factor of the Big Five. It explains the high level of awareness, and thoughtfulness together with goal-oriented and directed behaviours. When it is high (Conscientious) , people show the attitude of going for more details during tasks, spending more time for preparation, doing tasks timely and accurately etc.
Similarly, the low extreme of conscientiousness is called spontaneous, those personality types are not caring about anything, messing up things, don’t like to work in schedules and falling into tasks attitudes showers.
Extraversion is the 3rd factor of the Big Five. This also includes two extremes. The extraversion high people (Extroverted) are always enjoying being the centre of attention, making easy friends, having wide social connections, enjoying meeting new people, feels energized when with people-type activists.
The low status of Extraversion is called introverted. They do not like to expose more, feel tired when among crowds, less social interactions, are less talkative and find it difficult to start conversations.
Agreeableness personality trait includes trust, respect coordination with others, negotiation with others, listening to others, kindness and helping others (pro-social behavior).
The low end of this is called hostile. Those types of personalities are doesn’t care about others’ feelings, plan to get done his own need, take very little in others’ interests, rude and insult others etc.
Finally, Neuroticism is the personality trait finally remains to explain. Simply this neuroticism high type (Neurotic) of personality is characterized by sadness, stress, overthinking, anxiety, and moodiness. Meantime they are getting upset very easily, overthink minor matters, get a lot of stress and experience mood swings.
Stable is the lower end of Neuroticism. This trait includes being very relaxed, not much stressed, stable mood, sad or anxious very rarely having a personality.
Our life always swinging among these factors in low, high or mid ranges. This is not for the total prediction of human behaviors but to understand how it works according to big five explanations.
Specially, we must understand human personality impacts nature (genetics), environment (school, Home, Office), life incidents (positive or negative), Social Media and more.
The personality reacts whilst we are role-playing in social situations. By understanding this we can help someone under too much stress, moody or anxious to overcome those. In long term, such behaviors can create personality disorders, suicidal thoughts even anti-social behaviors. Even we can understand own behaviors and impact of interactions by referring the tricks.
Since this is a vast subject to study. Need to understand why, how, and when these happening. Especially be mindful of your thoughts feelings and behaviors in interactions and situations with end results. That will help you and others to stay with effective communication, better understanding, avoid or understand the risks especially people with self-harming or harming to others.
Nisal Rukshan Bsc (hons) Counselling Psychology