Retrospective Analysis of Personality
Written By: Keisha G. Roberts
Tulane University
Dr. Bernard Curry
PSY 105: Introduction to Psychology
December 2, 2015
Abstract
“Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: One is understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability. The other is understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole.” (Encyclopedia of Psychology) In this essay, I will explore the traits in my personality that have changed and the traits that have remained unchanged over the years. I will also explore how nature and nurture have shaped my personality, the inaccuracies and biases that I find and compare my findings to systematic studies that are considered more valuable than individual accounts.
Retrospective Analysis of Personality
As far back as I can remember, three personality traits stick out to me, being very observant, sarcastic and introverted. I was always very observant, quiet and shy. I didn’t have many friends as a kid due to me being so quiet. Now that I think about it, I never really wanted a lot of friends when I was younger. I was very mature for my age meaning, when other kids would be outside doing what most kids in those days did, I would be in my room curled up with a book or drawing. I watched how my peers would act, and most of them were very immature. Being around other kids just annoyed me, so I chose to stay away from them unless I absolutely had to be around them. I remember kids used to tease me because I didn’t have the latest clothes and shoes that everyone else’s parents would waste their money on and that really made me not want to be bothered with other kids too. When I did encounter a kid who decided to tease me, I would never get upset or mad. I would never let them know that what they said bothered me. I always had a sarcastic comeback. That would make them mad because I wasn’t getting mad at what they were saying. When I saw how well being sarcastic worked in my favor, I continued to just be that way all throughout school and throughout life. It became a defense mechanism that I used, but once I learned that it was my hostility being disguised as humor, I had to handle things in a different way. I found that I was very angry and insecure about myself, and I used the sarcasm to hide that and take what I was feeling out on other people.

I was also and I still am an introvert. I believe it’s hereditary because my mother, sister and my son and daughter are the same way. I would rather be at home, away from people nine times out of ten. I’m not so introverted that I refuse to go anywhere there are people, but I absolutely enjoy being by myself. I find that when I’m out and about, I get annoyed with people almost instantly. I don’t have to know them at all for them to annoy me either. That moment can be the first time I have ever seen them in life, or they might not even be conversing with me. But if I hear someone say something that I think is stupid and redundant, I’m instantly annoyed and I want to go home. I don’t know why I am like that. As much as I try to control it, I can’t. People just make me angry all the time with the stupid things they do and say and most of the time, it’s not even directed toward me, but I still get angry. Maybe that’s one of the cons of being observant, hearing and seeing too much.
As I became an adolescent though, I started to open up a little bit more. I was open to talking to people I didn’t know and I was open to new experiences. I still had my moments where I would revert back to being quiet and shy, but I was progressing. I still considered myself a loner throughout my teenage years because I hadn’t personally said that particular people were my friends, but unbeknownst to me, I was very popular. A lot of people knew who I was and I never thought that was a good thing.
I now see that my personality has changed a lot since my younger years. I’m way more open to things than I was. I’m still quiet and shy, but instead of waiting for someone to initiate a conversation with me, I find myself being the initiator. I still do not have a lot of friends due to the fact that I think, the less friends you have, the less drama you are involved in. I fell that the older I get, the more sarcastic I am though. When I was younger, I used it as a defense mechanism to hid how I was feeling about myself. But now, I use sarcasm because I think it’s hilarious. I’m originally from New Orleans, but I now reside in Atlanta. When people here find out I’m from New Orleans, I’m always asked “do you know how to make gumbo”, or “you’re a Saints fan, aren’t you” or “I’m not going to talk to you since you’re from New Orleans, you practice voodoo”. Those are very stupid generalizations to me and I usually say something sarcastic, so that the person saying those idiotic things will stop talking to me and it works all the time.
Nature vs Nurture
I will say that nature and nurture played a huge part in shaping my personality. My mother was not shown any love and affection from her mother, my grandmother or her brothers and sisters. She was the oldest girl and second oldest child of 9. She was always belittled and put down, was always made to feel that whatever she did was never good enough or that she would never amount to anything in life. Because of that, my mother didn’t show love and affection to my sister and I, but it was shown to my brother. She treated us the only way she knew how at the time because that was the kind of treatment she got from her own mother. With that being said, I believe I had and sometimes still have a stand offish personality due to lack of love and affection. I used the sarcasm to cope with not feeling loved and always feeling like I was never good enough. I was always naturally quiet, but when I was able to realize that I was being emotionally neglected, I became more introverted and closed off to everyone. And for a long time, I resented my mother for that.
But, as I got older and left the house more often, I was able to experience different things in my environment. The few friends that I did have, had parents who would show me the love and attention that I never got at home. That helped me to open up more and not look at everyone and everything so negatively.
After analyzing my personality, I will admit that biases could have possibly clouded my judgement. A huge part of the bias may have something to do with my memory. I personally do not remember a lot from my childhood and writing this paper and having to think back like this, has taken a lot out of me because I have suppressed and forgotten about a lot. I can only write about what I can remember and it’s not a whole lot. There was a lot of negativity in my childhood and a lot of negative memories and experiences. I suppressed them for so long, that I eventually forgot most of them. I believe I have been actually filtering out certain memories while writing this paper. A lot of what I wrote could possibly be inaccurate, but these things are what I can remember.
Systematic Studies vs Individual Accounts
I believe that systematic studies are more valuable than individual accounts because it’s not relying on the possible distorted memory of an individual. There are controls and variables in a systematic study that can be added or removed. The bias and inaccuracy and be removed and/or reduced in these types of studies, in which the psychologists can get better and more realistic results. With the systematic study of personality, the psychologist can perform many different experiments and get many different, accurate results, instead of relying on one person’s account of their past, in which they nine times out of ten, do not remember it clearly anyways. I will say this, while I have identified my different personality traits, what have changed and stayed the same over the years and how nature and nurture played a role in shaping my personality, all of this may possibly be inaccurate. Going back to chapters 6 and 7 in Webtext, where it talks about cognition and a person repressing negative memories and eventually forgetting them, I probably forgot about a lot of things, since my childhood was so negative. I do think that the emotional neglect helped me to not be so sensitive when someone disapproves of me, or something I said or did for whatever reason. It has helped me to understand that I don’t need the approval of others to live my life. Life is too short and I have to do what makes me feel good and makes me happy at the end of the day.
References
Webtext, Chapters 6 and 7
http://www.apa.org/topics/personality/