What Is Personality? It Is A Lot More Complicated Than Myers-Briggs

Professor Dan McAdams,  a personality psychologist and researcher at Northwestern University (USA) has studied personality across four decades. I came across his work when I was undertaking my undergraduate studies in psychology and have been forever fascinated by personality and his work in particular. His recent articles on former Presidents Donald Trump (read more at articles in The Atlantic) and George W Bush provide not just a great insight into these men but his personality model. 

McAdams Personality Model

McAdams proposes a three layer model of personality that include:

1. Dispositional traits, a person's general tendencies. For example, the Big Five personality traits (which I have previously written about) details: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
2. Characteristic adaptations, a person's desires, beliefs, concerns, and coping mechanisms to deal with unmet needs.
3. Life stories, the stories that give a life a sense of unity, meaning, and purpose. This is known as Narrative identity.

In this model, McAdams argues that individual differences in personality may be described in terms of these three different levels. Let discuss these three layers in more detail.

Layer 1: Dispositional Traits - Self As the Social Actor

This layer describes the kind of person you are. This layer describes stable, basic and most recogniseable aspects of you as a person.

Function

This layer identifies traits that sketch your behavioural outline and shapes the style of your actions and behavioural tendencies. They empahsise vairiances in people's behavioural and emotional adjustment to, and engagement with, the social world. These traits also act as major source of information in making comparative assessments of peoples social performances.

Development Trajectory

This layer appears in early childhood (2-3 years) and is consistent in functioning across situations and time from mid-adolescence. It emerges from the interaction between genetic endownment (20-30% of this layer is inherited based on identifical twins separated at birth studies) and early life experiences.

How Is It Measured?

Measured through questionnaires like the BIG Five (NEO-PI-3), Big Six (HEXACO) and other personality questionnaires like the Hogan Inventory.

Overall, this layer says much about how you regulate yourself across context and time, and your effectivness to get along with others (social acceptance) and ahead of (social status) those around us.

For example, in terms of Big Five factor of Neuroticism, an:

1. emotional stable child is 'unflappable', able to clam down quickly, often in a good mood and happy.
2. emotional unstable child responds quickly to averse environemnt, becomes agitated easily and is slow to calm.
   

However, to capture your personality, traits are limited and can only describe you in your general tendencies ... but we are not just our basic tendencies ... we have motivations ... goals ... needs. Your set of predispostions influences the way you experence your environment in specific ways.

Layer 2: Characteristics Adaptation - Self As Motivated Agent

This layer describes what people want and value. This layer describes the personal adaptations a person makes to developmental challenges and motivations and goals.

Function

This layer fills the detail that layer 1 sketches and reflects the dynamic personality. These motivaton, goals and needs influence our expectations and investment in certain behaviours (such as probem solving, personal strivings, coping strategies and defence mechanism).

Devlopment Trajectory

This layer appears in mid-late childhood (7-9 years) and may change noticelably over the life course. More so than traits, the adaptations are activated and shaped by early social demands (through our parents, peers and broader social environment) and speaks to what we want and value to form our identify. It also highlights, life methods we develop and employ to meet these intentions, and we each respond to events in predictable ways across the different contexts, roles and stage of our lives. This layer we not constrained by behavioural 'trait' tendencies - such as 'I am always anxious or fearful' - but I need to learn that not all situations are fearful ... you adapt coping mechanisms to recognise and appraise these situations correctly.

How Is It Measured?

Measured through understanding motives. goals, values, beliefs , relational modes, coping strategies and defence mechanisms.

So, while people can be understood in terms of dispostional triats, they can also be defined through goals, values and needs - each developing differenty over time. However, people are not known well enough unless a third layer is considered and integrated ... our self-narrative perspective. McAdams recognised that people vary in respect of their personal narratives they construct to define what their lives mean.

Layer 3: Narrative Identity - Self As the Autobiographical Social Author

This layer describes how a person considers onself to be. In this layer, the person seeks to internalise and evolve their narrative and story  by integrating the past, present and future and seeking coherence, purpose and meaning.

Function

This layer tell a person what their lives means in time and context. It provides a menu of life events (high, low and turning points) and stories, metaphors and images. 

Development Trajectory

This layer appears in adolescence and emerging adulthood (15-25 years) with lifestories changing substantially over timeand is consitent in functioning across situations and time from mid-adolescence. By the time we reach late adolesences and our early 20s, we become autobiographical authors, who are able to derive meaning, coherence and purpose from life events that define who we are ... how we came to be ... and where we are heading.

For example, the person with an emotional anxious disposition or tendency can adapt to situations to more effectively cope with anxious provoking situations and then forms their narrative that:

1. I am an anxious person
2. I can manage this or cope with this anxiety soemof the time.
3. Through a low life point it a tunring point that made me realise I needed help and I am am getting better at doing this.

How Is It Measured?

Measured through self-defining memories and recurrent themes - such as agency, communion, redemption, contamination, power and intimacy.

In the next few weeks I will be providing personality portraits based on McAdams personality model and framework. I will be introducing my new podcast series that monthly provides an interview of public figures and leaders where I:

• explore their traits, motivations and needs, and how they narrate their life; and
• provide them a detailed portrait of their personality.