Introduction
Amber Dahlin is twenty-three years old. She is six feet tall with blonde hair and an athletic body. It is possible to conclude that she puts some effort into working out so as to remain physically fit, something she denies. She suspects that her body type may be a product of genes.
She discloses to me that her mother is equally athletic. She is a junior in college, and she is soon becoming a senior. The possibilities and opportunities that are part of the world outside college excite her. She makes it clear to me how she cannot wait to live her out of college life. She loves college but she thinks that she will like life out of college more. She is confident and speaks with authority. She is comfortable with me disclosing her name in the interview. She tells me that she does not mind because she has nothing to hide. Her life is the typical American life.
Body
Amber comes from a middle-class American family. They have two cars and her mother divorced her first husband. The stability of the family is currently at its best and Amber cannot wish to be somewhere else. Her brother who is two years older is six feet seven inches tall and loves basketball. The youngest in the family is twelve-year-old Dan who is naughty and active. Amber has dated only once in her life. The lucky man was an international student from Kenya whose magnetic personality left Amber running after him. He was witty and landed on the Honor Roll the same Fall Quarter he reported for classes.
According to Amber, the guy seemed to get it without even trying. She also tells me that she liked him because he was not a fan of things she considers stupid. He never talked loudly; he was uniquely eloquent and wanted to become the president of his country someday. Their relationship experienced some difficulties but she hopes that he will come back to her one day. He still has feelings for him.
Besides the above, Amber tells me that she easily connects with open-minded people who are not inclined to make judgments. She believes that everyone has his or her own potential and in most cases, the things we dismiss as meaningless simply because they are done by people we do not value so much does not make the people as valueless as we may think. It is even possible that given a chance, we cannot do these things we consider trivial. She sees the world as a jigsaw mat that needs every piece so as to be complete and functional. The pieces cannot solve the puzzle if they are the same. Shapes have to be different so as to close the gaps and produce complete work.
Listening to Amber speak makes me conclude that she has an exceptionally good memory. She is able to give me detailed narrations of experiences she had close to sixteen years ago. For example, she clearly remembers how she nearly beat up a boy who had described her as the flamingo girl, something that had to do with her long slender legs. She knew that she would be tall right from the time she turned five. Her mother kept on pointing out to her that she had taken the traits of her grandmother who used to be tall and beautiful. All these details and more seem to be vivid to her in a way that makes you think that they took place in her life a few days or months ago.
It is at this point that I set out to explore Amber’s other memory and information retention abilities. Human beings have different cognitive abilities and we learn in different ways. Conditions are important as they work for others and fail to work for some.R.Gagne’s theory on conditions as a determinant of learning is relevant here (Lawrence 1989, p.104).
“When do you remember information about events or occurrences? Is it when you participate or observe the events or when you read about the processes of carrying out tasks?” I ask Amber. She takes some seconds and then gives me the answer. I am not surprised since she is a very practical person. She tells me that she remembers things better when she observes them being done. She further tells me that if given a chance, she would prefer to participate in carrying out tasks since this makes her remember almost every detail in the entire process.
She gives me the example of her salsa dancing classes where spending time in class listening to her instructor did not help at all. She would not be able to visualize the movements on paper (Gosling 2008, p.79). This changed when she attended salsa training sessions with an instructor who was good at salsa. She picked up the movements at a very high speed. I discover that she learned the dance in two months. This is a short period considering the complexity of the movements involved in salsa.
Apart from the above, I set out to find out where Amber likes doing her studies. The choices within the college include the library and in the dorm. She also has the option of studying at home. The library is very quiet. In contrast, the dorm and home are full of background noises. I wait for her response as she looks around. I soon learn that she prefers reading in places where there is at least a sign of life. The library is not the best for her (Lawrence 1989, p.46-47). She does not also like places with too much noise.
She tells me that she would read while listening to music in her boyfriend’s room or listening to his stories about Kenya, his home country. She also reads from her room at home with soft music from her music system. Too much silence is ominous to her and she tries as much as possible to be with the company of some manageable sound. She however tells me that she takes moments of quiescence and reflects on life. During these moments; she does not prefer any noise at all.
Besides the above, Amber has taken the Myers-Briggs test(Jung1921,p.6-7). She took it online and her results are as follows: Her type is ENFJ. These alphabetical letters cover the percentage of extroversion or extraversion, the degree of intuition, the percentage of feelings in her personality and the level of judgment. Amber is thirty-three percent (33%) extraverted, she has sixty-two percent (62%) intuitive personality, twenty-five percent (25%) feeling in her personality composition and eleven percent (11%) judging value in her personality. The qualitative analysis of these quantities is that she is a moderately expressed extrovert; she has a distinctively intuitive personality, a moderately expressed feeling personality and a slightly expressed feeling personality.
Amber thinks the results are a true picture of her personality. She attributes this to the way she reacts to situations in her life. On the moderately expressed extraversion score, she agrees and tells me that her willingness to reach out to people and engage is average to slightly below average. She sometimes finds her own company comfortable and reassuring. Concerning her distinctly intuitive personality, she tells me that that is truly her.
She tells me that she even expected her intuition to be higher. She considers herself insightful and she has a penchant for finding out why things work the way they do. The other part of her personality that represents her feelings has a score of twenty-five percent and she agrees with it too. She tells me that throughout high school she turned down many approaches from boys who wanted to date her. She tried to get close to one of them but she would not get the feelings to come by. She also tells me that she likes to exclude emotions from most of her decisions. The remaining part of the results is the judging part which is eleven percent.
She is not judgmental and wonders why she scored anything in this category in the first place. But she proceeds to tell me that given the low nature of the score compared to the other areas, it is a close representation of her as a person. In a general sense, she agrees with the results.
In addition to the Myers-Briggs test, Amber goes further to tell me the factors that have influenced her personality development. She mentions her biological father whom she thinks is a versatile person with the ability to live anywhere. She tells me that she began copying his manners as soon as she turned five. She still thinks that most of her traits are traceable to her father. For example, she plays the violin just like her father does. She loves music too, something that her father loves a great deal. Apart from this emulating of her father, Amber thinks it is a genetic predisposition. She says that she may have gained some of her traits through picking up genes from her parents (Eysenck 1987, p.13).
Other significant influences on her personality include her teachers in middle school, her professors and her fellow students. She makes an interesting distinction in personality development that I feel obliged to report in this essay. She tells me that sometimes personality does not develop through picking up the good habits of other people, but through observing them, disliking them and then deciding to do the opposite (Ryckman 204, p.79).
Doing the opposite means doing what we think is right since disliking what that other person is doing means it is wrong. An example she gives me is witnessing racist sneering at someone who does not look like him or her. Depending on the level of our exposure, we will perceive the behavior as despicable and go-ahead to do the opposite, which is, to embrace diversity.
Also, Amber thinks she is able to monitor herself in terms of attitudes. She makes it clear that based on the surroundings, we can get tempted to do things in a way that society thinks is acceptable or the way someone we know does. In most cases these influences are wrong and therefore she monitors how she forms her attitudes so as to avoid negatives in some areas. She tells me that life is about deliberate attempts to moderate our reactions on a daily basis.
The strongest influence on her attitudes has come from her hometown. She hails from Boston; a town that she says is full of learned people who are highly exposed and accommodative. She also tells me that people in Boston admire the talent and the ability to speak out their minds. There is also a strong sense of social justice in the town whereby the life of an individual is the concern of the whole community.
Race, gender and ethnicity issues are really according to Amber and they play a role in her attitude formation. She tells me how she grew up understanding that there were early prejudices against other people that gave one group the false notion of superiority, a myth that has been burst by the overwhelming reality of immense ability in these groups that were once discriminated against. She cites the example of Jews whose unique noses were used as a reason for prejudice only for the Jews to emerge as unrivaled inventors and entrepreneurs. She mentions the unique sports talent and educational abilities of African Americans and the engineering strength of the Japanese.
Thus her race and that of the people around her have assisted in forming the balanced attitudes she has. Gender has also made her form some attitudes given that we live in a patriarchal society. She however credits her all-inclusive hometown of Boston for assisting her to have an open attitude towards gender issues. When I ask her about motivation, she tells me that the best motivation that works for her is when it is from within (Sharma 1980,p.139-140). She says when it is from within or intrinsic, it can take you far and you are in control. Extrinsic motivation can be withdrawn at any time and this means that nothing more gets done.
When I compare Amber’s results to mine, I see little difference. I had similar qualitative scores for my Myers Briggs test with a slight quantitative difference whereby I had 30% extraversion, 69% intuition, 22 % feeling and 95% judging. My parents, genetic factors, my classmates and professors have assisted shape my personality, I believe I can control my attitudes, the greatest influence on my attitude formation is my environment and I believe race, gender and ethnicity affect my attitudes. I am also better off with intrinsic motivation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is clear that Amber is a moderate extrovert who is distinctly intuitive, less prone to emotional outbursts and less judgmental. Just like me, she credits her parents, her colleagues and genetic factors for her personality. She has been influenced by race, gender and ethnicity in her attitudes and she believes that she has control over these attitudes. Motivation is good for her when it is intrinsic. This is true for me too.
References
Eysenck, H. J. (1967). The Biological Basis of Personality. Springfield: Thomas Publishing.
Gosling, S. (2008). Snoop. New York: Basic Books.
Jung, C.J. (1921). Psychologischen Typen. (H.G.Baynes.Trans.). Zurich: Rascher Verlag.
Lawrence, G. (1989). People Types and Tiger Stripes: A Practical Guide to Learning Styles, (2nd Ed). Gainsesville: Center for Application of Psychological Type Inc.
Ryckman, R. (2004). Theories of Personality. Belmont: Thomson&Wadsworth.
Sharma, R. S. (1980). Clothing Behavior, Personality, and Values: A Correlational Study. Psychological Studies, 25, 137–142.