How Does Personality Shape Perception and Values?

TL;DR

Personality shapes which facts people notice, how they respond emotionally, what they value, and how they act. Although temperament is relatively stable and partly rooted in genetic factors, some variability permits learning and transformation. Understanding your traits can help you choose a compatible social or occupational niche and take seriously the perspectives of people whose temperaments differ from yours.

Transcript

so welcome to psychology 230 personality and its Transformations so I guess the first thing I'll do is offer you a bit of a description of what personality is it's a very extensive phenomena personality your personality determines the way you perceive so what that means at least in part is that your personality actually determines how you're going ... Read More

Key Insights

• Personality is a deep organizing influence that shapes perception before deliberate thought occurs. It affects which facts a person extracts from the world, making experience itself appear differently to people with different temperamental configurations.
• Emotional responsiveness is partly structured by personality. People differ in baseline positive emotion, emotional variability, anxiety, fearlessness, and negative emotion, while environmental conditions can move these tendencies to some degree.
• Temperamental starting points appear to be strongly influenced by genetic factors. The environment can modify emotional tendencies, but the lecture argues that their original levels are fairly tightly determined before later experience and deliberate action.
• Personality determines values as well as actions. Because people move from their present condition toward something they regard as better, temperament helps define what better means and consequently influences the direction of their behavior.
• Every useful personality attribute can carry associated vices. Orderliness may support effective conduct, yet it can also be connected with harsh judgments, xenophobia, and disgust toward sexual behaviors that are not strictly normative.
• Political preferences are associated with personality differences. People high in openness and low in conscientiousness tend to lean liberal, while people higher in conscientiousness and lower in creativity tend to lean conservative in cultures with comparable political spectrums.
• Occupational fit depends partly on matching personal traits to suitable environments. Creative people may fit poorly in conservative, precedent-dependent enterprises such as law or banking, where conscientiousness can be more valuable than unusually high openness.
• Personality combines stability with plasticity. Test results can remain highly correlated over time, yet remaining variability creates room for learning and transformation, although changing personality is difficult and comes with a cost.

Questions & Answers

Q: How does personality shape what people perceive?

Personality biases perception before a person consciously analyzes a complete set of neutral facts. It helps determine which facts are extracted from the world, so events can appear differently to people with different temperaments. This rapid filtering is important because deliberate perception, thought, emotion, and action would often be too slow if they always occurred as separate sequential stages.

Q: How does personality influence emotions and behavior?

Personality affects baseline positive emotion, emotional variability, anxiety, fearlessness, and negative emotional responses. It also influences values, which guide action toward outcomes a person considers better than the present condition. The environment can shift emotional tendencies somewhat, but the lecture presents their starting points as fairly tightly influenced by genetic factors.

Q: Why is understanding your personality practically useful?

Understanding your personality can reveal who you are, including both useful attributes and the vices associated with them. It can also help you identify environments where your traits are valued. This makes personality knowledge relevant to occupational and social choices, although the best-fitting niche may not always be stable or economically viable.

Q: Why do personality differences complicate logical discussion?

Logical discussion often rests on values, and values are partly grounded in temperament. Two people may therefore approach the same facts with different prior assumptions and perceptual biases. They remain similar enough to communicate, but their starting points can differ enough that reasoning alone may not resolve disagreement unless each person takes the other's perspective seriously.

Q: How is personality related to political beliefs?

The lecture reports that people high in openness, the trait associated with creativity, and low in conscientiousness tend to be liberal or left leaning. People who are more conscientious and less creative tend to be conservative. This pattern appears more or less across cultures where the left-right spectrum resembles the one found in North America.

Q: Does the effect of personality on politics decline with age?

The research discussed in the lecture suggests that personality's effects on political preference and voting behavior increase with age rather than decrease. The finding is described as one the researchers were still wrestling with. It may indicate that temperamental biases increasingly dominate thought and behavior over time, but the lecture does not present a settled interpretation.

Q: How can personality affect career choice?

Personality can help determine whether a person fits the demands and values of an occupation. Creative individuals may be poorly matched with conservative, precedent-based enterprises such as law or banking. In a study described in the lecture, the most outstanding attribute among nominated creative Canadian lawyers was conscientiousness rather than openness, illustrating the importance of occupational context.

Q: Can personality change if it is relatively stable?

Personality is stable enough that tests given to the same person at different times produce highly correlated results. It nevertheless contains variability, and that variability provides potential for learning and transformation. A person therefore has quasi-fixed attributes rather than a completely unchangeable identity, although transformation is difficult and the lecture emphasizes that it carries a cost.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Personality operates beneath deliberate reasoning by biasing perception, emotional reactions, values, and behavior. People differ in anxiety, fearlessness, positive emotion, creativity, orderliness, and other traits. These differences make individuals distinct while also affecting which facts seem important and what outcomes they regard as better or worth pursuing.

• Understanding personality can clarify both personal strengths and associated weaknesses. Orderliness may be useful, for example, but can accompany harsh judgment, xenophobia, and disgust toward nonnormative sexual behavior. Recognizing such connections helps people examine themselves while appreciating that others may begin discussions with fundamentally different temperamental assumptions and values.

• Personality is stable enough to measure across time, yet variable enough to allow learning and transformation. A practical goal is to identify personal attributes and find a social or occupational niche where they are valued. Successful matching is difficult because suitable niches may not always be stable or economically viable.