Expand Your Mind: Challenge Yourself and Explore the World

Several factors contribute to the development of the individual you are today, including life experiences, upbringing, and genetics. Most people argue that the one thing that really separates you from others is the pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that constitute your personality. There is no consensus on a specific singular definition of personality. Still, many professionals agree that it formulates from within every individual and rarely ever changes throughout life. Understanding personality helps you predict how people around you will respond to specific situations and the things they value the most. An email signature is also a good conversation starter. Maybe you have a fascinating fact about yourself or a personal project you want people to know about. Maybe you just had a baby and you'd love people to see his cute little face. You can post links to a few of your social media profiles and ask people to follow you. Pretty much anything goes. You can publicize events, new products, a fundraiser for your kid's school, or the results of your favorite sports team. This isn't about bragging, but sharing. If you want to share something fun but you don't want to reveal much about yourself, you could post a quote from a character on your favorite TV show or a link to a song you love. Make sure the signature is easily visible, clickable (if necessary), quick, and easy to read. The signature shouldn't be longer than the message itself. Literally hundreds of thousands of people have now taken the IAT online and have learned often uncomfortable truths about themselves--that they are implicitly sexist and racist and biased against people with certain looks, sizes, religions, and so on. You should take a moment and go online and test yourself at https://implicit. You may find that Susan is more associated with reading and writing and John with mathematics, and perhaps some worse associations of which you were not aware. People who make more gender-stereotypic associations on the IAT have been found to laugh more at sexist jokes. But laughing is not all.

The racial bias measured by the IAT predicted discrimination in simulated hiring situations (preferring white applicants), physician behavior (being more likely to recommend the optimal treatment to whites), and voting (being more likely to vote for John McCain than Barack Obama in the US 2008 presidential elections), among others. In addition, in the STEM study discussed earlier in this article in which people were hired to perform an arithmetic task, the IAT accounted for evaluators' initial average bias against women by measuring their implicit stereotypes. What is more, the evaluators' performance on the IAT predicted the degree to which evaluators updated their beliefs when more information was made available to them. The more biased the evaluators, the less often they were able to take individual performance data into account. It is crucial to appreciate that most of this happens unconsciously. Knowing about the most widely-accepted personality theories and their history throughout time can go a long way to understanding how psychology researchers study personality psychology. Although some of the arguments are considered silly by many people, it is indisputable that each theory adds something to the puzzle about personality psychology. Every personality psychology theory explains what humans' inner and outer personas comprise of. An interesting thing to note about the scientific study of personality is that what you believe you know about your personality is not in line with scientific research. Over the years, numerous theories have arisen to explain and break down the many aspects of personality. Some approaches focus on how personality develops, while others deal with differences in personality among people. Galen's Theory is one of the foremost personality theories. It is built on Hippocrates' beliefs and notions about personality. Galen, a Greek physician, writer, and philosopher, alleged that a balanced temperament equates health. Hence, you are automatically healthy if your temperament is stable. I try not to distract with flickering GIFs, but if that's your personal style, go for it. And if a link takes readers to another site, instead of pasting in the raw URL, rename it so it's clear what people are clicking on. For example, instead of your link saying www. Also, the email signature isn't the place for a dense paragraph of text (unless you work for a legal or financial company). Better to go with a few well-chosen words or links and make it easy for the reader to scan and click on what interests them.

If you haven't yet used this key bit of real estate, what are you waiting for? Jump into your email settings now and personalize, personalize, personalize! Your email signature, or even your social media bios, can be a fun and effective place to share your personality and preferences. Add some information about what's important to you, whether it's a quote, a link, a article you've read recently, or the good cause you hold dear to your heart. Use Clothes as Communication This makes quite alarming a finding by Eric Kandel, a neuroscientist at Columbia University and the 2000 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine: Kandel guesses that 80 to 90 percent of the mind works unconsciously. In addition to perceiving others in a stereotyped way, we also apply stereotypes to ourselves. Many women who take the IAT to explore gender biases experience the power of the unconscious mind. It is the truly rare woman who publicly subscribes to the belief that men are naturally superior at pursuing a career. But when women take the IAT, they are shocked to learn that they too instinctively associate careers with men and family with women. Such automatic gender stereotypes may lead to self-stereotyping that holds women back without their (conscious) knowledge. A fascinating experiment entitled The Emergence of Male Leadership in Competitive Environments supports the notion that stereotyping of the self and others interact in intricate ways. A group of researchers showed that female MBA students at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business were selected as leaders much less often than their established skills warranted--because women as well as men conformed to what we expect of their genders. Male MBA students behaved in a more overconfident manner than their female classmates and were thus more likely to be chosen as leaders. In the experiment, before having to select a leader, everyone participated in a math task, learned about how well he or she did, and was paid based on his or her individual performance. Otherwise, your bodily fluids are out of sync. The fluids were referred to as sanguine, melancholy, choleric, and phlegmatic. Galen's description of personality originated from the four elements: earth, water, wind, and fire. For more than 1,000 years, Galen's personality theory was the widely-accepted theory. Although this theory has been proven to be false as human civilization evolved, it is intriguing to know that humans and researchers have been interested in understanding the human psyche as far back as 2000 BC.

This theory was expanded further by Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century. Another popular theory is Gall's theory of personality, which was proposed in the 1700s by Franz Gall, a German physician. The Gall theory is skull-based and is also referred to as phrenology. According to the physician, measuring the length of the area between the bumps on an individual's head can reveal the size of their brain, as well as information about their personality. You could find out how kind and affable a person is and whether they could commit murder. What's your style? Take a moment to think about your wardrobe. Are you the casual type? Maybe you love to dress up and be flamboyant with bright or patterned fabrics and unusual cuts or combinations. Whatever your preference, think about selecting your clothes in a more purposeful way so they project how you want to be seen. We've all heard the expression dress for success. Of course, success means different things to different people and in different industries. A computer programmer is unlikely to turn up for work dressed in formal attire, and someone in commercial banking may be expected to wear a suit to the office. If you're angling for a promotion at work or you want to level up your social life, make sure your clothes coordinate with your intended destination. Don't dress for the job you have. Fifteen months later, the students were randomly assigned to groups, and each group selected a leader who would perform another math task on the group's behalf. His or her performance would determine every group member's earnings. Group members had five minutes to consult each other and decide who would be their representative to compete with other group leaders on their behalf. People could talk freely but had to state and record on a piece of paper how well each of them thought they would perform in the upcoming math task. It turns out the men were more optimistic about their future performance than their female counterparts because they misremembered how well they had done in the past by a larger extent than women.

Men had an inflated recollection of their past performance, overestimating it by about 30 percent; Based on these self-assessments, men were more likely to be chosen by their groups. Choosing the wrong leader had consequences. As you might expect, actual past performance was a much better predictor of future performance than the students' memories, most especially the male students' inflated recollection. What to do? Eventually, this theory was ruled a pseudoscience by researchers, but it was popular and accepted for several years. There are also Freud and Erikson's theories--originally developed by Freud and subsequently expanded on by Erik Erikson. Sigmund Freud is known as the founder of one of the most widely-known personality theories. His psychoanalytic theory lays out a series of phases and internal conflicts that humans undergo before their personality is formed. Later, Erikson also built a comparable argument based on the work of Freud. Although there are significant differences in the two theories, both agree that early childhood experiences and phases influence personality formation. In other words, the events that happen to you as you go from child to adolescent to adult have a significant effect on whom you become. In this day and age, the most influential is the Trait Personality Theories. Theories under this category are premised on the belief that personality is made up of broad traits and dispositions. Several approaches have emerged to identify the specific attributes that serve as vital aspects of personality and evaluate the total number of personality traits. Dress for the job you want. Observe the people you work with whose style you admire. I recently heard about a young guy who worked in a bank. Desperate for a promotion, he got a haircut, started to dress more formally, and tried to look the part. When the next round of promotions was announced, he was given the role of junior manager.