Yesterday in an e-mail conversation with Jean, my mother-in-law, she asked “What do you think is the best age to be?” I am happy to be whatever age I am, as each age offers different positives and negatives aspects.
Now this made me think. I know I have changed over time. I am more easy-going than I was when I was 20, for example. Wouldn’t a radar or spiderweb graph plotting personality traits over time be interesting?
It is interesting. For the foundation of my chart, I used the Big Five personality traits:
- Openness – appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience.
- Conscientiousness – a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behaviour.
- Extraversion – energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation and the company of others.
- Agreeableness – a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
- Neuroticism – a tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability; sometimes called emotional instability.
This definitely has faults: the Big Five is not comprehensive; the rating scale is not entirely clear – should 0 be neutral or an extreme opposite? No doubt I am overlooking a lot of other problems but is is interesting.
In addition to plotting the chart, I summed totals by age and category. I think the category totals sort of tell what your overall strengths are.
I want the totals by age to indicate the size of your personality – how much you have bloomed or withered over time – but I think that the Big Five are not the best traits to show this. I need to dig deeper to find better ones.
If you’d like to play with this, here is the Excel spreadsheet to download. If you try it, may I see your results? I won’t publish them here, but they would help me validate my ideas. I would be happy to have your comments on how this might be reworked to make it more accurate or revealing, too.
