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Personality Reflection Paper

Decent Essays

Personality is a fascinating construct, and the number of different ways to measure and define personality are many. One of the models that I believe helps to provide a framework for me to define and describe my past experiences within the context of personality theory is based on the traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion/Introversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. As I reflect on my personality in early life and as I think about my personality today, it seems that much of my personality has stayed the same. While some may argue that this would mean that there are strong and extremely salient genetic contributions to my personality, I think that my environment also helped to shape me into the person I am today. Extroversion has always been one of my biggest personality facets. I was the gregarious child who sat on the preschool teacher’s leg during story time, the class clown in elementary school, and the one who made friends with all of the different cliques that were ubiquitous in my high school. Some would say that this is genetically influenced to a large degree because both of my parents are also extremely extroverted and they enjoy social gatherings and large groups of people. However, in looking at my history, I see that the environment was ripe for social connectedness and being social was familiar and expected. If I was naturally extroverted (genetics), and grew up in a house of introverts who watched television and read books in the evenings instead of having dinner parties, I think that my extraversion would not be my strongest trait. Another strong personality trait of mine is my openness. As a child, I wanted to be everywhere and see everything. As a rambunctious child, I learned and explored, and as an adult, I do this, but in different ways. Overall, I do not think my personality has changed to a large degree since childhood, but my environment has definitely helped to keep some of my strong traits in check. As reported, both nature and nurture shaped my early life and developmental years of my personality. While I view nature as being those traits and characteristics passed down from my parents through their genes, I think of nurture as the environment in which I was raised,

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