Once Bitten, (Maybe) Twice Shy

How many times have you heard someone described as being shy? Have you ever thought about why someone was reluctant to approach another person and begin, or join, a conversation? One of the many misconceptions about shyness is that it is inherent to certain people and not others. However, shyness is not a personality factor, it is highly situational.

Let's clarify the difference between a personality factor and a situational factor. I know, I'm sure that most people could probably figure this out on their own. Yet, I want to be thorough with my post, so I will go ahead and lay this foundation. A personality factor indicates that this characteristic/trait/behavior is a relative constant for an individual in almost all circumstances. A situational factor indicates that these characteristics/traits/behaviors will appear in almost all environments or situations that are similar, but not necessarily in others. Wait. What's with all the qualifiers? Well, one of the components of Cattell's personality theory was the idea of surface traits and source traits.

A surface trait is a characteristic or behavior that shows up in certain situations and not others. It is believed to consistently appear in these types of situations any time this particular individual finds themselves in one. On the other hand, a source trait is part of the core essence of an individual, so it will show itself, or be very difficult to mask, in nearly every situation. The only problem with Cattell's theory is that neither he nor other researchers was ever able to identify which traits are surface and which are source. This idea seems to be as much an individual feature as one's actual personality. That is to say, one person's source trait may be seen as another person's surface trait. Regardless of the inability to identify which personality features are more malleable than others, personality researchers began to see that people's behaviors are influenced by their environment as well as their inherent personality.

The next leap was to try to find behaviors that were almost always situation-specific, more-or-less the opposite of a personality characteristic. Not surprisingly, there weren't too many behaviors that could be attributed solely to the environment. However, some behaviors, after years of careful scrutiny, did appear to be almost entirely situational by nature. Shyness turned out to be one of them.

Researchers found that a "shy" person--someone who seems to keep to themselves and who is reluctant to engage in activities or conversation with others--will actually open up to certain people in select situations. Yes, there are some people who appear to be shy almost all the time to almost everyone who meets them. There are better explanations beyond a throw-away assessment of "shyness" smacked upon them. Perhaps this is an individual who is cautious by nature. Maybe they want to observe their environment before they determine the expected behaviors or they were hurt in the past and are reluctant to share too much of themselves for fear of being hurt once more. It is possible that the "shy" person is an introvert who is preserving their energy for the right socialization moment. You could also have a case in which the individual has determined that this is a threatening situation and they do not want to make any false moves, so they shrink back from any possible confrontation.

Some people appear shy when meeting someone of the opposite sex. Others are shy around perceived authority figures (for example, my daughter shrinks back and is reluctant to speak any time she has to meet a new adult, but meeting new children her age or younger poses very little problems for her). Sometimes individuals are reluctant to speak up in a crowd, such as a classroom or meeting, but when they are surrounded by their friends or only a couple other people they seamlessly participate in the conversation and activities. If you were to observe these shy individuals in other contexts, then you may find that they have no problem opening up to other individuals in other circumstances.

So, before you dismiss someone as simply shy, try to think about the situational factors that may lead to them being reluctant to communicating. Could they be an observant or cautious individual? Could the situation be overwhelming? Could you, yourself, be perceived as an overly dominant force? It also helps to think about the moments when you may have been shy or more cautious to join in the conversation with others. Put yourself in their shoes before you start judging them. Then you might be able to help relieve their anxieties and get them to open up to you more easily.

Clearing Up Jung & Myers-Briggs

Many professionals in psychology, education, and even business have heard of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). What a lot of people don't know, however, is that the work of this mother-daughter team was based largely on the theories of Carl Jung. Many people also seem to lack a full understanding of the components that make up the 16 personality types. I am not going to give an explanation of the personality types here, just the individual dichotomous parts that make up the 4-letter type.

The first letter set (E/I) represents a person's orientation in the world and their source of energy. I do not mean to say the fuel, such as food and drink, but rather the psychological and/or motivating energy we need to think, socialize, and engage in any other mental activities. E stands for extrovert. An extrovert is oriented outside (extra) themselves. They gain their mental energy through socialization with others. If given a choice between watching a good movie by themselves or going to see a sub-par movie with friends, it would not be uncommon for the extrovert to choose the sub-par movie because the socialization is more important part of the entertainment. I stands for introvert. A introvert is oriented within (intro) themselves. They gain their mental energy from quiet, solitary introspection, rather than socialization. While the introvert will socialize--some of us even have friends!--this socialization tends to use up energy that was generate through solitary activities, leaving the introvert to feel exhausted. The extrovert, on the other hand, will use up stored energy in solitary activities, needing to socialize to "recharge their batteries," so to speak. If all of this seems repetitious, that could be due to the fact that I covered the extrovert/introvert thing in my first post on the term Antisocial.

The second personality dimension (N/S) in Jung's theory is a person's preferred source of data gathering. The N stands for intuition (the letter N is used to clear up confusion with the use of I for introvert). An intuitive tends to seek or trust data that "feels" right, oftentimes basing conclusions on faith or the perceived authority of the source. Intuitives tend to be a bit more chaotic in nature than their counterparts, but they manage to still be productive, and even creative, in this state. S, on the other hand, stands for sensing. A sensing individual tends to look for more concrete evidence, using their natural senses to verify data. If it cannot be seen, smelled, touched, tasted, or heard, you will have a hard time convincing a senser of its validity. It's not impossible, just hard. Sensing individuals prefer to generate order out of chaos, as it allows them to more effectively gather sensory information. Keep in mind that all of these personality dimensions are on a continuum. It is possible for a strong sensing type to occasionally take a leap of faith, or for a strong intuitive to desire more concrete evidence.

The third letter set (T/F) represents the primary route used to analyze data that has been gathered. These two traits are very often misunderstood when it comes to discerning one's personality typology, mostly because we attach other meanings to the base words. In Jung's typology, the T stands for thinking. A thinker in this context is an individual who looks at the data collected, either via senses or intuition, and draws seemingly logical conclusions from that data. Thinkers tend to sometimes get tunnel vision, occasionally not seeing how conclusions could affect other individuals on a more personal level. The letter F represents feeling. Feelers are capable of drawing logical conclusions, but they also broaden their focus when analyzing data to incorporate non-tangibles, such as the impact an action may have on another person. Not all feeling types are benevolent, however. A strong feeling person with a mean streak could cause a lot of psychological damage to others willingly, as they readily see how their actions could impact others and still make that harmful decision. Not all thinkers are cold and callous, either. They may attempt to act in what they feel is the best interest of another person, though their actions may not seem beneficial at the time.

I would like to say that the final dimension is the least understood, yet I have found in my years of teaching that just as many students encounter biases and/or misunderstandings with each of the other three dimensions. It is probably easiest to become confused on this last letter set (J/P), however, because of the words chosen to represent the two sides of the continuum. The fourth dimension is how a person ultimately goes about making decisions. Whether you generate your mental energy from within or without, whether you gather data through the sensory world or your "gut" feeling, and whether you seek logical conclusions or incorporate the impact of your choices on others, you will use all of this to finally make decisions and take action. A J means you are a judger. Many people think judging means to criticize others and weigh each personal on some imaginary scale of worth. This is NOT what it means to be judging when we talk about the MBTI. Think of it this way: if you are on trial for your life, would you want the judge to make an instantaneous decision, or would you want them to take their time weighing all of the evidence? A judger, in this instance, takes their time making a decision. They plan ahead, often generating a number of contingency plans, just in case. They follow the data down many paths of conclusion, trying to calculate and weigh possibilities before they finally make a commitment to a decision. Even then, an extreme judging type may second-guess themselves and take still more time to redo a decision. On the positive side, they tend to be more cautious. On the negative side, it may take a judger too long to make a decision or they may find themselves frozen with indecision. The P, perceiving, is the complete opposite of a judger. The perceiver makes split-second decisions, sometimes even ignoring the evidence they've gathered. A perceiver is the type of person who will decide in a heartbeat whether or not they like you, whereas a judger will want to take their time to get to know you before they decide if ye be friend or foe. On the plus side, a perceiver is capable of making split-second decisions on a moment's notice. On the down side, though, sometimes making snap decisions can lead to one having to remove their foot from their mouth all too often. Then again, one snap decision could make things right very quickly.

If you would like more information on the 16 types that come out of Jung's theory and the MBTI, I strongly encourage you to talk to a professional counselor (not a therapist [see my post on Psychologists are not Psychics for the distinction between the two]) or personality specialist. You can find information on the Internet, just be aware that not everyone has all of the facts detangled properly. You can even find several free and pay versions of the MBTI. Again, buyer beware, as some sites can be very misleading in the read-outs they give you from your responses. Some sites don't even give you an explanation, just your 4-letter typology (e.g. INTJ), leaving you to try to figure out how they mesh together.

Please feel free to leave your questions or comments on this or any of my other posts. Feedback is the best way to learn.

What Makes You YOU?

Personality is another one of those psychological concepts that has made its way into the popular vernacular, lending itself to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. This is such a complex topic that many of the major schools of psychological thought have their own take on the subject. Thus begins another "series" of sorts. This time I will try to clarify some issues on and present some theories about personality, or what makes you YOU. Let's begin with a basic definition.

Personality: the unique and relatively stable ways in which people think, feel, and behave. In its most general terms, you are a combination of your way of thinking, your general emotionality, and the choices you tend to make. This also includes the situations that lead to your greatest comfort and your preferences, even in the face of behaviors in which you would rather not engage but still sometimes feel compelled to given certain circumstances. Personality is often confused with one's character.

Character: value judgments of a person's moral and ethical behavior. Your character is the judgment that others (and sometimes yourself) lay at your feet based on the observable data that you present to them. Note that character does not include your actual motivations or emotions concerning the matter, only the behaviors that others can see. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of humans (around 99.998%) are NOT psychic and cannot actually see into another person's soul or mind or heart. We infer people's motivations based on circumstantial evidence, but our character judgments are still flawed by the fact that we cannot know ALL of the relevant information involved that may or may not have had an impact on the resulting behavior of another. As my mother says, we judge others by how we live our lives. All subsequent character judgments are biased by our own personal lenses formed from our past experiences. Plus, character is based upon the behaviors that another person chooses to show others.

Temperament: the enduring characteristics with which each person is born. Temperament is really the baseline emotionality of an individual. This inherited part of personality, which is exhibited as early as day 1 of infancy, is simply a baseline upon which we build the rest of our personality--the cognition and behavior. Infants can generally be classified into one of four temperaments--easy, slow to warm up, difficult, or undifferentiated. The easy children tend to be generally happy babies who adapt to change and new environments readily. If upset, it doesn't take much to placate them. The slow to warm up babies tend to take their time in building their comfort zone. When in the comfort zone they are satisfied. Removing this infant from their comfort zone (changing routine, introducing something new) will significantly distress them, however, they will eventually adapt over time, so long as changes are introduced slowly and one at a time. The difficult baby seems to have his/her mind set from the get-go and is not willing to budge for anything. So long as the routine and the environment stay the same, they will be content. Any change will be met with extreme resistance and will very rarely be accepted. They do not like change at all. The rest of the children are born with an undifferentiated temperament. This means that they have not made up their mind yet as to how they will deal with change or new situations. Sometimes these infants exhibit characteristics of more than one temperament, sometimes they just don't have any clearly distinctive characteristics (of the aforementioned three types) until later in their infancy or childhood.

So, the bottom line is that, in a nutshell, your personality is what you do, how you feel, and your thought processes that make you unique. True, there are overlaps between individuals, yet there is no exact copy of the unique combination of all the components that make a person who they are. One of the reasons personality is so debatable from a theoretical perspective is the fact that we show different "faces" to different people we encounter. We never show every single nook and cranny of our entire being to any one person. We always keep something--sometimes a large part, sometimes only a tiny spark--in reserve for just ourselves. And there is even a part of our personality that we have not uncovered yet. Some theorists (Maslow, Rogers, Erikson to name a few) believe that we are constantly discovering new things about our own personalities as we encounter new life experiences, so we may never find everything there is to know about our self.

Does Personality Drive Motivation or Vice Versa?

Motivation: the process by which activities are started, directed, and continued so that physical or psychological needs or wants are met

Sometimes motivation becomes intertwined with the idea of personality (another "series" to follow on this blog). One of the more prominent motivational theories that appears to closely resemble a personality theory is David McClelland's needs theory. This theory states that there are some people who are driven by one, or a combination of, three distinct needs.

Need for Affiliation: an individual's need, desire, preference for socializing with other individuals. Someone with a high need for affiliation feels lost if left alone for too long. In some cases, the extreme need for socialization will outweigh any other motivators. It would not be uncommon for a person with a high need for affiliation to go to a movie they don't want to see or go out to eat even if they are not hungry if their friends are going. These individuals may sacrifice other comforts in order to satisfy their need to interact with other people. They may even associate with "despised" individuals if there appear to be no other options for socialization. In a team environment, these individuals tend to be the peace-keepers. They may not have a preference for what or how work is done, so long as they can get everyone working together.

Need for Power: an individual's need, desire, preference for being the one in control of situations and others. There are actually two sides to the power coin. The high need for power with a "pawns" orientation wants power for the sake of power. This is a Machiavellian individual who does not care how much they are liked so long as people do as they say. This is the darker side of need for power that sometimes turns people off of the idea of being in control. In a team situation, the "pawns" power would create a hierarchy structure that may accomplish nothing but frustration as the "leader" complains that no one does anything and the other team members complain that the "leader" won't let them contribute to the project. On the flip side, the high need for power with an "origins" orientation wants power so that they can maintain a smooth chain of command and power transition when the time comes. The "origins" power generates a leader who takes charge because they know they have the leadership skills and abilities that are needed, while at the same time they are training their predecessor so that the leadership can be handed over to a competent individual who will keep things running smoothly once the time comes to move on. In a team situation, the "origins" leader is the one who creates a game plan and then delegates responsibilities as needed. They will check in with the rest of the team from time to time and help out any team members as is warranted. This leader will also contribute to the actual work of the project, attempting to create an equal disbursement of duties among all the team members.

Need for Achievement: an individual's need, desire, preference for accomplishing goals. An individual with a high need for achievement is driven toward success, either large or small, but preferably meaningful. High achievers take calculated risks. Tasks that are too easily accomplished give very little satisfaction, while tasks with improbable odds may present too great a risk of failure. Moderately risky tasks present enough of a challenge to be worth the effort, and enough of a sense of accomplishment to warrant the energy spent in its pursuit. High achievers do not always need recognition for their efforts; the accomplishment of the task is often reward enough. In a team setting, it will be the high achiever who pushes the team forward from the background to ensure the success of the project. They may step forward to take on additional responsibilities, or even the leadership role, if they feel it is necessary to keep the project moving forward. The downside is that occasionally the high achiever may bear the majority of the project weight upon their shoulders because they are so concerned with seeing it completed successfully, so they may suffer burnout more often than someone with a high need for affiliation or a high need for power.

Of course, McClelland and his colleagues recognized that it was possible for an individual to have score high on more than one of these needs areas, or to even score low on all three. This theory begins to cross over from motivation into personality as it acknowledges that each person is unique in their level of needs in these three areas. Not everyone who is a leader is driven by the same need; not everyone who is accomplished is driven by a need to achieve. Personality is comprised of the unique qualities and characteristics that make you YOU. In McClelland's theory we begin to see that motivation may be tied to some core personal characteristic that drives someone toward certain behaviors or preferences.

Let Your Conscience Guide Conscious Behavior

This week's entry is to help clear up some confusion for a couple of "spelling" words from your typical psychology class. The three terms, all associated in some way with personality, are: conscious, conscience, and conscientiousness. They do not all mean the same thing and they are only loosely related.

Conscious: a mental state in which your thoughts are clear, organized, and easily focused; (alternatively) one's awareness of all that is going on around them at any given time. Your conscious is, according to Sigmund Freud, the part of the mind that is currently being accessed, the part containing all the information of which you are aware at the moment. When you are "conscious" of something you are aware of it. Consequently, most behavior is conscious in that you made a decision to act in that manner and you are aware of what you are doing as you are doing it. Unconscious behaviors occur when we do not stop to think about our actions and simply react (almost instinctively) to the current situation. These automatic responses could be under our control, but we choose to not think about them.

Conscience: one's inner guide and standard for right and wrong, moral and immoral behaviors. This is equivalent to Sigmund Freud's concept of the superego, which houses (in the conscious, unconscious and preconscious) our internal standards for behavior. This is that "little voice" that tells us if what we're thinking about is a no-no or if it's okay. Remember Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio. Incidentally, individuals without a conscience have no internal limitations on their behavior and often-times exhibit antisocial personality disorder. We don't really concern ourselves too much with someone who has an overactive conscience, however, though this does lead to greater strictures and limitations on their choices.

Sigmund Freud never identified a "subconscious" part of the mind. This is a more modern term that is not used in most psychological research literature. The "subconscious" that many people speak of is really what Freud called the preconscious. This is a layer of awareness between the conscious and unconscious levels. It is just below current awareness, but it is not buried so deep as the unconscious. The preconscious consists of information that we can easily access if we need to, but that we are not thinking about currently. It is kind of like your address book in your cell phone or email. You don't have everyone memorized, but the people you saved can be brought up easily to call them or send them a message. Sigmund Freud did not see this part of the mind as having as much of a direct impact on behavior as either the unconscious or the conscious mind.

Conscientiousness: one of the Big Five personality traits from the work of Costa & McRae (based on many other personality theories, including the work of Carl Jung). Like all personality traits, this is measured on a continuum from high to low. It reflects your internal motivation, organization, and reliability. A person scoring high on conscientiousness is the kind of person that the boss can give a very important client to and walk away with the confidence that the employee will do a stellar job and hand it in on time. This person reliably comes in on time, turns in consistent work, and their thoughts and work space are organized and orderly. A person scoring low on conscientiousness is not very predictable. They may come in to work early or late at times. They are not strictly organized, yet they may claim that "there is a method to their madness" in their work. They are less conventional in their results, sometimes producing work that is amazing and creative, but also sometimes producing poor-quality work. This is the type of employee that confounds the boss because the boss never knows if the work turned in will be spectacular or sub par and the boss may feel the need to watch over the employee's shoulder to keep them on task, otherwise the employee could become too distracted to complete the work.

The other Big Five personality traits are Openness to New Experiences, Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Agreeableness. Look for a future post on Neuroticism, as it is often confused with psychological disorders, specifically anxiety disorders.