Personality Psychology

I'm reading a psychology book about personality. I was halfway through a chapter on extroverts which it struck me: why are we so interested in it anyway?

And that's not even an unanswerable question. As soon as I asked it a thousand reasons flooded my head: It's interesting, it can tell us who's at risk for certain types of behavior, we like patterns, we love to quantify intangibles... And so I rushed to quantify myself using a variety of tests. They used pretty much the same methods, and all arrived at the same conclusion: I am an introverted, conscientious person who finds it fulfilling to lead others to success. But duh, I already knew this, because I knew the answers to all of their blatantly obvious questions (guess which trait "do you enjoy talking to strangers" tests.) Is there any way a person can be surprised by a personality test? And if that's the case, what purpose do they serve? People can easily manipulate them, and it's personality if you need to. Some things just can't be altered.

Anyway, I'm getting off the subject. My real question is whether or not it is right to quantify personality. If personality becomes a number, there goes the last hope of individualism for humanity. If personality becomes a chemical process, then we can find a way to engineer it, which leads to the same thing.

If you change someone's personality, are you changing something fundamental about them? Or is it just an attribute, like the color of one's hair? If it is fundamental, does the core of person's soul then lie in that mind, in that personality? Does personality include only actions toward the outside world, or inward thoughts and emotions as well? Do people have different personalities in different situations, or is the way they change behavior also an underlying personality trait? And does chemistry rely on personality?

Luckily, I score low on neuroticism, so this won't keep me up at night.

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