Contradictory personality traits and their causes

What is a contradictory personality 

A paradoxical personality is a personality that is contradictory in its thoughts and actions in the same or similar situations, and can increase its commitment to goals by balancing the positive and negative perspectives of an impending reality. Free are imagined future events or behaviors that do not take into account the possibility of their actual occurrence.

For example, someone might imagine receiving a promotion and getting a new corner desk, even if this is unlikely to happen in reality. In contrast, the person might focus on the negative aspects of a future position, such as the late hours that will inevitably lead to such earnings. Promoted, a person may approach their fantasies and impending reality in one of three ways, and the approach chosen will influence that person's willingness and likelihood to make their fantasies a reality by pursuing and achieving the goal.

• First, the person may simply indulge in positive fantasies about the future and ignore the negatives of the impending reality.
• Second, the person may only think about the negative aspects of a future reality, thus ignoring their positive fantasies.

The danger of either of these approaches is that they threaten to limit the potential overall level of commitment to achieving the goal.

Contrasting personality traits 

There are a lot of traits that help us identify the contradictory personality, below we get to know them:

• Sensitivity or discomfort

You may have ever felt an uncomfortable feeling in your stomach before doing something or after making a decision, more often than not, this is a sign that you are suffering from mental ambivalence.

• Avoid conflict

Some people do not like conflicts or confrontations at all, and when faced with a potential confrontation situation, they choose the path of least resistance, which is conflict avoidance. Conflict avoidance can also be a sign of contradiction in personality. Instead of facing the situation, they decide to avoid the psychological suffering associated with the conflict.

• Ignore the facts 

Another sure sign of inconsistency in personality is ignoring facts and making wrong decisions from a rational point of view.

• Justification

If you made a wrong decision and then found yourself convinced that you made the right one, this means that there is an indication of mental inconsistency.

• FOMO

This is known as the fear of missing out and is what causes you to do something contrary to your ideas in order to look cool or impress your friends.

• feeling guilty

Doing something contrary to your thoughts is often accompanied by feelings of guilt, feeling that you did something wrong, that you should have done something else instead, ambivalence in personality before such an act usually signifies anxiety just before the action, followed by feelings of guilt after doing the act, usually What follows is justification as you try to relieve guilt.

Reasons for inconsistency in personality 

A contradiction in personality occurs when you find yourself in situations where there is a contradiction between your thoughts, attitudes, and actions. Such situations may occur through:

• Forced compliance behavior

Forced compliance behavior refers to situations where a person is forced to perform actions that are not consistent with their ideas. Think of an accountant who is asked to cover up a case of financial embezzlement by her boss. The accountant thinks this is wrong, but she may have to do it in order to keep her job. This It leads to a contradictory personality.

• Make decision

Decisions are a part of life, and you have to make hundreds of decisions to get over them every day. Decision making raises a contradictory personality. This is because all decisions involve choosing between two or more alternatives. Each alternative has its pros and cons. Choosing one alternative means that you will give up all the advantages of the unchosen alternative, while It guarantees you at the same time the disadvantages of the decision you have chosen, which is known as the opportunity cost of the decision, and this is what causes the contradiction. The more attractive or similar the two options are, the greater the contradiction you face in your personality.

• Effort

Humans tend to value achievements based on the amount of effort that goes into achieving them, and things that require great effort are valued because we will face the mental ambivalence if we put in a great deal of effort just to achieve a small achievement, sometimes, we put in a lot of effort just to get a dismal result, This is expected to lead to inconsistency as well. In order to reduce this inconsistency, we either convince ourselves that the result was good, that we didn't put in too much effort, or that the effort was fun, and this is referred to as justifying the effort.

• Gain new information

Another major reason for contradiction in personality is that we get information that may contradict our attitudes, and thus this makes us contradictory in our thoughts and actions.

Ways to get rid of the contradiction in personality 

When there is a conflict between a person's attitudes, thoughts, opinions, and actions, the person must take some steps to reduce the inconsistency and associated feelings of discomfort. There are three common reactions to mental inconsistency, these are:

• Change contradictory ideas 

This is the simplest and most effective way to solve the mental contradiction, when you think of your friend who smokes, the friend is addicted to cigarettes, but the cigarette packet contains a warning that smoking is harmful to health, and this creates the contradiction, he may search for new information that may go beyond the belief that smoking is harmful, he may This information causes him to change his position that smoking is harmful to his health, thus reducing ambivalence. While changing ambivalent thinking is the simplest way to reduce ambivalence, it is not the most common, this is because in most cases people are not willing to change their thoughts.

• conflicting behaviour

If a person cannot find any new information to help him change his thoughts, he can still resolve the contradiction by eliminating the action or behavior that is causing the contradiction. Many people do not succeed in eliminating the contradiction by changing their actions or behavior. This is because changing Learning good behaviors is not easy, sometimes a conflicting behavior or action can have some benefits for the person.

• Downplaying the importance of conflicting doctrine

This is the most common way to reduce mental inconsistency, using this method a person changes how they perceive conflicting thoughts or behavior.