Who are you?
How my search for this answer, led me to rethink The Big Five Personality Traits theory into Three Essential Traits.
The start of seeking
I recently stumbled upon, wanting to self assest, how do I score on the five personality traits. I went to wikipedia page, read all of the parameters, and drawn some drawings, each representing one parameter, and I scored myself where I felt, I belong. Very scientific, I know.
Out of the boredom or somehow, an idea visited me: “Hey isn’t it too complicated? Like, that many parameters? Surely, some parameters needs to be redundant here.” So, I started to follow the idea. By redundant I mean: “Finding a subset of personality traits, that I can create one of the traits as a combination of two more essential traits.”
I think the inspiration, or the confidence to follow this idea, came after recalling how every color of your display is a combination of Red, Green and Blue led lights. Essential colors, when combined can create every possible color. “Maybe personality has the same!”
So here I was, on the journey to discover the subset of the 5 personality traits, describing a human being. An usual evening.
The first Essential: Sensitivity
I think this one is the first essential. I did write maybe 2000 words before, where I put the different scenarios or situations together, and this one kept popping up as a no-brainer. I call it sensitivity, but they mark it as neuroticism. I think this one, influences all others.
I would describe sensitivity as: “How sensitive you are, to the emotions and feeling that are arising.” Hold on, hold on, I would put it a bit different. “How sensitive you are to the stimulus of the environment.” It might be a rock, or just an insult. Right after it, I came across the first adept to go out of the essential trait group.
The first one out: Agreeableness
The first one that I combined was the Agreeableness. I just took the sensitivity one and the extroversion and here we go.
Before, I would go to an explanation, some people may not know what Extroversion is. Well even I have a hard time describing it. But, I imagine it as a field around you that you are aware of. C.G.Jung saw it as where are you more naturally drawn to. Inner world or outer world? Or another one is where do you take your energy from, being in a solitude or among other people?
Insight: Walking outside in the woods, I found out a different way to frame it. There is an ever present pull to go deeper and deeper into your inner workings. Or on the contrary, extroverts are pulled to expand as much as possible to be all over the place. Those two opposite pulls may determine where is your orientation.
Still, I see the extroversion more as an abstract or invisible bubble around you that you are aware of. You know how they say Tom Hardy was all over the place? No? Me neither, but there were some actors who said it when meeting him.
Finding Agreeableness
Now, depending upon the sensitivity aspect and the extroversion parameter you can almost calculate your agreeableness parameter. Here’s an example.
Imagine someone saying something preposterous like “Pickle Rick is stupid.” When you are too sensitive and too extroverted, like the surrounding field is too big, you would think twice till you would speak up about your disagreement with that statement. You would just let it past by you, and rather focus on other Rick and Morty moments, that you can both agree on. Basically you can combine those two parameters, and “wuala” you have how agreeable and disagreeable someone is.
Now your extroversion parameter distingueshes just what you get entageled with more. Are you more: “Let’s change the world” or “Let’s change the way we think about world?” I am not really great at making up introvert dissagreements. Maybe if I would mess with your inner Theory of everything or Physics that’s where you would be more senstive. Like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. Introverted, but not sensitive equals dissagreable. See? It works!
After that finding I said: “Okay, I know you’ve been researched for many, many years as a standalone parameter, but it’s time to say goodbye to measureing you agreeablness trait. We don’t need you anymore!” and the parameter agreed because it’s in his name you know.
Side note to Extroversion: If you have ever played a game like World of Warcraft which characters were you playing? The combat close ones like Rogue, Warrior or the spell ones from distance: Mage, Shaman or Druid. This could also show you your extroversion. It’s not a random thing the characters you picked.
The tricky couple: Openness and Conscientiousness
Now, I went to the other ones, and that’s where it got a bit tricky. Openess and Conscientiousness. I thought one of those two, is redundant. I felt as if both of them describe the same thing, the same underlying phenomena.
So, I went there, and started thinking about divergent thinking and convergent thinking. Divergent is when you are coming up with ideas and not really judging them if they are good or not. You just shoot them there, pam, pam, pam one after the other. When writing it’s the first phase where you are creating the first draft. Now the other mode is when you try to make sense of it all. Try to edit it and put it somehow together. This call to go to the details, to really make sure everything fits. Chaos and order. Where you find yourself more, is the parameter that I am trying to pin point here.
You can see Openess in play here!
As Jordan said: he shoots the ideas all over the place, and it’s really just picking up jumping form one to another. If that makes you uncomfortable and you would like some order, I have a good example for you: Jocko Willink. He talks about plans and stuff. Yeah, you wouldn’t find too many plans with the high openess people or a structure. The line or the edge where you feel most comfortble between the chaos and order is basically the trait we are looking for.
I think of an Openness as a trait symbolizing your relationship with fear. The reason why I am connecting it here, is because what I heared Peterson spoke about once. He made a comment over a study where people were give an psylocibin and after a transformational trip, peoples trait of Openness has jumped susbtantially to the more open direction.
Also it make sense if you think about it in terms: ”open to experience.” The more healthy relationship with fear you would have the more open and less afraid you would be to experience stuff. So that’s another point of view how to look at this trait.
I know, I’ve put a lot of ideas here, but another examples that I see as extreme high in Openness is Kanye West. The Podcast with Joe Rogan, when he spoke, it was too much even for me to keep track of where he is with ideas. And the way he approached fear and worry. Like a Stoic but he uses God terms!
On contrary you can pick a guy who makes really stiff, and rigid plans and sticks to them no matter what. Where the planning, and being really caucious is the more closed approached.
The next one out: Conscioutiousness
So, I had a bit of a graps upon what it is or whats’ the underlying trait that I am focusing on, but I still couldn’t decide. That’s not true! I thought the Openness is the one that is the more fitting here. Like the Conscioutiousness is just a one that is a combination of your Senstivity and Openness.
You know those people who want to clean even tree because they want order to be in everything. I think it’s because they have big senstivity, and there is a control freak tendency there, and combined with the little openess; ‘Vuala’ and you have your:
“Let’s make order in how the trees look like in the woods.“
See it there? I love you mom, but the moment you were scrubbing the tree I lost any hope of seeing you as a normal. Remember Monica from the Friends series? Yep that one.
And just mixing in the Extraversion parameter here and you would be seeing people wanting to have order inwordly or outworldly. “Huhu!” see how it’s working? That’s so great to see it working! (If you are not seeing it working, that’s your fault!)
Essential traits founded?
Now, then I was thinking: “Can I make a smaller subset?” But, I thought, that I am no longer able to do it without loosing a key component.
Maybe the two, extroversion and the senstivity. Imagine extraversion as an invisible field around you, that you are sensing, and connecting to. How big is that filed depends upon your extraversion and introversion. I think it can expand and contract depending on the situations. So in a strange sense the …. Hang in a minute.
Are some introverts just a really sensitive big field people? Like, they don’t go outside or don’t present in front of the audience because their buble or the field is soo big around them, and the emotions or feelings are so overwhleming that they rather not do it?
I would come back to the C.G.Jung definition if the interest is on your inner working or your outer workings. If you are more interested… Okay, here I think, I need to put a bit more thinking reps in.
Questioning the Openness
Openess how to connect openness here. How does the openess fits into this bubble like field around you combining with senstitivity. It’s the way how open you are for the new things to come in, into your buble. Your ability for being open to the bubble invitations.
Hmm, but then it would suggest that openness and senstivity are almost the same. They are just saying, how open you are to those energies of the ideas or other people things, coming into your field of awareness. How big is your field depends on the parameter extroversion, and the openess to those. No, I think we should keep them seperate. Because they are didfferent. Or?
I am not sure anymore about keeping the openess and sensitivity as seperate parameters. I thought about sensitivity how much do you have reaction to the feelings coming your awareness buble, and openess is tightly connected to that, it’s almost sounds similar.
Test situation
Okay, let’s put it through a test of situations. Imagine someone screaming at you depending upon your openess and sensitivity are just describing the same. Or do they? Is the senstivity the one to… Is the senstivity desribing how big of an experience would this man scremaing be for you, imagine the thought as a cloud marching towards you how big it would be, is the parameter of senstivity. It influence really tightly your openness towards that cloud. That would be the openness aspect of it. There is still; how open you are to that screaming thought, even though you may experience it as a really powerfull and overwhelming experience overall.
I think, openness it’s the sense how much or describe how much open you are interanlly for the ideas coming into your buble independent of the sensitivity.
You may close yourself a bit more when the senstivity is high, like your dad telling you who you are, you may close there. But it’s a combination or it’s still a parameter, of the essentials. The question is simple could I recreate the openness with just extroversion and sensitivity. I don’t think so. There are people who are open to even those father talks, and there is a parameter, even though, independent of the sensitivity parameter, and the buble around you thing.
I just think the openess has lived through the scrutiny of the thoughts to be an independent parameter. Welcome you!
It’s just funny that the people you would describe as introverst may be just people who are really sensitive, and their field of feeling the emotions in the air is really high! And people who may be labeled as extroverts they are better withstanding the emotions so their senstivity is lower to negative emotions. To all emotions if we look at them as energies. They can withstand a bigger burst when it comes to energy buble coming your way.
I think of close minded people, as some who have a structure, or a group of thoughts that they may be really senstivity to changing. Like, they don’t like chaos that much, their ability to withstand or bare with the choas may be less as the people with high openess. So they rather stick close minded and keep their structure intact. I see it always in connection to the field of awareness how big it is also may influence the way how much they need to protect the field.
The holy grail of theories: Finding connections to matter
First time I hearded about it was from Dr. Jud Brewer talking about how the holy grail of psychology is when you have all the three aspects of a theory working across all the three domains. The physical, finding the physical underpinning or somehow measure the parameters. It’s basically finding a pairing of the matter world to all your theories. I don’t know about the third one then. Moving on!
I think the big 5 personality traits were keeping or being afloat just because they were too abstract. Too much of them, so you would have hard time finding the agreebelness and mapping it to some neruotransmitters in the brain jellyfish (yeah I mean the whole thing, from finger neurons to eye neurons.)
Extroversion and a neuron pathways
However, when it comes to extroversion, I think there were already few studies explaining this inner world external world orientations. Where they connected it to some regions in the brain, and how they can measure how meditators were focusing on inner workings and outer working. And the extroversion parameter, I am talk about, is basically the resting position of yours. What is your natural position when it comes to focus on inner world or outer world.
Seratonin marries Sensitivity
Now, when it comes to senstivitiy, I think you would connect this to the neurotransmitter called seratonin. If I recall this correctly, Jordan peterson was talking how seratonin is the one neruotransmitter regualting the response you have to the emotions. Especially when it comes to his lobster, theory how you uncosciously keep score in the social hierarchy and that’s what influences how overwhelming the emotions are for you. Or another adept for matching it with matter is endocannabiod sytem?
I think I zoomed to close to the one neurotransmitter here; Seratonin. It might be one of the most important ones when it comes to senstivity to emotions, but I would zoom out here and measure, nervous system here. Basically the reaction of your nervous system to external stimuly is what would ultimatelly correlate with your baseline Sensitivity result. You know the whole deal about sympatetic and parasympathetic nervous sytem state.
Openess as …, well that’s tricky.
Now the last one openeess. “Pfuu,” that’s a tricky one, right? To what would I map this parameter. I can’t really find anything in the matter world that resembles this thing. That we could experiamentally measure, and find a correlation between measurening the parameter with questionare outside and then measure some matter in the body, and they would both match. This is maybe for someone in the scientific community to tackle.
The willingness or openess to the experience and conenct it to the some matter. If not. It seems like the openess would need to be even that would be too reduntdant, I would need to leave the trio. But I don’t like it. I like the “Top gear” being with three people.
Maybe the openess is the connection between the sensitivity seratonin, and inword and outword parameters?
Oh neurotransmitters! I know what openess can be. It’s the place that they were measuring. How it’s called. It s a circrut in the brain, default mode network. Right! That’s three, here we go! I am sorry unvirese, I doubted that it needs to stay. Yeah, that’s where If we would measure that place during testing of the people we could correlate it to the paramtere that would come outside of the personality test.
We need experiments people
Now what we need is simple. Couple of scientist, couple of people, and they would go and put them inside the fMRI. But I heard you can’t move while in the fMRI, so It would be harder to experiemntally prove this theory of finally finding the core of the personality traits.
I am feeling anxious, I think I stumbled upon something here. Jordan Peterson may be proud.
Personality
Remeber personality isn’t a box you once put onto your head and could never go outside. It’s just a thing that: “each of us, each of you is in a certain respects, like all other people, like some other people and like no other person.”
I really liked a definition of personality of one guy, I’m sorry Mr. Brian Little.
I can’t put into words how much I like, how he phrased personality here. So enjoy thinking about your own color through the lenses of the new personality Trio: Openess, Extroversion and Sensitivity.
Bye, rather very brave into what he’s proposing here,
Luke
