A common mistake that we make in judging people is not evaluating all aspects of their personality. We may know that a person is intelligent and hard working, but what else do we know? A thorough evaluation requires a systematic approach. For this, we need to print a chart such as the following and put check marks in the squares corresponding to the attributes that we know about a person. Instead of check marks, we may put the numbers 1 to 3 in the boxes depending on the strength of the characteristics. Intelligence would be marked in box i4+ and stupidity in box i4-. Box i10+ would be checked for a hard-working person and box i10- for a lazy person. Does the person often fight with others? If so, we have to mark box s1-. By reviewing all 10 categories of the individual and social attributes we will have better perspective about what we know about the person. The chart will also help us to focus on what we do not know about the person.
Zamora Personality Profile | ||||||||||
Individual Attributes | i1 | i2 | i3 | i4 | i5 | i6 | i7 | i8 | i9 | i10 |
Positive + | ||||||||||
Unknown | ||||||||||
Negative - | ||||||||||
Social Attributes | s1 | s2 | s3 | s4 | s5 | s6 | s7 | s8 | s9 | s10 |
Sociable + | ||||||||||
Unknown | ||||||||||
Dangerous - |
Certain aspects of a personality always remain hidden from us. Generally, we are not able to conduct a full personality analysis. Suppose that we don't know the level of aggressiveness of a person. Is this bad or not? When you don't know, it is better to have some doubts and not assume that a person is not aggressive. Another possibility is that there is an error in the characterization of a person. Suppose that you can determine that a person is not normally aggressive. What you may not know is that the person gets paranoid and aggressive when drunk. Alcoholics and drug users almost never make good partners because their habits control them and distort their senses. Personality analysis is a complex and challenging subject. A systematic trait-by-trait analysis, such as the one discussed here, can help us to understand the people around us better.