The Power of Personality
Utilising personality traits as a child development tool
"Strength lies in differences, not in similarities."
- Stephen R. Covey
Children are being increasingly diagnosed with the likes of autism and ADHD, in part due to an increased push from parents and teachers who have a square peg and hope that a diagnosis will explain why they’re not fitting in the round hole. Assessments are useful, but anyone who has worked in special educational needs will know that if you get 10 people with autism in a room, it becomes immediately apparent how different they all are. To that, people will point out that autism is a spectrum.
So too is personality, and once you go down the rabbit hole of that spectrum, it makes you contemplate which is the most effective way to gain further insight into the motivations behind a child's actions. Personality traits have evolved over millennia, and therefore learning about the range of personalities out there can help develop a child's awareness of their own emotional state and others.
The science of personality
We all sit somewhere on a scale of specific personality traits. Different personality tests range from astrology, which has the same predictive outcomes as chance, to The Big-5 Index, which is a statistically significant, widely used personality measurement. Then there’s the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a common personality test, but its reliability has been questioned given its poor replicability and how it pigeonholes people into personality types, instead of using a scale.
Evolutionary justification for personality traits
Are we unique? Yes and no. Trait theory suggests that we have an innate personality, which determines how we perceive the world, explaining how multiple people can see the same scenario and draw completely different conclusions. However, these traits are heavily influenced by real-world experiences, which will form how these genetic traits develop over time. Like chess, there are set rules to the game but an infinite way to play.
Every debate eventually degenerates into debating the definition of a word.
- Laynes Law
Even in the narrow window that we see the world through, there is far too much going on to take it all in at once, so our brain scans the immediate environment to filter unnecessary information. The information presents itself to us differently depending on our current goal and our personality, meaning different traits can thrive in different scenarios. When life was slightly more precarious, running around the jungle in small tribes, you would need certain personalities for different roles within a community. For example, a neurotic worrier was necessary because tigers and snakes are worth worrying about, but if everyone in the tribe was constantly freaking out, nothing would be achieved.
Strategies for child development
Understanding personality
The fundamental idea is that adults and children can benefit from gaining a further understanding of the theory surrounding personality. Traits can be analysed through the Big-5 and Hexaco inventories, and our values can be surveyed through the VIA character strengths. The VIA test has a child-friendly version, but as the other two do not have one free to the public, it is best done on behalf of the child and used as a guide. Similar to how educational assessments are carried out. The results give a detailed understanding of who we are, and where and why we differ to others. Appreciating the strengths that come with each trait, whilst understanding how they can limit our analyses of a situation, can: improve tolerance of other perspectives; develop teamwork; provide career guidance - if appropriate - and enhance social skills.
Building self-awareness
Sussing out our personality traits allows us to recognise what can cause a certain reaction to a problem and if that reaction was appropriate. This improves our ability to regulate our emotions, which seems to be a dying art, and supports our communication skills, decision-making, personal relationships and overall life satisfaction For example, anxiety is not a good or bad thing, it’s how we’re wired to forecast prospective scenarios. As I discovered a little later in life, anticipating the future is useful, and knowing that it doesn’t come naturally to me, was an opportunity for improvement, eventually.
Cultivating empathy
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."
- Harper Lee, "To Kill a Mockingbird"
Different predispositions to anxiety can cause the common experience of the same holiday, same timeline, two very different opinions on when you need to start organising it. You can’t argue against planning in advance, but how many possible future holiday scenarios are worth worrying about? Understanding the vastly different lenses through which we see the world helps us walk in another person’s shoes and, more importantly, walk more comfortably in our own. Children benefit from knowing that facts don’t present themselves to everyone in the same way, and that they are screened depending on where we sit on each scale. It simplifies explaining concepts of empathy, compassion and the necessity of working with others towards middle ground which, usually, gets us closer to a productive outcome.
The Tests
The Big-5 Personality Test is the most widely used and tests where you fall on the scales of trait agreeableness; extraversion; neuroticism; openness; and conscientiousness.
The Hexaco Personality Inventory is based on the Big 5 but includes the additional trait of humility and honesty, which represents your ethical viewpoints.
The Values in Action(VIA) Character Strengths Survey is a different approach, which I only recently discovered through David Bott. The VIA ranks 24 character strengths – values and principles rather than traits – which guide our thoughts and actions. Bott explains how understanding individual differences benefits our well-being and provides an approach to raising children based on positive psychology.
If you found this interesting, you might enjoy reading other Misfit Memo articles on personality
New academic year, same old bullies - The psychological warfare of school yard tyrants
Worrying about worry - The science behind anxiety and its effect on children
The myth of self-esteem - Children are not perfect, so don’t tell them they are
I read an amazing book "on learning", and that I intend to post some parts of it. It is "Improvisation for the Theater" by Viola Spolin. If she just ran actor workshops you could say, those that signed-up already had talent. It Proves Nothing. But she ran decades of Children's Theater. "OK Kids, we're really going to have fun today." No special classes for gifted children. Just taking all comers. Here are some of her quotes:
Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become "stageworthy." We learn through experience and experiencing, and no one teaches anyone anything. This is as true for the infant moving from kicking to crawling to walking as it is for the scientist with his equations.
Aptitude, "Talent" or 'lack of talent' have little to do with it. It is highly possible that what is called talented behavior is simply a greater individual capacity for experiencing. From this point of view, it is in the increasing of the individual capacity for experiencing that the untold potentiality of a personality can be evoked. This means involvement on all levels: intellectual, physical, and intuitive.
Of the three, the intuitive, most vital to the learning situation, is neglected. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with a reality and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression.
Acting can be taught to the "average" as well as the "talented" if the teaching process is oriented towards making the theater techniques so intuitive that they become the students' own. A way is needed to get to intuitive knowledge. It requires an environment in which experiencing can take place, a person free to experience, and an activity that brings about spontaneity.
Authority destroys learning!
Very few of us are able to make this direct contact with our reality. Our simplest move out into the environment is interrupted by our need for favorable comment or interpretation by established authority. We either fear that we will not get approval, or we accept outside comment and interpretation unquestionably. In a culture where approval/disapproval has become the predominant regulator of effort and position, and often the substitute for love, our personal freedoms are dissipated. Abandoned to the whims of others, we must wander daily through the wish to be loved and the fear of rejection before we can be productive. Categorized "good" or "bad" from birth (a "good" baby does not cry too much) we become so enmeshed with the tenuous treads of approval/disapproval that we are creatively paralyzed.
Having thus to look to others to tell us where we are, who we are, and what is happening results in a serious (almost total) loss of personal experiencing. We lose the ability to be organically involved in a problem, and in a disconnected way, we function with only parts of our total selves. We do not know our own substance, and in the attempt to live through (or avoid living through) the eyes of others, self-identity is obscured, our bodies become miss-shaped, natural grace is gone, and learning is affected. Both the individual and the art form are distorted and deprived, and insight is lost to us.
Trying to save ourselves from attack, we build a mighty fortress and are timid, or we fight each time we venture forth. Some, in striving with approval/disapproval develop egocentricity and exhibitionism; some give up and simply go along. Others, like Elsa in the fairytale, are forever knocking on windows, jingling their chain of bells, and wailing, "Who am, I?" In all cases, contact with the environment is distorted. Self-discovery and other exploratory traits tend to become atrophied. Trying to be "good" and avoiding "bad" or being "bad" because one can't be "good" develops into a way of life for those needing approval/disapproval from authority, and the investigation and solving of problems becomes of secondary importance.
Approval/disapproval grows out of authoritarianism that has changed its face over the years from that of the parent to the teacher and ultimately the whole social structure (mate, employer, family, neighbors, etc.).
The language and attitudes of authoritarianism must be constantly scourged if the total personality is to emerge as a working unit. All words which shut doors, have emotional content or implication. Since most of us were brought up by the approval/disapproval method, constant self-surveillance is necessary on the part of the teacher-director to eradicate it in himself so that it will not enter the teacher-student relationship. Judging on the part of the teacher-director limits his own experiencing as well as the students', for in judging, he keeps himself from a fresh moment of experience and rarely goes beyond what he already knows. This limits him to the use of rote-teaching, of formulas or other standard concepts which prescribe student behavior.
The shift away from the teacher as absolute authority does not always take place immediately. Attitudes are years in building, and all of us are afraid to let go of them. Never losing sight of the fact that the needs of the theater are the real master, the teacher will find his cue, for the teacher too should accept the rules of the game. Then he will easily find his role as guide; for after all, the teacher-director knows the theater technically and artistically, and his experiences are needed in leading the group.
Spolin is the major innovator of improve theater. Her son, using her techniques started Second City in Chicago, a center for improve. Much of the book is about theater games, that is acting situations that focus on solving specific theatrical problems. I would like to read that, but only if I had a scene partner to play the game with, which I don't. So I have skipped over most of the applications. You could do it with kids, (that was the point of the handbook.)
Our life IS a theatrical act. So all of her critiques on acting method, (I think) are directly applicable to living.
(I can't find my link to the book right now.) If you want it, I'll look again.
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I enjoyed reading your piece!