Diana wants it noted she wished "snarky" was a choice
What follows is the analysis of the responses to my Johari Window. It is cut because I do not want to influence anyone who has not taken it yet and would like to fill it out. I think it would be fantastic if others posted even a short reflection on their results. Also, I invite all of you to explain why you made the choices you did in the comments.
Numbers Game
Raw results for my Johari window
22 people have completed my Johari Window; however for the sake of this analysis, I am excluding "meredith" and "LinweCastaneda" becuase I do not know who they are (Please tell me, I'd love to know who you are!). 30% of participants (henceforth known as group A) are people who know me mostly from face-to-face interactions and thus are likely to be better judges of my personality (or I speak with every single day on IM and thus fall into the same category), the remaining 70% (group B) may or may not have met me offline and so I am presuming that they based their responses mostly on the content of my journal.
The top traits selected by both groups are intelligent (60%), reflective (45%), observant (40%), independent (35%), idealistic (35%) and giving (25%).
The top traits selected by Group A are intelligent (66%), confident (50%) and reflective (50%), with traits selected only by this group consisting of caring, extroverted, introverted, proud, sensible, trustworthy and wise.
The top traits selected by Group B are intelligent (57%), observant (50%), reflective (42%), giving (36%), idealistic (36%) and independent (36%), with traits selected only by this group consisting of mature, accepting, adaptable, cheerful, complex, energetic, giving, happy, kind, knowledgable, logical, modest, observant, organised, quiet, shy, silly, sympathetic, warm and witty.
Traits only picked by only one person are mature, accepting, adaptable, caring, extroverted, happy, introverted, modest, proud, quiet, shy, silly, sympathetic, wise and witty.
Two or more people agree that I am able, cheerful, clever, complex, confident, dependable, energetic, friendly, giving, idealistic, independent, intelligent, kind, knowledgeable, logical, loving, observant, organised, reflective, searching, self-assertive, self-conscious, sensible, spontaneous, trustworthy and warm.
Excluding the 7 respondents who seem to have completed the window in alphabetical order, the most adjective chosen first most frequently was intelligent.
Key Points
My Choices
Choosing the adjectives which I consider to define my being was an incredibly difficult process because I felt like a lot of who I am is not present on this grid. The first two descriptions which pop into my mind are passionate and pretentious (which Nic pegged as "proud," but it was too late to change my choices). I spent an entire day deliberating over what to select, and I fear that my choices were perhaps predictable or haphazard. Below follows each of my five adjectives and why I selected them:
independent - I would have never considered independence to be a defining trait (need?) before I attended college, but since I've moved out, I've developed a strong distaste for people who attempt to impose rules on me and for suffocating relationships. I need my own time and my own space, and I just cannot cope with always having an omnipresent companion who seems to think they know what is best for me. This was an immediate selection based off of various frustrations.
intelligent - This was a throw-away; I hadn't originally picked it, and I don't walk around looking at people on the street and feeling self-satisfied because I fall into a higher percentile than they do on standardized tests. I've always been in situations for "smart" people, however, and my mental capabilities are something I value, hence the selection.
loving - I struggled with which of the various synonyms for "nice" to pick, as each had a slightly different connotation. In the past few months, I've felt unbalance in many of my relationships, with me expending more emotional energy than has been returned. I almost picked "giving," in part because I do enjoy both physical trinkets (I'd just finished filling out my Valentines) and larger sacrifices, but I chose loving instead because I think that someone who loves is a giver, but not necessarily the other way around.
mature - What word I would have preferred to mark is "serious." Two years ago, I would've rather spent my evenings on silly and creative endeavors, but now all I want is an intense conversation or a good book (next it will be knitting or chess, egads!). The bouncy, happy, spunky me does not board the airplane when I do and remains stuck at home.
searching - Fairly straight forward, I do not have all the answers I want in life. I spend far too much time analyzing my social relationships in hopes of being able to place everyone neatly into boxes tied up with bows, and I am bothered by my lack of concrete answers to Life's Big Questions.
Response Group
One of the most interesting things to me is who filled out the window and who did not. Only one person that frequently reads LJ who would have fallen into Group A failed to complete the survey (and one person who does not frequently read LJ, as well). A fourth of respondents in Group B are people I met offline, but do not see often for a variety of reasons.
When I skim the responses with names attached, it seems as though many people selected traits which either describe them, or something they value. Some of the responses describe the participant better than they describe me.
To me, the most fascinating of these people were the two who went to elementary school with me, as in my mind, their results described me better at age twelve than age nineteen.
Overall Trends
As people continued to respond, I kept chuckling to myself over which words were bolded due to high frequency. Intelligent, observant, reflective, idealistic-in my mind, these adjectives do not characterize me so much as illustrate the qualities required for an interesting journal. (This is not to say that I believe my journal is a superior one, but I know that those words are what I would use when discussing other journals/journalists I admire.) With 70% of respondents presumably basing their selections off of what they have read in my journal, this amused me to no end, as my journal is not always a fair representation of my offline self, but those are traits which would be accentuated through writing as opposed to speech.
I just looked at about five other windows I remembered filling out for other people, and Blind Spot (known to others, unknown to self) is by far the longest of those sampled with the fewest bolded descriptors. While certainly not indicative of any overall pattern, I find it notable that the responses for my window are all over, whereas other people seem better-defined. One of the problems with this, of course, is the presence of many near-synonyms on the list (how many ways are there to say someone is smart or kind?), yet my Blind Spot is still very scattered. Even so, this has made me reconsider how I present myself to the world, as I appear to be creating a mosaic of tiny pieces of glass, not a cubist painting with few colors and large brush strokes. A lot of the characteristics listed in the Blind Spot are some that might be part of who I am, but by no means define my existence, and some I would not use under any circumstances.
One of the absences that struck me the most was that of tense or nervous, as in the past, I have often told I am anxious, jittery or high-strung (although I hear that less and less with time). However, as a vast majority of participants have known me for at least four years, it struck me as odd that there would be no edgy residue left in people's minds.
One of the other results of note are the variance between responses in the two synonym categories. I would say that there were two large sets of similar adjectives: the "nice" grouping of kind, caring, loving, giving and warm, and the "smart" grouping of clever, intelligent, wise, witty and knowledgeable. Why, out of those groupings, were my results overwhelmingly skewed toward giving and intelligent? I don't have a solid answer to that, but I speculate that part of why giving was the most frequent for "nice" is that some of the people who selected that have received various cards and gifts from me.
No conclusion, as I've already exhausted the subject (and myself), and I already earned my nerd points with the abstract (although it is odd that I didn't make any footnotes...). My final comment would be that through this meme, I learned more about others than about myself, I think.
Numbers Game
Raw results for my Johari window
22 people have completed my Johari Window; however for the sake of this analysis, I am excluding "meredith" and "LinweCastaneda" becuase I do not know who they are (Please tell me, I'd love to know who you are!). 30% of participants (henceforth known as group A) are people who know me mostly from face-to-face interactions and thus are likely to be better judges of my personality (or I speak with every single day on IM and thus fall into the same category), the remaining 70% (group B) may or may not have met me offline and so I am presuming that they based their responses mostly on the content of my journal.
The top traits selected by both groups are intelligent (60%), reflective (45%), observant (40%), independent (35%), idealistic (35%) and giving (25%).
The top traits selected by Group A are intelligent (66%), confident (50%) and reflective (50%), with traits selected only by this group consisting of caring, extroverted, introverted, proud, sensible, trustworthy and wise.
The top traits selected by Group B are intelligent (57%), observant (50%), reflective (42%), giving (36%), idealistic (36%) and independent (36%), with traits selected only by this group consisting of mature, accepting, adaptable, cheerful, complex, energetic, giving, happy, kind, knowledgable, logical, modest, observant, organised, quiet, shy, silly, sympathetic, warm and witty.
Traits only picked by only one person are mature, accepting, adaptable, caring, extroverted, happy, introverted, modest, proud, quiet, shy, silly, sympathetic, wise and witty.
Two or more people agree that I am able, cheerful, clever, complex, confident, dependable, energetic, friendly, giving, idealistic, independent, intelligent, kind, knowledgeable, logical, loving, observant, organised, reflective, searching, self-assertive, self-conscious, sensible, spontaneous, trustworthy and warm.
Excluding the 7 respondents who seem to have completed the window in alphabetical order, the most adjective chosen first most frequently was intelligent.
Key Points
- I had a hard time selecting descriptions for myself because I feel like many useful words are not present, and too many similar adjectives are listed.
- Traits selected often describe the selector as much as they describe me.
- Over two-thirds of those who filled out the window know me best through my journal, which perhaps is the cause for the words with the highest frequencies relating to a journal.
- The Blind Spot is lengthy and few adjectives were agreed upon by many, suggesting that I do not portray myself to others consistently.
My Choices
Choosing the adjectives which I consider to define my being was an incredibly difficult process because I felt like a lot of who I am is not present on this grid. The first two descriptions which pop into my mind are passionate and pretentious (which Nic pegged as "proud," but it was too late to change my choices). I spent an entire day deliberating over what to select, and I fear that my choices were perhaps predictable or haphazard. Below follows each of my five adjectives and why I selected them:
independent - I would have never considered independence to be a defining trait (need?) before I attended college, but since I've moved out, I've developed a strong distaste for people who attempt to impose rules on me and for suffocating relationships. I need my own time and my own space, and I just cannot cope with always having an omnipresent companion who seems to think they know what is best for me. This was an immediate selection based off of various frustrations.
intelligent - This was a throw-away; I hadn't originally picked it, and I don't walk around looking at people on the street and feeling self-satisfied because I fall into a higher percentile than they do on standardized tests. I've always been in situations for "smart" people, however, and my mental capabilities are something I value, hence the selection.
loving - I struggled with which of the various synonyms for "nice" to pick, as each had a slightly different connotation. In the past few months, I've felt unbalance in many of my relationships, with me expending more emotional energy than has been returned. I almost picked "giving," in part because I do enjoy both physical trinkets (I'd just finished filling out my Valentines) and larger sacrifices, but I chose loving instead because I think that someone who loves is a giver, but not necessarily the other way around.
mature - What word I would have preferred to mark is "serious." Two years ago, I would've rather spent my evenings on silly and creative endeavors, but now all I want is an intense conversation or a good book (next it will be knitting or chess, egads!). The bouncy, happy, spunky me does not board the airplane when I do and remains stuck at home.
searching - Fairly straight forward, I do not have all the answers I want in life. I spend far too much time analyzing my social relationships in hopes of being able to place everyone neatly into boxes tied up with bows, and I am bothered by my lack of concrete answers to Life's Big Questions.
Response Group
One of the most interesting things to me is who filled out the window and who did not. Only one person that frequently reads LJ who would have fallen into Group A failed to complete the survey (and one person who does not frequently read LJ, as well). A fourth of respondents in Group B are people I met offline, but do not see often for a variety of reasons.
When I skim the responses with names attached, it seems as though many people selected traits which either describe them, or something they value. Some of the responses describe the participant better than they describe me.
To me, the most fascinating of these people were the two who went to elementary school with me, as in my mind, their results described me better at age twelve than age nineteen.
Overall Trends
As people continued to respond, I kept chuckling to myself over which words were bolded due to high frequency. Intelligent, observant, reflective, idealistic-in my mind, these adjectives do not characterize me so much as illustrate the qualities required for an interesting journal. (This is not to say that I believe my journal is a superior one, but I know that those words are what I would use when discussing other journals/journalists I admire.) With 70% of respondents presumably basing their selections off of what they have read in my journal, this amused me to no end, as my journal is not always a fair representation of my offline self, but those are traits which would be accentuated through writing as opposed to speech.
I just looked at about five other windows I remembered filling out for other people, and Blind Spot (known to others, unknown to self) is by far the longest of those sampled with the fewest bolded descriptors. While certainly not indicative of any overall pattern, I find it notable that the responses for my window are all over, whereas other people seem better-defined. One of the problems with this, of course, is the presence of many near-synonyms on the list (how many ways are there to say someone is smart or kind?), yet my Blind Spot is still very scattered. Even so, this has made me reconsider how I present myself to the world, as I appear to be creating a mosaic of tiny pieces of glass, not a cubist painting with few colors and large brush strokes. A lot of the characteristics listed in the Blind Spot are some that might be part of who I am, but by no means define my existence, and some I would not use under any circumstances.
One of the absences that struck me the most was that of tense or nervous, as in the past, I have often told I am anxious, jittery or high-strung (although I hear that less and less with time). However, as a vast majority of participants have known me for at least four years, it struck me as odd that there would be no edgy residue left in people's minds.
One of the other results of note are the variance between responses in the two synonym categories. I would say that there were two large sets of similar adjectives: the "nice" grouping of kind, caring, loving, giving and warm, and the "smart" grouping of clever, intelligent, wise, witty and knowledgeable. Why, out of those groupings, were my results overwhelmingly skewed toward giving and intelligent? I don't have a solid answer to that, but I speculate that part of why giving was the most frequent for "nice" is that some of the people who selected that have received various cards and gifts from me.
No conclusion, as I've already exhausted the subject (and myself), and I already earned my nerd points with the abstract (although it is odd that I didn't make any footnotes...). My final comment would be that through this meme, I learned more about others than about myself, I think.