It is possible to describe personality in terms of how individuals think, act, and act. It is the part inside us that makes up our entire being. Retrospective personality research involves studying the evolution of an individual’s personality over time by relating to historical experiences. It pays careful attention to the improvements that an individual has made, the changes that the person has experienced, and the attributes that have not changed over that period. It offers documentation of the improvements and the possible causes of the modifications.
Study of Personality Over time, my life has changed in a number of ways. In the same breadth, I have retained a number of life aspects over the years. My association with people, especially at the first sight, has not been easy because of emotions and the feelings I sometimes have. I have also developed in my openness, extraversion and the ability to agree to my personality. In acquisition of work experience, I have become more open to new skills, ideas and knowledge. My interaction with people has also seen me become more extraverted. In helping others during their times of need, I have improved on my level of agreeableness. I have also changed my perception about people and how I look at them in terms of personality, Character and conduct.
I have, similarly, retained my conscientiousness and neuroticism. This has been because, perhaps, I have been very careful with my morality and the need for personal peace. I have also retained my feelings and attachments towards people and different aspects of life. I have the same initial feelings and attachments to people, particularly, friends and relatives.
Nature and nurture, evidently, have played a significance role in changing my life. Nature has enabled me to see the world of reality and escape the imagination of a fantastic world. It has enabled me to view things as they are supposed to be. It has helped me learn more aspects of my environment, the norms and beliefs, the living styles, cultures and how to live others in the society. Nature has enabled me identify things that are considered evil and helped me have a good sense of decision making.
Nurture, on the other hand, has helped me develop a great sense of agreeableness. Growing up, I did not like to make friends even with my peers, I was shy and less open to people I considered strangers. I had an anxiety in me, therefore, to exploit the outside world and know what was contained in it. To this extent, nurture enable me to become more open and interactive as I joined the professional world and realized the need to have friends and professionals around me. It also instilled in me a great sense of lending a helping hand to those who are in need.
In analyzing my life and the changes I have undergone, I cannot rule out the possibilities of biasness. Biasness could have resulted due to issues that are related to memory. It is difficult to rule out the possibility of an inability to clearly recollect information from the past. Information, in this case, could have been selectively picked or distorted. Arguably, people tend to suppress unpleasant memories that could, after a duration, be erased. My analysis, therefore could be inaccurate if I had experienced this suppression (Reisberg & Hertel, 2004).
Implicit memories, stored unconsciously, could also affect the analysis. It is possible that I erroneously used these implicit memories to documents traits that, perhaps had been transformed for a long while. The use of distorted information can affect the analysis of the changes. Moreover, distorted information could result to misinformation effect hence confirmation of bias (Reisberg & Hertel, 2004). Misinformation effect may subsequently lead me distortedly recall events that never existed or misrepresent the events that actually happened. Bias, here, can be confirmed whenever a person only remembers things that favor them or events that they liked.
The effects of intelligence related factors, that includes Intelligence Quotient, are also a possible distortion of retrospection. This includes an individuals’ ability to think solely, reason, respond and execute solutions to various problems with the reality amidst existence of emotions. Low level reasoning normally lead to attribution of a wrong cause to a particular effect and assigning of wrong emotional weight. In the same manner, people who gifted with specific problem solving skills are bound to offer them whenever they are required to do so.
According to the above explanations, analysis of personality retrospectively through reflection on past experiences can be undermined by biasness and inaccuracy. Scientific research, rather than retrospection is preferred in psychology research as it leads to objective observation and attainment of reliable results. Scientific research is more detailed, starting at hypothesis and tests various assumptions (Argyle, 2013). It tends to remove, or greatly reduce the chances of biasness and limits inaccuracy. Contrary to retrospection, it examines the cause-effect relations and controls the chances of biasness as the experiments are frequently done to ascertain various facts.
In conclusion, in as much as the aspects of my life that have changed and those that have refused to change have been identified through retrospective analysis, there is little doubt that they have elements of biasness and inaccuracy. It is, therefore, important to adopt the scientific research methods in doing this analysis.
Argyle, M. (2013). The scientific study of social behavior (psychology revivals). London, UK: Routledge.
Reisberg, D., & Hertel, P. (2004). Memory and emotion. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.