Everyone always says, "You figure out who you really are in college". Parents, teachers, and high school councilors all told me that college would be a time of personal, social, and emotional growth. I guess I didn't really believe them. That is, until I started looking back and realized how different I had become in the last 9 months. The"Big 5", that we learned about in Psychology, helped me to understand more about myself, and why I've changed so much. When we took the test in lab, and then analyzed our results on the Big 5 test I was shocked. I didn't get the score that I had expected to receive. I found out that I score low on the scale of extroversion, high on consciousness, high on openness to experience, high on agreeableness and low on neuroticism (which pretty much means I get stressed out a lot). I had been expecting a high score on extroversion, but when I really considered it, I found that I personally get the most joy out of being with small groups of people. The Big 5 also has helped me to manage my stress levels better. Before the test, I thought my stress and anxiety levels were normal, but after scoring a 7 (that's about as low as you can do), I decided to get help in managing my stress. The Big 5 has really helped me to understand myself as a person and as a college student, and I know that I will continue to change and grow as the years go on. I can use the Big 5 as a tool to understand why I am the way I am. And it's the concept that I will remember 5 years from now.
Understanding my BIG 5
No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/187553
I'll say here what I said on another: extraversion is often misunderstood, I feel, not always meaning what people think it means. The way I heard it described once (by a peer in the department) is that extraverts re-energize by being around people and introverts re-energize be being alone. Thus, someone may be sociable around people, but it could be that they are simply being agreeable in a situation in which they may not have choses to be. I think that's my case, because people always think I'm extraverted, but I definitely score on the lower end.
Also, I don't know the anxiety test to which you refer, but a low score on neuroticism would generally indicate lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger, etc. However, there are multiple facets to each of Big 5, so while someone could, like me, have a low score on neuroticism yet score deceptively high on the anger facet. Or, in your case, the anxiety, being only a facet, does not grossly increase your neuroticism score, but will have at least some effect.