Anna Moore

Dr. Burke
Eng 111 W-B
November 2015
Paper #4 Extended Definition
Being who you are never goes out of style
You walk into a party looking around taking in everyones outfits,
spying the couple in the corner kissing, a group of girls taking shots together,
and a bunch of people dancing together in the middle of the room. The
music is blaring and you are standing awkwardly in the corner, taking it all in
but wondering which group you want to join, if any. This situation is a great
one that can show a persons personality best. Personality is the way
someone behaviors, thinks, feels, and carries themselves. After asking many
people here at LC, this definition seems to be commonly accepted.
Personality is affected by how you were raised, your experiences as well as
what you are naturally born like. There are a variety of tests and quizzes that
can be completed to see what kind of personality someone has, but what is
more interesting is the information and science behind these types.

Before going into what kinds of personalities there are and all, what
must come first is the idea of what a personality is and what forms them.
People are definitely influenced by their upbringing and how they were
nurtured as a child. For example, if a child is brought up in a family that
allows them to express themselves freely, they may be more outgoing and
easy to get along with because they might be more accepting of others. This
is not a definite, but this is a factor that leads to an individual's own
personality traits. Even looking at siblings who share similar DNA, some
children are more easygoing than others. For example, my sister was a baby
who needed to be rocked to sleep, cried over everything, was afraid of
everything, and needed constant attention. On the other hand, I did not want
to be rocked but left alone to fall asleep on my own terms, never let anyone
see me cry, and was not afraid of anything. We were brought up in the same
household, but our beginning personality was very different than the other
persons. This is contradictory to John Lockes idea of a blank slate at birth,
and falls in line with Platos idea of a persons soul being born in a certain
category.
A persons personality can be confused with a persons identity.
Identity is what people identify with, how they define themselves. For
example, some people identify with where their family came from. People

may identify with the Bahamas because that is where their family is from, but
they themselves may never have been there. People can identity with a
gender, race, place, and groups of people. A persons personality is more of a
description while an identity is who or what someone is. Personality and
identity are often confused because people group them into the same
category when in fact those together define and describe a person.
With personality defined as a way someone behaves, thinks or feels, it
is clear that there can be a lot of variation and kinds of personalities. For
example, think of all the people freshmen in college have met in their first
three months of school. Many people around the ages of 17 to 22 have just
completed their third month of college and have met an enormous number
of people within that short period of time. Thus they have been exposed to
many different kinds of people with different backgrounds and personality
types. Different people with unalike personalities are often compared. The
comparison that is most commonly made between an introverted or
extraverted person, and then the third category of ambiverted personalities.
People tend to identify with one of these three personality categories, but
within each there are different levels and traits that come along with them.
An extraverted personality type is more outgoing, and according to the
American Psychological Association, Extraverts find social situations more

rewarding than introverts, not because they are more sociable, but because
they are more sensitive to the rewards inherent in most situations (Smith).
An introvert personality tends to be quieter, and has more noise inside their
heads, making them deep thinkers. The in-between of that is the ambivert
personality; this personality has a balance of both, enjoying social situations
as well as internal thinking.
According to the Myers-Briggs Foundation, a foundation that
describes, the essence of the theory is that much seemingly random
variation in the behavior is actually quite orderly and consistent, being due to
basic differences in the ways individuals prefer to use their perception and
judgment (Myers), there are 16 different basic personalities and, the goal
of knowing about personality type is to understand and appreciate
differences between people. As all types are equal, there is no best type
(Myers). The Myers-Briggs Foundation looks at behavioral differences and
such to categorize different personalities to help people get a more holistic
scene of someones personality; therefore generating peoples ability to
understand and interact with people who are different than them.
Personalities vary depending on many different external factors such
as upbringing and experiences but also internally on how you're born also
called a persons nature. Personality and identity are similar but not the

same and together they make a person. The different kinds of personalities
are what make the world innovate; different personalities force people to
grow and create new ways of doing things. Different personalities are what
make the world so diverse. With a deeper understanding of what makes
someone the way they are, it allows us to be more accepting and tolerating
of people who come from different places, backgrounds, and ways of life.

Works Cited
Smith, D. What Makes an Extravert Extraverted? American Psychological
Association, Dec. 2000. Web. 16 Nov. 2015
The Myers & Briggs Foundation - MBIT Basics. The Myers & Briggs
FoundationMBTI Basics. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2015