Personality and Motivation

Most scholarship defines personality as some sort of combination of the emotional, behavioral and attitude patterns for an individual. Different theorists ascribe differing ways the personality is acquired, but there are a few agreed upon ways that help us define a person's personality. For instance, there tend to be five major traits that help define human personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness. Over time, different ways of focusing on these attributes help make up ways of describing a person (Lucas and Baird, 2004, pp. 473-85).

One way to measure personality types evolved from the work of psychologist Carl Jung. Using psychological preferences of how people perceive their universe and make decisions, Briggs and Myers developed a way to consider types of personalities based on personality preferences that focus on the manner of human values, experiences, needs and motivations. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a...
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