Is This A Personality Test?

Individual attempts to define the concept of ‘personality’ and the concept of ‘character’ have generated confusion in almost all psychological endeavors. Everyone instinctively knows that they are different, yet we also know that they are intertwined and interdependent.

The concept of personality has many meanings to various people. In an attempt to be able to more accurately describe what MindsIView does, we are going to define an individual’s personality as ‘the social and emotional characteristics displayed by a person when dealing with another person, the interactive traits that give an individual a unique social identity.’

Listed here are but a few examples of personality traits that a person could display when interacting with another person.

A person might be friendly, amiable, affectionate, sociable, benevolent, loving, gregarious, congenial, jovial, merry, affable, have a good sense of humor, be pleasant, agreeable, enjoyable, a pleasure to be around, cheerful, happy, jolly, merry, spirited, lively, light-hearted, giving, loving, tender, affectionate or they could be jealous, envious, grudging, resentful, suspicious, unfriendly, hostile, antagonistic, unkind, secluded, private, aloof, recluse, withdrawn, formal, conformist, hard, unyeilding, ugly, surly, threatening, unpleasant, offensive, repulsive, a pain to be around, depressed, miserable, sad, gloomy, grumpy, grouchy, sullen, cantankerous, cross, crabby, and irritable.

These are not traits or characteristics we would use if we were describing the way a person executes professional responsibilities or pursues the activities of a career. Some traits or characteristics we would use to describe these activities could be:
Respect for individuals, Honesty, Ambition, Problem solving ability, Proactive thinking, Self confidence, Goal focus, Persistence, Planning ability, Integrity, Attention to details, Seeing the ‘big picture’, etc.

However, we know that the execution of life activities, whether personal or professional, involves a combination of ‘personality’ and ‘character’ traits and this blending of traits produces the unique individual.

The American Heritage English Dictionary defines culture as, “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions and all other products of human work or thought.” Alvin Toffler, author of The Third Wave, gives a very simplistic definition of culture by defining it as ‘how’ an organism or organization ‘does things’. Peter Drucker defines culture as, “the manner in which an organization conducts itself in order to accomplish its desired goals”.

Since the attributes/characteristics measured by MindsIView cannot be clearly defined as ‘personality’ or ‘character’, MindsIView has looked to other headings to define the attributes that belong to an individual’s cognitive structure. MindsIView defines this collection of the attributes in an individual’s cognitive structure as an individual’s ‘personal culture’. That is, the application of an individual’s cognitive structure against the activities of life result in the development of an individual’s ‘person culture’ or ‘how they do things’.

Listed below are a few examples of cognitive structure traits evaluated by MindsIView. As you will notice, these characteristics tend to be more closely identified with the concept that we call ‘character’, yet it is intuitively obvious that traits the world defines as ‘character’ are significantly impacted by the traits that are often defined as ‘personality’. Some examples are:
Attitude toward others, Goal focus, Long range planning, Problem solving, Relating with others, Seeing potential problems, Results oriented, Short range planning, Role confidence, Concrete organization, Persistence, Handling Stress, etc.