Personality - Agreeableness

Around 50% of your personality is heredity- this is the genotype influence *. So, who you are and how you react to different situations are predetermined up to 50%, the other 50% is shaped through the many early life experiences – these are the environmental influences. The famed debate of Nature Vs Nurture (heredity Vs grooming), is split right at the middle. The most disturbing or striking outcome of research is: upbringing has no effect on the personality of a person. Parents do not play a role through their parenting skills (or the lack of it!) – their contribution ends with the donation of genes.

Among the 5 personality traits, people who score high on Agreeableness (Daniel Nettle calls them Empathizers) focus on harmonious interpersonal relationships and will spend considerable amount of time caring for others, to my mind this is probably the most important personality trait (esp., in today’s world) and interestingly it is the least acquired trait through genotype (42%). Agreeableness is explained through the Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind) is divided into two related capacities; mentalizing (understanding the mental state of others – e.g., understanding that someone is in a state of hunger) and empathizing (relating/caring to others mental state- sympathizing and providing food for someone who is hungry. Only humans are capable of these two mental states. People who score high on agreeableness are highly capable of this mentalizing and empathizing; especially with empathizing.

The Big 5 questionnaire (available here: http://www.outofservice.com/bigfive/) will shed some light in rating the 5 personalities based on the responses to some standard questions. The realization of ‘Self’ is critical to the process of growing up (wonder if someone is really aware of this Self, generally we either underestimate or are over confident about ourselves and our abilities). Being aware of the strengths and weakness in our personality and will help us enrich our professional and personal life.

If you take the Big 5 test and happen to score high on Agreeableness, drop me a line.

*Effect of Genes on personality:
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Openness: 57%
Extraversion: 54%
Conscientiousness: 49%
Neuroticism: 48%
Agreeableness: 42%
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