The Diversity of Personalities

Unlike the ability to locate specific daily functions to certain areas of the brain, personality is a cognitive aspect that contains no set physiological definition.There are two ways neuroscientists delineate a brain and they are both contrary meaning one side sees the brain as being holistic whereas the other as segregated. The holistic side thinks the brain's amazing traits are explained by its size and the collaboration of neurons from different hemispheres. The segregated side believes that there designated areas for specific function and that these functions are limited to these areas. One's personality has much to do with a combination of his environment, genetics, and reoccurring patterns or thoughts in his brain. Two out of the three of these can be related to the brain's plasticity due at an early age as well as the combination of the two views of neuroscience.

Lewis Goldberg proposed a five dimension personality model:
1. Openness to Experience: the tendency to be imaginative, independent, and interested in variety vs. practical, conforming, and interested in routine.
2.Conscientiousness: the tendency to be organized, careful, and disciplined vs. disorganized, careless, and impulsive.
3.Extraversion: the tendency to be sociable, fun-loving, and affectionate vs. retiring, somber, and reserved
4.Agreeableness: the tendency to be softhearted, trusting, and helpful vs. ruthless, suspicious, and uncooperative.
5.Neuroticism: the tendency to be calm, secure, and self-satisfied vs. anxious, insecure, and self-pitying.

Sigmund Freud divided personality into three components which are id, ego, and super-ego. The id's demands are represented by the pleasure center demanding immediate gratification regardless of one's external environment. The ego then realistically meets this demand from the id by observing its environment's practicality. Finally, the super-ego practices moral judgment and implements societal rules on the id's demand. The super-ego is the last portion of a personality to develop and is the embodiment of the parent's ideals during childhood.


We physiologically are all the same, yet we differ so much in the way we act. Our emotional stability and experience have everything to do with our overall personality. Differentiation in our brain's reactions to certain situations defines our personalities which is correlated to our memory. Our memory is linked to our temporal lobe which is the portion of the our brain that retrieves vital memories from taste, sound, sight, and touch. An eclectic grouping of our memories is associated with our overall knowledge and experience which in turn leads to our unique reactions to certain situations. This is an example of the segregated view of the brain.

Connections between memories and certain emotional reactions must be made to define personality. Freud's three component description also states something relevant to that. This would physiologically be described as unique connections between the hypothalamus and our temporal lope giving reason to the holistic view of our brain. When we see something foreign or new, our initial reaction to it is a question. We attempt to gain knowledge of that foreign object only to make an opinion of it for future use which define our personality. For example, if you take one child and observed his every experience to detail(from birth), and simply placed another child into his situation where the second child experience the same exact as the stuff as the first(from birth), they would have identical personalities unless people are born with different personality. This idea gives to the idea of being the "product of one's environment".