In my quest to understand people, I have stumbled upon a question. What exactly makes an individual? What is the difference between one person from another?

There are very obvious ones like, physical appearance and circumstances such as wealth and health. There are also not so obvious ones like, personality and values. All of these are interconnected, one can affect the other. For example, your values and personality can affect your wealth.

According to research, genes affect your personality. Your personality links to your political orientation, whether you are liberal or conservative. People with high openness score are almost twice as likely to be liberal.

Here are the “Big five” personality traits:

• Openness - appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience.
• Conscientiousness - a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behaviour.
• Extraversion - energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation and the company of others.
• Agreeableness - a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
• Neuroticism - a tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability; sometimes called emotional instability.

You should read more about them on wikipedia.
These questions that I have leads to another: Why people act the way they do?

We had discussions about people recently..

From what I have learned, there are four needs that everyone has: Uncertainty, certainty, significance and love/connection. These rank differently in importance based on the individual. Everything we do are meant to fulfill these needs.

According to Mister Wong, when a robber commits robbery, he satisfies at least three of these needs. Certainty of being in control, uncertainty of how the victim will act, of how much “richer” he will be, and significance of being significant. Maybe even love/connection if he wants to use to money to help his family or save someone.

And things that satisfy at least 3 needs can become addictive. Now, satisfying these needs need not be a bad thing such as robbery, you can satisfy these needs in a good way like helping others or making money.

Significance can be fulfilled by some by something like piercings and tattoos. Something that makes him/her who he is, something that makes him/her someone in this world, in a social circle, etc. An example, in an conversation, would be someone who would go against everything you say, by that act, he/she is significant in that conversation(unless he/she is totally ignored). Note, significant is not a there or not variable, there are levels of significance too. From that example, one can get more significance just by being more aggressive in his/her stance against what you say. Of course if it goes overboard, then the significance could be lost too.

Have you ever faced a situation where you would be better off changing and yet “can’t” change because by changing you are no longer yourself? Yes, that is significance.

Then there is this thing about goals. People living purely on reactionary basis and people who are moving towards their goals. If you are purely reactionary, you have no actual goals, you do things just to fulfill needs as they appear. Needs such as money, when your parents stop providing you when you reach a certain age. On reaction, you would go out and find a job and try to make money. On reaction to your friends saying something, you agree with them. On reaction to someone bumping into you, you punch them in the face. Without goals, everything you do is caused by an external event. With goals such as I want to make $1000 per month on another hand, you wouldn’t be so reactionary. For example, when an event that distracts you from your goals occur, you can ignore it and move towards your goal. With goals such as wanting to be a more graceful person, when someone bumps into you, you restrain the urge to punch them in the face and say “Are you ok?”.

We further analysed individuals to study why they act the way they do, for privacy/security reasons, I cannot reveal the details here.

For everything we do, for every choice we make, our values and personalities play a part. I am not perfect, no one is, but we can always change for the better. Set goals.