And how can we tell the difference between a person’s social persona and the person hidden underneath?
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To handle the vast complexity of the human mind and all the differences that exist in the world, we rely on loose categories and groupings to explain some key patterns in human behavior. So, a personality type is a simplified way to explain and communicate who you are to other people based on some key themes, interests, passions, motivations, and values that you display more than you display other patterns and personality traits.
While you have more in common with other people than you have differences—just for the sheer fact that you are both human beings—we all have our differences. We can all see and spot differences in how we talk, how we act, what we tend to do in a day, and how we tend to organize our lives. Most of us wake up at similar times, fall asleep around similar times, and sleep for a similar amount of time. We eat in similar ways, and we live and work according to a similar rhythm.
That’s not to say that there are not exceptions, but most people tend to fall into a certain pattern. These are human needs. We all need to eat; we all need to sleep. We all need human interaction in order to be happy and healthy. We need to rest; we need to play. We need to be creative.
So, there is no person that doesn’t need these things. We can speak of universal values, universal traits, and universal patterns that exist all over the world, across all civilizations, that are rooted in our biology and our genetics. For example, most people can see the same colors. Most people can hear a similar range of sounds, and yes, most people tend to develop at a similar pace.
Defining Personality vs. Cognition
First of all, what is a personality? A personality is the social layer of a person. It is what we can observe and see in a person. We can see a person is more outgoing, or we can see a person is more shy or reserved. We understand personality by using adjectives like kind, smart, or funny; what we’re really saying is this person behaves in a certain way which we perceive to be kind, smart, or funny.
So, personality is the outer layer of a human being. It is the first layer of your “onion.” Because we can see and measure your personality, we can understand it using tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the Big Five. What we can’t observe or understand is what you are thinking or feeling on the inside. We can’t say for sure what your true intentions are with your behavior, why you appear a certain way, what your history was like, or what key memories shape you as a person. These things we can only guess at, and the only way we can understand this about you is by relying on your honest self-reporting.
At the same time, even if you do explain how you feel or what you think, we can’t guarantee that we understand what you are experiencing the same way that you are experiencing it.
Jungian Theory and the Shift to Personality
When Carl Jung wrote his book Psychological Types, he did not write about personality types. He wrote about a person’s cognition: thoughts, matters, emotions, and beliefs. Essentially, he tried to understand what was inside a person by looking at what is in the realm of their conscious and unconscious experiences. To understand this, he developed the theory of cognitive functions. He said that human consciousness consists of four different fields:
Sensation
Intuition
Feeling
Thinking
Essentially, your inner experiences are made out of your thoughts, emotions, your ideas, and the sensations that you experience on a daily basis.
Carl Jung made no attempt to systematize your personality. That happened later with Isabel Briggs and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Because Carl Jung’s theories focused on what was inside a person, his ideas are widely considered unscientific. Importantly here, unscientific doesn’t mean unimportant. It doesn’t even mean incorrect. It just means we do not know, and we do not have the tools to understand whether this is true or not, because we can’t measure or understand this using existing scientific methods.
The Malleability of the Persona
The only thing we can really understand is your personality—how you appear in a specific social context. Very importantly, your personality can change depending on who you are spending time with: if you’re with friends or with family, at your work, if you’re outside or inside, if you’re engaged with your favorite hobby, or if you’re doing something you don’t like. This means that you might appear differently in different settings. You can have multiple different social personas.
Still, we see general patterns in human behavior, and usually, when we talk about personality, we will focus on a specific setting. For example, personality tests can be used at work to track how you are at work, or they can be used in dating to track who you are in a romantic setting, or to understand who you are with a group of friends.
If you focus on how you are in your personal life, or in most settings, you can still identify patterns. In general, you tend to be more outgoing than you tend to be shy. In general, you tend to be more agreeable or polite than you tend to be rude. In general, you tend to be more open to new ideas and less traditional. When you say you have a certain personality type, what you’re really saying is: “Generally, this is who I tend to be in most situations.”
But what are you underneath? I find that a really interesting question.
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