The Personality Puzzle

What Personality Type Are You? Sarah Marinos Finds Out What Makes Us The Way We Are…

Are you someone who is highly organised, reliable and hard-working? Or do you have a laidback, whatever-will-be-will-be approach to life? Do you fire up and get angry quickly, or do you opt for a gently does it approach when navigating a tricky situation?

After studying the traits, attitudes, values and qualities of more than 1.5 million people, US researchers have come up with four personality types which they say describe most of us.

Why does this matter and why is knowing our personality type important? Well, our personality type has wide ranging impacts on our life – from the quality of our relationships and our job prospects to our level of education and the state of our physical and mental health.

“Personality is a good predictor of a number of things and research suggests it is fairly enduring over our life span – it doesn’t change a lot,” says Dr Bradley Elphinstone, a lecturer in Psychology at Melbourne’s Swinburne University.

Personality types are defined using the ‘big five’ personality traits. These are: neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. People who score higher in the neuroticism trait are more prone to being anxious and worried. “Neuroticism can be associated with higher stress and more mental health concerns,” explains Dr Elphinstone.

Those who have a strong extraversion trait are outgoing and social – introverts are more likely to be reserved and to prefer their own company.

Openness to experience refers to being willing to try new things and agreeableness is the much-desired personality trait of being cooperative, warm and optimistic. Conscientiousness is also often highly regarded as a trait because it signals diligence and hard work.

A nifty health fix?