Science-based Approach in Personality Development:

Unlocking Potential through Psychological Profiling

Highlights

• The significance of personality and its connection to human nature and, consequently, to our lives. 
• Benefits – why does every individual need personal development? 
• Risks – What problems can result from a lack of development? 
• The scientific approach to personality development. 
• The essence of the process of personality development. 
• Verifying the sustainability of change.

The Significance of Personality and Its Connection to Human Nature and Our Lives

As we know from the Socio-Functional Theory of human nature, we are all born with certain predispositions and develop different characteristics during the early and not-so-early years of our lives.

These characteristics shape our human nature and largely determine the things we do.

Indirectly, they are the reason why people look at us and judge us the way they do. This, in turn, leads to additional consequences in our lives.

This brings the idea that our human nature is of great importance for our success or, conversely, failure in the modern social world.

Realizing its significance, it is not difficult for us to understand that making efforts to develop our human nature would be a meaningful strategic move.

An important clarification to make here is that a large part of existing psychological theories consider personality as a combination of temperament and character, excluding other important characteristics, such as values.

From the perspective of understanding human personality, this is non-functional because science judges a person’s personality based on the behaviors they consistently demonstrate in similar types of situations.

Values, on the other hand, manifest in the real world in the same way – through people’s behaviors. In other words, it is illogical to talk about manifestations of personality (temperament + character) without taking into account a person’s core values.

In this regard, for true personality development to occur, it is necessary to work with all constructs of human nature, not just temperament and character.

For the sake of clarity, here are all the constructs of human nature:

• Emotional mechanisms 
• Intellectual mechanisms 
• Physiological mechanisms 
• Interpersonal mechanisms 
• Social tendencies 
• Adaptive habits 
• Maladaptive behaviors 
• Core Values (Beliefs + Attitudes + Preferences + Interests)

Benefits – Why Every Individual Needs Personal Development?

Try to remember a situation where you felt frustrated with the way your life was unfolding. In other words, when things did not go as you wished, and not for a day or two.

• It could have been related to your relationship with a loved one… 
• Or your parenting efforts towards your children… 
• It could have been difficulties in advancing your career… 
• Or setbacks in developing your business… 
• Perhaps it manifested as strained relationships with friends or colleagues… 
• Or you may have experienced periods of stress and mental strain, affecting your health in the long run… 
• It could even be during times of financial difficulties and shortfall…

Regardless of the form these experiences took, they can be extremely unpleasant, especially if they are prolonged. They create a lasting sense of dissatisfaction and frustration, and after a while, they genuinely hinder our ability to be happy. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for these experiences to lead to more serious problems such as depression and illness.

How would you feel if you learned that in 100% of these cases, the cause of these periods of failure and frustration was your personality?

Specifically – the ways in which your personality traits have failed to lead you to your goals or have even hindered you.

This is where the need for development arises!

The truth is, if we want to become more successful in facing challenges, achieving goals, and satisfying both our own and the needs of our loved ones, we must do something.

And that something is usually personality development.

But what exactly should we develop? – you might ask. How can we pinpoint which of our characteristics hold us back?

This is where the need for a scientific approach comes in, which can answer the question “What should we develop?”

Psychological profiling is the way we can “illuminate” the manifestations of the characteristics of our human nature and genuinely understand how each of them influences our lives and those of others. This, in turn, gives us a clear path for personal development.

Because, if we think about it, most of us have been through all kinds of courses, trainings, and education – built in a general way, created to serve the maximum number of people. However, this does not solve our specific problems. These training programs may not be related to our specific situations because they focus on topics that may not be genuinely problematic for us. 

And something else – they are most often directed towards building knowledge and skills to solve specific problems, whether practical or social instead of developing our personality traits.

As a result, frustration and dissatisfaction do not disappear but remain an unwanted companion in our lives.

Risks – What Problems Can Result from a Lack of Development?

We’ve all heard the maxim that staying in one’s comfort zone and not developing actually leads to degradation.

But the only way to understand what it really means is to consider the risks if we don’t make efforts to develop.

Since one of the fundamental principles of personality development is using specificity, let’s examine the risks in the context of each of the main areas of life:

• Love, Relationships, and Intimacy: The risk of failing to build a quality, long-term relationship with the right person that could eventually grow into a healthy and cohesive family. 

• Parenthood: The risk of not being able to raise healthy and highly functional children who have good chances in life. 

• Work, Career, and Business: The risk of not understanding and utilising our own strengths and weaknesses and failing to develop our talents, which could hinder us from choosing the right career path and achieving true success in our work, dooming us to mediocrity. 

• Health: The risk of not understanding our own needs, significantly and permanently increasing our stress levels, and damaging our health. 

• Friendships, Social Contacts, and Reputation: The risk of leaving a lasting negative impression on others without even realizing it, leaving us without friends and people to rely on. 

• Social Status and Competitiveness: The risk of permanently dropping out of social competition, directly leading to significantly reduced access to resources, opportunities, and potential partners. 

• Resources: The risk of failing to achieve the desired financial standard of living.

These are just some of the risks that a person faces if they stop developing in today’s fast-paced world!

Having accepted the importance of personal development, it is time to discuss how exactly it happens.

The Scientific Approach to Personality Development can be broken down into four stages:

1. Analysis of the need for development and setting goals. In general, personal development does not occur just for the sake of it but has a final goal. In other words, we don’t develop just for the sake of development but to achieve something. Therefore, the first step in the process of personal development is to identify the specific goal that the development process will lead to. This step is crucial for another reason as well: for different goals, a person needs to develop different personality traits. Without a clear goal, there is no clear answer to the question “What should we develop?”

2. Analysis of a person’s human nature. This step involves a process of in-depth psychological profiling, which allows the characteristics (and their manifestations) of one’s personality to be illuminated.

3. Highlighting the significant characteristics in the context of the goals. Once a person has been profiled, they have an answer to the question: “What are the specific manifestations of my personality?” They then need to identify which of these manifestations are related to achieving the goals set in the first step and should be developed. This step involves planning the process of their development in the right sequence.

4. Implementing the actual process of personality development. Once a development plan has been created, the final step is the actual development program.

The Essence of the Process of Personality Development

There are many different models and methodologies for personality development. 

However, for such a process to be effective, and for the material taught to be truly internalized for lasting and quality application in the future, the person going through the process of personality development should work on several fronts.

Here they are:

• Intuitive acceptability. The material should be presented in an intuitively acceptable way. To achieve this, it must be filtered through the lens of the individual’s leading core values. For example, if a person has a leading value of “Money,” the development program should clearly demonstrate how a person can benefit financially from what they have learned and how their financial situation will improve as a result of the active development they are going through. (You can learn more about the 17 universal values from the Socio-Functional Theory of Human Nature). This can only happen if the person has been previously profiled, and their leading core values have been illuminated and clear to the instructor of the personal development program. If, on an intuitive level, a person is “not convinced” of the significance of the material (which is possible only if it resonates with their leading core values), even if they logically understand what is said, they will not have the long-term motivation to use what they have learned.

• Clarity and rational presentation. The material should be clearly explained and supported with sufficient rational, scientific, and/or logical justifications to be understood and intellectually accepted. If a person does not understand the cause-and-effect relationships around the material in detail, their ability to apply what they have learned will be more mechanical and they will not be able to make the most of it. Over time, this will lead to a return to old ways of acting.

• Training the trainer. The material should be articulated by the trainee in their own words to the trainer in order to check their understanding of the material. The ability to articulate what has been learned is the first of three mechanisms for verifying what has been learned.

• Behavioral involvement. The material should be put into practice by the person through actions that implement the studied material in real life to achieve assimilation through experience. This can be achieved through assigning exercises, homework tasks, and/or practical cases in a real environment. Applying the material in practice is the second of the three mechanisms for verifying what has been learned.

Verification of the Sustainability of Change – 360-Degree Feedback from Third Parties

As clarified at the beginning of this article, we judge a person’s personality based on their behavior. In this regard, to establish a change in their personality, we should attempt to identify lasting changes in their behavior (related to the characteristics that have undergone potential development).

For this reason, in addition to the two mechanisms for verifying assimilation mentioned earlier, we should add a third one, which determines whether the person has started to apply what they have learned permanently and whether it has led to significant changes in their life.

This is achieved through the so-called “360-degree feedback” from third parties. 

Through this feedback, we determine whether specific behaviors (that the person is supposed to have learned during the personality development program) have changed or been consistently demonstrated in their daily life.

The process involves reaching out to people close to the individual who has gone through the personality development program. 

These are usually the people they interact with on a daily basis. 

It is preferable for them to come from various spheres (colleagues, family, friends, etc.).

The feedback process involves asking them specific, pre-prepared questions aimed at checking the manifestations of the personality traits that the person has worked on during the development program.

It is essential to note that the respondents should not be aware of the program the person has gone through or the specific characteristics they have worked on.

Through this feedback, it becomes evident whether there has been a lasting change in the person’s personality or if they are still functioning as they did before.

With this explanation, the scientific approach to personality development is completed.

If you wish to gain a better understanding of the related processes, we could recommend that you familiarize yourself in more detail with the mentioned process of psychological profiling.

And if you found the information provided so far meaningful, you can express your interest in psychological profiling and/or a personality development program from. You can do both from here.