Zachary Hamid

400003907
November 20th, 2020
Behavioral Medicine
A Reflection Upon the Big 5
According to the great Aristotle, the knowing of oneself, sparks the beginning of wisdom.
Being able to describe oneself and fully understand their personality, encourages them to reach
out and sometimes go out of their ‘’comfort zone’’. One can develop friendships of their
reflection, differentiate themselves from others and indulge in activities and situations that suit
themselves best, based on self-intuition. In identifying one’s personality, the Big 5 personality
model was used, developed by Lewis Goldberg. This model focuses on five factors:
Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism – which I believe offer a great
range of traits to describe oneself. This model offers an array of questions which made me often
ponder who I truly am, questioning my personality though developing it for 20 years. Another
attribute of this test, is that it allows you to see your personality traits from an outside perspective
which in my case, shocked me. Lastly, one must also take into consideration that individuals
especially through their teen-adulthood years, are constantly changing and a year or two, may
cause a drastic change in personality as they are trying to verify their multi-faceted traits.
Despite foreseeing some of my results, a couple of them were still very surprising. For
the most part, my scores were ‘’fairly low’’ in the factors of conscientiousness, and
intellect/imagination. To further clarify, my scores for extroversion and agreeableness were on
the far left being extremely low with the score for the factor of emotional stability, being
extremely high instead.
As it relates to extroversion, my score was shown to be 2% indicating I am not a talkative
person at all, and I seldom engage in social activities. Being extremely introverted, I tend to be
very quiet, reserved and I do not seek out excitement or attention in the slightest. Regarding this
factor, I completely agree with the results shown as I have been a very reserved child my entire
life up to now. Despite this, when an opportunity arose especially in the aspect of dance, I found
myself going out of my comfort zone and interacting with many individuals and trying out new
dance moves when a new choreography was taught. I find that this opens me up quite a bit but
when the dance show passes or the event is over, within a week or two I completely revert to
being shy and introverted. This result was therefore very expected and accurate.
In the emotional stability factor, the results showed a very high score of 94%, completely
dominating all other personality factors. This trait shows one can persevere throughout difficult
situations, not be phased by internal and external factors, and avoid negative feelings. This trait
began dominating my lifestyle especially during secondary school, having to handle exams and
domestic issues. I am thankful for those experiences as I find it helps me approach situations
wholeheartedly while remaining calm and collected and I am usually the individual people can
depend on, in weary situations. This trait was also expected and accurate.
 For agreeableness I had a score of 3% which is also extremely low and shows I am
critical and aggressive, and I found this very surprising. I find that I am in fact the opposite,
being friendly and optimistic, seldom having conflicting views. Outside perspectives in this
factor was therefore considered and I may in fact be uncooperative and critical to other
individuals, as they view me. In my opinion this score was inaccurate and very surprising, and it
has made me ponder on who I truly am.
In addition, my score for conscientiousness was 12% which according to the test, means I
am impulsive and very disorganized. This result was expected but also surprising at the same
time as in my opinion, I am organized but also not dependable depending on my mood. This
means that I may be wanting to have everything in their respective places, but I may be lazy in
doing so. This has caused me to reflect on my childhood chores as I seldomly did them or even
cared for it to be done. In addition, I have been developing negligence for little things around the
same which includes not caring to study for exams, cleaning my room or sometimes not even
bothering to eat. Lastly my score for intellect/imagination was 11% which also according to the
test means, I tend to be more traditional and conventional. I highly agree with this result as I tend
to not be very interested in new things. This is in harmony with my low extraversion scores, as I
believe it plays a very important role in my openness which limits me as an individual. This may
also be a good thing as I may shy away from potentially ‘’bad attributes’’ or distasteful activities,
protecting my character.
Through reflection and introspection, this personality model indicated that I am aware of
most of my personality traits as well as being comfortable and accepting of them. It has made me
reflect on how these traits developed in the first place and how they may change in the future due
to internal and external factors. I would recommend it to other individuals as it is mostly accurate
on determining who an individual really is and can guide them to becoming a ‘’better person’’ if
they so desire.