Brass 1 Zachary Brass Dr. Groth PSYC 1010 14 November 2022 Big 5 Personality Reflection According to my test results, I scored highest in open-mindedness, high in conscientiousness, low in extraversion, high in agreeableness, and somewhat low in emotionality. I don’t completely agree with the results, but the brief summaries provided for each major aspect of the test are somewhat accurate. For open-mindedness, it states that I tend to enjoy having novel experiences and seeing things in new ways. I think that is pretty accurate to the image I have of myself, and I feel that open-mindedness is important for the goals I have set for myself in music performance and production. The conscientiousness category was also pretty straight-forward. I tend to organize things in a specific way and have a hard time focusing when things are not organized or cleaned to my liking. It also touches on self-discipline, which I do agree with. My parents were less restrictive, lenient, and left me with few responsibilities growing up: I had to self-actualize and find the will to take on the responsibilities that I have. The test results on extraversion were a little more inaccurate as it explains that I “tend to shy away from social situations”, which is not the way I would describe it. When I am around peers that I feel comfortable with such as family and friends, I am very sociable and outgoing. I’m much more reserved and observant when I’m around people who I don’t frequently socialize with. Agreeableness showed results that say I tend to consider the feelings of others, which is not always the case for me. I sometimes find myself disregarding people’s feelings before acting, which might stem from simply thinking Brass 2 logically before letting my emotions dictate my responses; however, when I notice something like this happen it makes me feel guilty for not being in tune with how someone is feeling. This fact alone ties into the final category, which is negative emotionality. It’s very true that I am generally relaxed and secure as the test says, but the fact that I sometimes have this emotional numbness makes me feel insecure about relationships I have or future relationships I will have with the people around me. In that sense, I feel that my lack of empathy has caused me difficulty. Other parts of my personality such as creativity, open-mindedness, self-awareness, and curiosity are what have helped me establish an identity. The two main factors that I feel contributed to the personality I have now are the way I was brought up by my parents and the time after my parents divorced. It’s all of my childhood experiences, the freedoms I was given that I probably shouldn’t have had, and the things I got away with. My parents divorced when I was thirteen years old, which was the summer leading into 7th grade. I moved away from all of my friends and started middle school, and I found that a lot of my friends were not my friends anymore – it felt like I was starting a completely new social life as a new person. The whole experience of starting middle school, not being close to my old friends, and the adjustment to the homelife of being an only child with my mom felt like the biggest change in my life, and it feels like the personality I developed throughout middle school and high school molded me into the man I am now. I made new and much more valuable friends in middle school that helped me get through my early years in adolescence, and from what I can tell, I’ve absorbed little bits of my friends’ personalities in some ways. I noticed it very early on, and I believe the saying “you are who you hang with” is the truest thing about me. Brass 3 In the end, the personality test was about halfway-accurate in generalizing my personality type. There were a few right and wrong things the test suggested, but in all honesty, I don’t think something like a personality test should be used to determine someone’s persona.
