Theories in Evaluating Personality

I always stumble upon one particular question over and over again- what do I think of myself? To be frank, I can never actually answer the question because I am still quite ignorant about who I really am. However, I got feedbacks from various people about what they think of me and the most repetitive characteristic is my jovial personality. May times people wonder why I am constantly smiling. They also find it amusing that I love to smile into the thin air and laugh at every joke that is dubbed as lame. Not only that, I have trademark laughter. My friends told me that I have this distinct way of laughing and that my laughter is extra loud. The second characteristic that people thought fit me best is my sense of oblivion, or should I say, ignorance. Ever since high school, I was known as "Blur Ben", in which it can also be roughly translated to "Oblivious Benita". I have to admit that I am quite unaware of situations that are happening around me now and then. I always forget to bring my textbook or my wallet to school, I frequently unconscious about the important things that are going on right before my very own eyes, and my mind is most of time in another world. For example, once my friend was gossiping about something, I spaced out, blocking whatever they were talking about. In the end, I was clueless about what they were discussing and I got made fun at. In psychology, I finally learnt about theories that may be able to explain why I am the way I am. Among the three theories that I can relate to the most in terms of personality are Freud's psychodynamic theory, social cognitive theory, and trait theory.

In Freud's psychodynamic theory of personality, it stresses the importance of early childhood experiences, the unconscious mind, and the conflict between conscious and unconscious force that influence our feelings, behaviors, and thoughts. I was raised into a normal, whole family. When I was young, I used to have a strong respect for my father and was greatly influenced by him. People always deemed me as a daddy's girl. My dad is a cool and calm person and is always cheerful. I have a high admiration for his jolly personality. He never scolds me or displaces his frustrations on me. I felt that this may be the reason why I am so cheerful most of the time. From young I had this urges to be like my dad because I used to look up to him as my role model. As for my oblivious attitude, I feel that maybe because it is due to the fact that I relied too much on my parents. I tended to seek their help on almost everything and my mum was always the one to remind me of things. Hence, I think for the reason that I depended so much on my mum to help me remember things that it had shaped me into a forgetful, oblivious or ignorant person. When it comes to the unconscious mind, maybe it is some unconscious psychological forces that influenced my characteristic. I do not know what is running in my unconscious mind but let's just say in a hypothetical way that my cheerfulness may be due to my unconscious desire to please other people, while my oblivion persona may be related to the fact that I am scared to perceive or know about what people say about me. Because the unconscious mind is something hidden, it can only be noticed by other people or uncovered through three techniques which are free association, dream interpretation, and Freudian slips. Free association is where the patients talks about any thoughts and images that enter their heads, while dream interpretation is a Freudian technique of analyzing dreams. Freud firmly believed that dreams contain fundamental, concealed meanings that can provide clues to a person's unconscious thoughts and desires. The last technique is the Freudian slips, in which the slips of tongue that we make in everyday speech are believed to reflect unconscious thoughts.

The social cognitive theory postulates that personality development is determined by cognitive-personal factors, behavior, and environmental influences. Firstly, the cognitive factors help in personality development by influencing the way people view and interpret information. In my case, I view the world as something magnificent and I like to look at the bright side of everything. Somehow I think that my cheerfulness is related to my ignorance. Like they say, "ignorance is bliss". I perceive things in a more positive light. A lot of times I have a tendency to try and overlook all the negativity that is lingering around and focus more on the more pleasant side of life. The personal factors are the ones that influence a person's personality due to his or her emotional makeup and biological and genetic influences. Therefore in a nutshell, cognitive-personal factors influence our personalities by affecting what we assume, believe and experience which sequentially affect how we act. For the behavior aspect, it denotes that my personal actions play a part in shaping my personality. In many occasion, I laughed at jokes that were not funny and always forgot to bring along the things I needed. These behaviors of mine had probably subconsciously developed into a personality traits. As for the environmental part, it says that our personality is formed from our social, political, and cultural influences, including our particular learning experiences. While the cognitive factor determines how we perceive and interpret our environment, our environmental in turn affects our beliefs, values, and social role. In my case, I was brought up in a normal and happy family where I was constantly showered with tender, loving, and care. No doubt, I was a really happy person and from young, my parents instilled their beliefs in me that anger and hatred does not get you anywhere far. They consistently encouraged me to be happy always and to not get easily upset at things that may not be nice. This in a way triggered me to be more ignorant to my surroundings, so I would not get hurt so easily. Their over protectiveness over me had put me into a state of oblivion and in many times, naivety. My characteristics can also be analyzed in the form of Bandura's social cognitive theory. This theory concludes that our personality as a whole is influenced by four distinctively human cognitive processes, which are the language ability, observational learning, purposeful behavior, and self-analysis. Language ability is influential as it acts as a vital tool in personality development. With it, we convert information into beliefs, values, and goals which shapes our behaviors. For instance, when I take part in Christian fellowship activities, it preaches tolerance and love. This information that it promotes make me become a more tolerant, loving and also a happy person. Sometimes, overload of information, in particularly the unpleasant ones, may lead me to block it out because I do not want to learn about it. This may be a factor