What is your personality profile?

Since ancient Greek times, humanity has been trying to decipher and compartmentalize personality types as a way of knowing the ways of the human mind. To this day, however, the scientific literature in this sense does not seem to have gained such relevance or universal support.

The psychological studies of personality done so far have been controversial: apparently, the results were confined to small groups, and could not be replicated to a larger set of individuals. Such tests only found their place in the territory of self-help publications.

The Personality Project

Here comes a Personality Project, a study from Northwestern University, a university located in Illinois, USA. With machine learning and data science technologies applied to web-based questionnaires, researchers were able to collect data from 1.5 million people worldwide.

Initially, traditional data clustering or clustering mechanisms identified 16 distinct personality niches. However, in refining what was found, the researchers were able to narrow and sift the way algorithms receive data; Thus, they came to 4 distinct types: egocentered, reserved, common and exemplary.

The applied methodology is the main contribution of the study to science.

These are the words of William Revelle, professor of psychology in the department of arts and sciences at Northwestern University. The data from the questionnaires always came back confirming one of the same four types of personalities, becoming increasingly dense.

The quartet is based on five widely accepted and well-defined personality traits or personality traits: neuroticism, extroversion, openness, affectivity, and self-awareness.

Neuroticism is the tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, worry and sadness, showing sensitivity in interpersonal relationships.

Extroversion is the characteristic that is evident when the person is communicative with a tendency to dominate the environment; a connoisseur of social life.

Open-mindedness or open-mindedness is the tendency to show openness to the new, be it ideas, arts, values, feelings or behaviors.

Affectivity is the tendency one has to agree with others or to be led by others' ideas without expressing one's own opinions or personal choices.

Self-awareness is the tendency to follow the rules, be hardworking, punctual, hardworking and careful.

Which of the profiles do you most identify with?

Below is a brief description of the profiles found and try to identify which one you match.

Egocenters

Self-centered people score high on extroversion and are below average in openness, affectivity and self-awareness.

Reserved

They are emotionally stable people, not neurotic, but not very open. They are not particularly outgoing either, but tend to be more pleasant and self-conscious.

Common

Individuals like this tend to be more neurotic and outgoing. It is the most common personality type among people.

Exemplary

These people score high on all traits except neuroticism. They are great leaders and open to new ideas.

To validate the accuracy of the results, the researchers analyzed a group notoriously belonging to one of the niches. They took as a sample a group of male adolescents who are known to behave in a rather self-centered manner. The results confirmed that young men predominate in the egocentric group, while women over 15 years old are hardly represented in this group.

The researchers are optimistic that such results may contribute to a better analysis of the profile of candidates for hiring companies. They are also making research information and data public so that other researchers can perform independent analyzes.

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