Why Personality Matters!

 

“Why Personality Matters!”

By Gary L. Clendenon

January 8, 2019

“What we've got here is failure to communicate!” ~ Cool Hand Luke

Yesterday, I was involved in a Facebook discussion which revolved around the saying: People’s reactions say more about them than about the people to whom they’re reacting. This idea got stuck in my mind and I thought about it all night long, then awoke early in the morning with the following realization. This statement is not just a way to dismiss someone who is responding in a way we don’t understand or find offensive or inappropriate, but this statement is so literally true that a whole field of psychology is based exclusively on this one statement!!

We know this branch of psychology by the name “Personality Theory”. And, it is completely based on studying the unique and completely different way that individuals respond to the same stimulus! The more thorough of the tests that quantify the unique way we each individually respond have divided the respondents into 16 different different categories based on their observations of how specifically people respond differently! (One of the tests is even called 16PF (PF standing for “Personality Factors”)).

What this means is that psychologists have learned and determined over the years of studying and quantifying what “Personality” means that each of us responds uniquely and differently than 94% of the rest of the population. Also, that means that there are ONLY 16% of the population that will respond in a somewhat similar fashion to how we uniquely respond! Is it any wonder that we people have so many miscommunications and misunderstandings? Naturally, given the commonality of these challenges, psychologists have created a name for these consistent occurrences: “personality conflicts”.

I am an INFP personality, according to the famous “Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator” (MBTI) personality test. This means that I am uniquely wired to ponder deeply these ideas and try to make sense of them. All my life I have operated out of this perspective, but I wasn’t able to understand myself very well until I discovered and studied psychology and personality. And when I did, I was able to find acceptance of my unique self—before then I thought maybe I was crazy! (Personal Note: I was so driven to understand myself and others that I ended up with a minor in Psychology.)

This understanding of Personality Theory completely revolutionized and changed my life. It gave me the answers I was constantly looking for in striving to understand myself and others. Besides, the obvious primacy of the Spirit of Love in our hearts, I believe this understanding is critical for us as humans to understand and get along with the huge challenges that our unique and different personalities create! I believe the complete lack of the understanding of personality in our society today is one of the main factors explaining why we have so much confusion, misunderstanding, and completely lack of tolerance and empathy!

Having said all that, and realizing that I only represent 16% of the population’s perspective, I am aware that my perspective may not be the “be-all end-all” and I acknowledge that there are other perspectives and tools out there to understand and utilize in our journeys and attempts to understand ourselves and others. (Here is one example: https://hbr.org/2014/05/most-work-conflicts-arent-due-to-personality)

I guess my main point, then, would be for all of us to take the time to make our best efforts in the Spirit of Love to do whatever it takes to learn to understand ourselves and others better so that we can communicate better and get along better, thus making the world a better, less-caustic place. That is my objective and strong desire for myself and my world. I hope it is yours as well.