Retrospective analysis of Personality (Essay Sample)

RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF PERSONALITY
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Retrospective analysis of personality
Retrospective analysis of personality is generally defined as how a person’s present behavior, feelings, and thinking can be related to his/her past life exposures. More often, personality changes over time; however, there are some aspects which may form a basis component of the current personality. In this essay I will discuss my past life and describe the aspects of my personality that have changed and those that have remained consistent, thereby, analyzing the roles of nature and nurture as phenomenon’s of such transformation. It will also discuss any possible biases within a retrospective paradigm as opposed to systematic scientific methods.
Over the years, retrospectively, the traits of conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness of my personality have been elevated while the other two dimensions, neuroticism and openness have consistently remained the same. Being the first and only male child in a family of three siblings, the degree of my discipline, sociability, and cooperativeness have always measured very high due to the fact that I had no brother, thus I saw myself as the family protector and a person they should look up to, especially to my two younger sisters. As I grew up, I became more outgoing, from interacting with other people, neighbourhood and college friends. My organizational skills and discipline have increased tremendously as more responsibilities have been bestowed to me initially at home, at school, and now at work. I have learned to appreciate and developed a loving bond for my family, friends, and fellow staff. The other two "broad traits" of my personality, neuroticism and openness (Mischel, 1996) have remained moderate. I have not come to grasp with the fancies of adventurousness, creativeness, and curiosity. I have always been cautious of not hurting the people close to me, therefore maintaining a calm profile and a nonchalant nature. I have always endeavored in taming my nervousness and living a quite life.
Concisely, nature and nurture have played a bigger role in shaping my personality as it is today. Being the only male child in a family where my father never used to come home, often as he was working at the city while we stayed in the rural areas, therefore, most often there was no male figure to look up to. Having to play or walk around with the girls made me less bold and daring to discover anything new, therefore, keeping the degree of my traits of openness consistently low. This situation may have translated to my state of lack of creativity, reserving nature and a very polite person. Even after interacting with people afterwards, my openness has consistently been moderate. In this regard, nature seems to have impacted on my personality of openness and neuroticism. However, the influence of nurture seemed to have in principal shaped my conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness as I grew up and interact with more people especially at college and during internships. I may have become more of these traits as a result of wanting to feel wanted and keep a close circle. The kindness and dependability may be as a result an inferior complex I had grown with, therefore, triggering a submissive trait.
However, some sources of bias may have made analysis and judgmental of my personality inaccurate. For instance, I may have analyzed the personality in bias related memories such as; choice supportive, childhood amnesia, positivity, and imprecise memories of unpleasant past events. More often, it is suggested that people will tend to forget past events that were not pleasant as a result of trying to hold back those memories from affecting their present behavior (Mischel, 1996). In contrast, favorable and pleasant experiences tend to be recalled easily as the memories have a positive, egocentric feeling on one’s present life. Thus, I may have applied this gist in trying to asses my past to bring about a favorable and self appeasing judgmental. Therefore, the possibility of my analysis being accurate could be inaccurate by a wider perspective. Childhood amnesia, whereby, events experienced below the age of four might not have been vividly remembered. I may tend to have accounted wrongly on how nature or even nurture had a cognitive bases of my present personality.
Imprecise memory as a bias may have caused in describing accurately the series of events experienced in the past, especially, those that may have happened in early life. However, the bias in this case is understandable since over time people forget and move on with new life and experiences. Other possible biases are related to cognition which is mostly, intelligent factors. They ent...