Knowing Someone’s Personality Is Key to Treating Them Appropriately

Or, a person’s personality isn’t buried deep inside

Do you know that the oh-so-famous The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (INTJ, ENFP, etc.) personality test has no scientific validity?

The test has no power to predict how happy you’ll be in a given situation, how you’ll perform at your job, or how satisfied you’ll be in your marriage.

Myers-Briggs relies on false binaries. For example, those good at thinking v those good at feeling. But in real life, people who are good at thinking are also likely to be good at feeling.

A Myers-Briggs questionnaire is like asking someone, “What do you like more, pillows or rains?” and expecting to get a revealing answer. About half the people who take it twice end up in entirely different categories the second time.

Despite that, if I ask people to raise their hands if they are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, 80–100% of the people would raise their hands. But, if I ask if they’re familiar with the Big Five personality traits, something that has a ton of rigorous research behind it, somewhere between 0–20% would raise their hands.

The Big Five traits are extroversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness. A series of questionnaires help you discover how high or low you score on each of these traits — whether, you’re extremely extroverted, or not so extroverted, or, like most of us, somewhere near the middle.

Having a deeper understanding of personality traits will allow you to see people more clearly. Just like a musician who can pick out the distinct notes in a complex piece of music.

EXTROVERSION

We often think of extroverts as people who get energy from being around others. In reality, people high in extroversion are drawn to anything that makes them feel good.

They love excitement, seek out thrills, and enjoy gaining social approval. They’re driven more by the potential for rewards than by avoiding consequences.

But every trait has its pros and cons. Extroverts live life with a high-reward/high-risk approach. Therefore, they’re quick to anger, take more risks, and are more likely to die in traffic accidents.

People who score low on extroversion tend to be more relaxed. They have calmer, more stable emotional reactions. They’re often creative, thoughtful, and deliberate.

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

If extroverts are the people you want livening up your party, those who score high in conscientiousness are often the ones you want managing your organisation.

Conscientious people have excellent impulse control. They are disciplined, persevering, organised, self-regulating. They have the ability to focus on long-term goals.

People high in conscientiousness are less likely to procrastinate, tend to be perfectionists, and have high achievement motivation.

They tend to display more competence and grit, but they also experience more guilt. They are well suited to predictable environments but less well suited to unpredictable situations that require fluid adaptation. There can be an obsessive or compulsive quality to them.

NEUROTICISM

If extroverts are drawn to positive emotions, people who score high in neuroticism respond powerfully to negative emotions.

They feel fear, anxiety, shame, disgust, and sadness very quickly and very acutely. They are more likely to worry than to be calm, more highly strung than laid-back, more vulnerable than resilient.

People who score high on neuroticism interpret ambiguous events more negatively. They are therefore exposed to more negative experiences.

They often feel uncomfortable with uncertainty. They prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know. They also have a lot of negative emotions toward themselves, and think they deserve what they get.

But, like all traits, neuroticism has its upsides as well. If a business is in danger, it helps to have a neurotic leader who can spot it early on.

In a world where most people are overconfident and overly optimistic, there’s a benefit in having some people who lean the other way.

AGREEABLENESS

Those who score high on agreeableness are good at getting along with people.

Such people tend to be trusting, cooperative, and kind — good-natured rather than foul-tempered, softhearted rather than hard-edged, polite more than rude, forgiving more than vengeful.

Those who score high in agreeableness are naturally prone to paying attention to what’s going on in other people’s minds. They are able to keep in mind how different people are feeling about one another, for example, “Jim hoped that Tom would believe that Susan thought that Eddy wanted to marry Jerry.”

In the workplace, people often think that high agreeables are not tough enough, and won’t make the unpopular decisions.

OPENNESS

If agreeableness describes a person’s relationship to other people, openness describes their relationship to information. People who score high on this trait are powerfully motivated to have new experiences and to try on new ideas.

They tend to be innovative more than conventional, imaginative and associative rather than linear, curious more than closed-minded.

Such people are able to appreciate a wide array of experiences. People low in openness feel comfortable when they eat a familiar dish at a familiar restaurant. People high in openness find familiarity monotonous.

Artists and poets are the quintessential practitioners of openness.

Understanding a person’s personality traits is a key to knowing how to treat them appropriately.

If a boss is low in agreeableness and thus quick to criticise, and an employee is high on neuroticism and sensitive to negative emotions, they’d hear even the mildest critiques as brutal attacks. Same goes for a friend, a spouse, and a parent.

If you want to understand how you rate on these Big Five traits, you can go online and find any number of questionnaires to help you do it. But, when it comes to others, you’re probably not going to hand them a personality test. You really don’t need to.

If you observe people closely, you’d be able to make a pretty good guess about whether someone scores high on agreeableness, low on extroversion, and so on.

A person’s personality isn’t buried deep inside. It’s right there on the surface. It’s their way of being in the world.