ELOÏSE LIKES WRITING: PERSONALITY
People tend to view some personality traits (like high conscientiousness, low neuroticism, and high agreeableness) as strictly better than their opposites. I think this is a mistake - there are at least some appropriate situations for each point on a trait's continuum, and the optimal place to be depends on the context in which you find yourself.
Using the traits from the Big Five:
Unconscientiousness is best when you’re in an environment with:
- stupid rules that don’t matter
- tasks that don’t benefit much from being done carefully
- easygoing people who mostly want to have fun
Conscientiousness is best when you’re in an environment with:
- unpleasant but valuable tasks
- enough predictability that you can benefit from implementing long term plans
- social rewards for rule-following and reliability (in particular, being around other conscientious people, who will like you more if you are neat and on time)
Disagreeableness is best when you’re in an environment with:
- people who don’t have your best interests in mind
- high rewards for being competitive
Agreeableness is best when you’re in an environment with:
- high costs to conflict
- trustworthy people who will cooperate if you do too
Neuroticism is best when you’re in an environment with:
- threats that anxiety and constant vigilance would protect against
Emotional stability is best when you’re in an environment with:
- safety, where it’s wasteful to spend mental and physical energy trying to protect yourself because nothing is going to hurt you
- threats that you can’t do anything about
Closedness is best when you’re in an environment with:
- physical risks such that it’s better not to go poking around in new things
- social risks such that it’s better not to say anything too weird
Openness is best when you’re in an environment with:
- safety
- benefits to exploration and curiosity
Introversion is best when you’re in an environment with:
- disease
- untrustworthy or uncooperative people
- high costs to social mistakes
- valuable non-social pursuits
Extroversion is best when you’re in an environment with:
- nice people who want to be your friend
- high benefits to having a strong social network
Personality traits are of course not easy to change, but where you are on the spectrum of a trait is more of a distribution than a point. There is a range in which you comfortably operate, and an even wider range that you can sometimes stretch to. You're not located at a single point. So, when a situation calls for high disagreeableness (or whatever the case may be), you can operate on the higher end of your range, and maybe even widen your range with effort. Viewing yourself as having your traits set at specific single points unnecessarily closes off large swathes of the options available to you.