Fundamentals of Your Personality

Is your personality fluid? Does it change throughout your life or is it set at birth? Can you deliberately change your emotional hardwiring?

We use the Core Values Index psychometric assessment to answer these and other questions about your personality.

Your personality is a many-splendored thing. It reflects more aspects of what makes you unique than any other set of characteristics. Consideration of your personality also raises many questions.

Your personality is a many-splendored thing.

Is your personality fixed at birth or does it change and evolve as you get older?

Do you have a different personality at home than you do at work or school?

Can you deliberately change your emotional hardwiring over time?

What makes you naturally get along with some people but not others, even before you've even gotten to know them?

Finally, can your personality be accurately and consistently measured and defined?

Like asking questions about microbes or distant stars, we need a tool that helps us examine our personality. This tool needs to be accurate and produce consistent results every time you use it. It should be easy to use and the results should also be easy to understand. Finally, it should be affordable and within reach of most people.

The tool that best fits these criteria is the Core Values Index™ psychometric assessment.

The CVI™ takes 8 minutes to complete and can be used by anyone aged 13 and older. It costs less than $50 and doesn't require special training to understand the results. Finally, it has a 97.7% repeat reliability rating, which means it is accurate and consistent. If you take the CVI today and again 10 years from now, your results will likely differ by less than 3%.¹

Sharp-eyed readers will remember that 97.7% repeat reliability rating later in the article when we address the question about personality changing as we get older.

Personality Fundamentals

Your personality entails many different things, and is a catch-all term that reflects many different characteristics of your preferences and behavior.

Interestingly, much of your behavior is actually determined or at least influenced by your preferences.

You start life with different preferences for the type of activities you enjoy and the way you instinctively go about them. For example, some people have a naturally analytical mind. They prefer to engage in activities that entail solving problems or gathering knowledge and data. This preference will influence how you behave not only when engaging in those activities, but also when you are doing things that are very different from problem solving and data gathering.

Other people are naturally creative or have a deep-seated need to engage with others in group activities. They recharge their emotional batteries by spending time with loved ones, friends, or even making new friends out of complete strangers. Doing something alone or in isolation for long periods is so uncomfortable to them that it feels as if they're being punished.

These fundamentals of your personality are your emotional drivers, what the CVI refers to as core value energies. There are four core value energies (called Builder, Merchant, Innovator and Banker) and each represents broad personality characteristics.

The CVI doesn't group people into four broad types, though. Humans are far too diverse for that!

Your Core Values Index report describes the particular ratio of how much of the four core value energies dwell within your innate and unchanging emotional nature. There are literally millions of combinations.

How much creativity do you have within you? Do you enjoy gathering knowledge and data but only some of the time? Is your top preference to boldly lead from the front and get things accomplished? Is there a lot or a little of the problem-solver in you?

Is Your Personality Fixed or Fluid?

We asked the question, "Is your personality fixed at birth or does it change and evolve as you get older?"

The answer can be found in the earlier clue about the CVI's repeat reliability rating. This rating, measured in longitudinal tests,¹ determined that if you take the CVI at the age of 18 and again when you're 45 or even older, your results — the fundamental description and ratio of the four core value energies within your personality — will likely differ by 2.3% or less.

The fundamental core of your personality doesn't change as you go through life.

However, this doesn't mean that you will behave the same in all situations. This brings us to the next question:

Do you have a different personality at home than you do at work or school?

Your preferences for what brings you joy and what frustrates you remain the same no matter what the circumstance. If you have an inherently bold personality, driven by the need to get things done, coupled with a secondary preference for bringing others together and pulling toward accomplishing shared goals, those innate and unchanging preferences will exist whether you are at home, work or school.

Your innate and unchanging emotional drivers remain within you no matter what.

However, you will outwardly behave differently based on who you're with. This is normal and it is how we all get through our day in modern society. Your fundamental preferences — your core value energies — remain, no matter what the circumstance or situation you are experiencing.

What happens if you don't like something about your personality? Can you deliberately change your emotional hardwiring over time?

We can all change our behavior to different degrees, but behavior is not the same thing as your core personality. Unless you go through a severe trauma or injury, the core value energies within your personality's DNA will remain throughout your life.

What about those who overcome addiction or use therapy or other techniques to change socially unwanted behavior?

These are aspects of psychology and behavior that can be changed, but underneath it all your basic personality preferences (creative vs. analytical, leader vs. data-gatherer, etc.) remain the same.

The composition of your core value energies will determine how you go about changing your behavior — they will determine your approach and method.

A few paragraphs up we mentioned that your behavior will likely change somewhat depending on who you're with. You will act differently talking with your boss than you will with your romantic partner or with someone you just met at a party.

Think back about your life so far. Have there been certain individuals who seemed to rub you wrong from the moment you met them?

On the other hand, there has likely been a few people who you liked from the very beginning. You just seemed to get along, even if you didn't have any life experiences in common.

What is it about personality that makes you naturally get along with some people but not others, even before you've even gotten to know them?

Similar to pheromones, we can instinctively pick up on the core value energies in other people within minutes of meeting them. If they have a very different Core Values Index profile, the way they communicate and their preferences for activities and how they behave will seem strangely contrary (almost "wrong", but that's not entirely accurate).

But if you meet someone who shares a very similar CVI profile to your own, there will be this subconscious synergy or alignment in your personalities. The two of you will seem to gel on everything, maybe even to the point of completing each other's sentences. This is because you both see the world through the same emotional lens and you share the same fundamental preferences for how you like to engage and act.

Get Answers With the Core Values Index Psychometric Assessment

The CVI is both simple — it's super easy to take and easy to understand — and powerful — it can be used to great advantage in hiring, relationships, and even education and career planning.

One of the most common uses of the CVI is in employment and talent management.

Employers use the CVI to define the ideal ratio of core value energies for a role, then match the CVI profiles of applicants to that ratio. Those who are hired in that position with a highly-matched CVI profile often experience significantly higher productivity, job satisfaction, and lower turnover.

Workers hired to a role via the CVI often report, "The job feels like it was custom-made just for me."

An increasing number of therapists and marriage counselors are using the CVI to help couples overcome issues in their relationship. By understanding the perspective of each other after taking the CVI, they can learn to honor and appreciate the unique way each other sees the world and prefers to operate within it.

Finally, students are using the CVI to plan their post-secondary education and career tracks. By learning how they are emotionally hardwired, they can seek the education and employment paths that align most with their personality.

Many working adults use the CVI mid-career to finally get an answer to the question, "Why is my job so unsatisfying?" (70% or more of workers are disengaged in their current job.) Taking the CVI explains where that disconnect lies between their emotional hardwiring and the characteristics of their position.

Here's one final question for you:

Would understanding the reason why some jobs or relationships make you happy and others don't be worth fifty bucks and 8 minutes of your time? If so, go to erep.com now and take the CVI. It might be the most beneficial thing you've ever done for yourself.

NOTES

[1] Source: Seattle Research Partners, 2014

Core Values Index™ and CVI™ are trademarks of Taylor Protocols, Inc.