MY PERSONALITY IS MY SOCIAL CONSTRUCT: SO FAR SO COOL

 

ADAM HICKS -- SOUTHLAND BUSKER BOSS

In this essay I am purporting that one’s personality is simply an interpretation (by others) of one’s collective behaviors.  This is hardly a unique notion, and yet not one necessarily embraced, never mind thought about, by the pedestrian collective.  This notion about what constitutes a personality will be of interest only to those who enjoy reading about psychology, those of you reading this blog entry for example.

While there seems no generally agreed upon definition of personality, most theories focus on motivation and psychological interactions as being the major influences. Hippocrates (460-370 B.C.) suggested humans had a ‘persona.’  Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), the Father of Psychology, drew a clear distinction between the human body and the human personality.  Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), founder of Psychoanalysis, suggested our behaviors (and personality) were prompted by our innate exigencies (water, food, shelter, and so on).  Carl Jung (1875-1961), one of Freud’s disciples, insisted that innate exigencies are all part of the collective unconscious of all humans both present and past.  Well, whatever drives us certainly helps others to define our personality.

Whether the consequence of genes or environment or both, PERSONALITY is one’s signature set of behaviors and the social meaning attached to these behaviors. Personality is a social construct, a shared idea that has no inherent meaning, but exists only because people in a group or society have decided this to be the descriptor for somebody’s behavior.  (Other social constructs in my world have included the developmental years of pink for girls and blue for boys, girls playing with dolls and boys playing with trucks; the age of consent for emergent adulthood at 18 years of age; the ritual of marriage; the practice of religion; the notion of time.  Synonyms for social construct include “acceptable practice,” “cultural norm,” “societal norm,” even “tradition.”)

I should add that one’s personality is what determines one’s likeableness, and likeableness, too, is a social trait.  Being friendly, being a good listener, not taking oneself too seriously, and being of open mind, are common traits of likeable people.  On the flip side, unlikeable people do not really listen, take themselves too seriously, and are of closed mind. Likeable people are genuine, unlikeable people disingenuous.  Likeable people are positive and present a friendly face, unlikeable people are negative and smile only when forced.

I am purporting that if we can change our behaviors, we can change our personalities.  Simple changes such as practicing being a better listener or even offering an unwarranted smile will certainly parlay into a more positively perceived personality.   

However, some personal behavioral changes are not so simple to accomplish, in fact very difficult actually, especially if the behaviors have resulted in the deterioration of one’s physical and psychological well being. Excessive drugging and gambling are two such examples.  Oftentimes, for changes in personal and socially detrimental behaviors, one needs the resort of professional counselling, for which, I might add, the success of which is directly related to the client’s desire for change. 

Many psychologists and others in the social service industries believe that human personalities can be measured through quantitative constructions, such as the MYERS-BRIGGS, a personality test that will clunkily and confusedly label us in combinations of extraverts/introverts, sensors/intuitives, thinkers/feelers, and judgers/perceivers.  However, more qualitative junkies such as I, exercise far more faith in the projective type tests including my favorites, the GOODENOUGH DRAW-A-PERSON, DRAW-A-HOUSE, DRAW-A-TREE, and of course, the most famous of all, the RORSCHACH INKBLOT.

Be they charismatic or farouche, if personalities are social constructs, then personality disorders, too, are social constructs.  People suffering personality disorders noticeably have trouble when it comes to relating to situations and people, and this is especially apparent when their behaviors over time continually deviate from main-stream cultural expectations.  Ah, but personality disorders are another ship that I can sail another time.

Hmmm … If I were to enquire about my own personality, I wonder how others would describe me. Quirky or crazy?  Stoic or stupid?   Quaint or cool?

Hmmm ... I will go with cool.  I will take a risk and publicly hypothecate that I am cool.  Yes, cool is admittedly socially and individually subjective, and because I believe that personality is simply a collection of subjective behaviors being judged by others, I shall ask just a few questions to help prove my thesis: Is playing guitar at bar gigs cool?  Is being a Bobby Dylan wannabee, busking with a guitar and harmonica cool?  Or how about the highbrow portrait busking with my pencil and sketchpad?  Is that cool?  Is my job contract working with convicted murderers a cool occupation?  Is being a hypnotherapist, rather than an everyday eclectic counsellor, cool?  Is being a published author, one that has collected significant amounts of royalty dollars, cool?  If the answer to most of these, admittedly autobiographical questions, is a resounding YES, then I am, indeed, a COOL guy, and then COOL quite describes my personality.

Speaking of COOL, there were two cool guys marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week:

There was ADAM HICKS, pictured above, organizer of the BUSKERFEST on Saturdays at the SOUTHLAND MALL in Regina SK, and there was my friend, ROQUES ANDRES, pictured below, chatting with me while I am busking at the FARMERS MARKET here in REGINA, and chatting with me several years earlier while I was busking at the DAM MARKET in AMSTERDAM!

LOOKING GOOD: EVOLUTION FITNESS AND EVOLUNTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY, MARTIAL ARTS AND MANTIC ART

Currently, I am a member of two gyms, EVOLUTION FITNESS DOWNTOWN for strength and conditioning and ASCENDANT MARTIAL ARTS for Muay Thai kickboxing.

FACTOID:  I have been a gym member practically all my adult life.  I started out my weight training at the University of Regina gym, then joined the Regina YMCA gym, then Gold’s, then Evolution.  I began my martial arts training on a high school mat at the Swift Current Comprehensive High School, then joined Ross Wilkinson Karate in Regina, then Siam Kickboxing (Regina), and now Ascendant Martial Arts.

But why!  Why do I go to the gym?  Why does anyone go to the gym?

In survey after survey when gym members are asked why they go to the gym, they answer with the same recurring reasons: to lose weight, to build or tone muscle, and to socialize.  And perhaps to be more precise, losing weight and gaining muscle could really mean striving for peachy behinds and toned arms or big biceps and steel abs, whereas, the socializing could really mean to be looking for love in all the right places, rather than cruising the nightclubs or dating websites. 

Evolutionary psychologists continually seek to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations – those functional products of natural selection or sexual selection in human evolution.  Staying in this evolutionary mindset, our sole (soul) purpose in life on this planet is simply to seek a mate and continue the species, and when we go to the gym we go only to look good to assist in our pursuit of a mate.

This essay shall focus on this continuing-the-species argument for going to the gym.  And too, without any slight to any member of any sexual community, this essay is about attracting partners for heterosexual couplings, in order to procreate for an evolutionary purpose.   

Okay then.  My reason for going to the gym is based upon LOOKISM.  Yes LOOKISM.  Lots of us suffer from Lookism, that discriminatory practice or prejudice against someone based solely upon looks.  Such judgements are based upon how well or poorly they meet our (imagined) standard of beauty.  Factoid:  Actually, I calculate my daily regimen of going to the gym to be a combination of Lookism (I believe that people are judging me for my look) and Narcissism (my rather obsessive interest in my own physical appearance).

Though most gyms lose 50% of their new members within the first six months of their membership starting, going to the gym to look good is still a BIG industry.  I cannot help but notice the two gyms of which I have a membership are starting to get packed again after the Covid restrictions have been relaxed.  And I cannot help but inductively reason that most of these returning members are returning in their attempt to look good.

From the evolutionary perspective, to continue the species, it is important to attract a mate. And it is not coincidence that human mating is of a special interest to evolutionary psychologists who aim to investigate our evolved mechanisms to attract and secure mates. 

Now back to the gym perspective, the first thing to increase one’s magnetism for such a mate attraction is to look good.  Striving to build muscle, to get ripped, or to become svelte are certainly worthy goals when one wants to look good in a physical sense.

As shallow as I may seem while expressing this from the skinny of an evolutionary perspective, it really is not a stretch to believe that humans judge one another, first, by their appearance (lookism), and therefore project how they judge others by logically thinking this is the way they, too, are judged by others.  Thus, anyone going to the gym with the goal of looking good could be like me in their suffering smacks of self-concept (narcissism).

Whether this be a purely evolutionary genetic trait, or a Jungian archetypical trait, everyone knows that along the attraction and mating continuum for procreation is to express in metonymy fashion, it is face first, then holding hands, then touching toes.  Intellectual (like-minded) and spiritual (kindred soul) connections come second and third, respectively.

Yes, for all the above reasons I go to the gym.  Going to the gym is a retreat to a conclave of familiar strangers to socialize, while at the same time the mantic art to stave off my impending infirmity.  All that I seem to need right now in narcissistic fashion is to lose eight pounds and have my abs of steel and my guns (biceps) registered and ready for a summer of busking in tight white t-shirts.

SUN’S OUT, GUNS OUT! 

Marching in my CHAUCERIAN PARADE this week, are my friends, MORGAN, the British Columbian mountain-lover, and JOANNE, owner of BOOMTOWN DRUMS in Regina.