How does my ND affect my personality?
So studies have shown that ADHD affects our personalities and there are traits that those of us with ADHD share. That’s also true for Autism and I’m sure it extends to other forms of neurodivergence. So that leads me to the question, how much of me is.. Well, me.. And how much is my neurodivergence?
Firstly, this blog today is based on a YouTube video I put out. If you would prefer to watch instead of read, you can find the video here:
Last week I did a deep dive of just how ADHD affects personality, critically evaluating three separate studies to look into just how this flavour of neurospiciness affects how we behave. If you haven’t read that post yet, I’d really recommend taking a look because today I’m diving a bit further and asking how much of our personality is actually our neurodivergence?
I’m someone who is diagnosed with ADHD and in the grand scheme of my life it was a pretty recent diagnosis. After this diagnosis I went on a massive deep dive into ADHD, learning as much as I could about it and I was surprised by the number of times things I thought were just me could actually be attributed to my ADHD.
I’ve always been someone who is excitable and enthusiastic, something that comes from my ADHD big emotions. I’m also someone who gets bored incredibly easily, struggles with chores and is pretty impatient, all things that I thought were character flaws and turn out to just be my ADHD.
I also had lots of friends who are neurodivergent. It’s true that we like people who are similar to us so it makes sense that I gravitate towards people with ADHD (and autism as well, something I’m not pursuing a diagnosis for but I likely have as well). We have shared experiences but also shared traits that bring us together.
But of course, while we do have some shared traits, we are definitely not the same. I have overlap with my ADHD friends of course but there are also many ways in which we are different. And there are also people with ADHD who I don’t get on with, and often it’s because we are very different in some ways.
So it’s obvious that while having ADHD gives us similarities that mean we often get on, it also doesn’t completely describe our personalities. So that leads me to the question of how much of it is it responsible for?
This is going to be a difficult question to answer. To begin with, within one form of neurodivergence, everyone presents differently. Autism is on a spectrum due to the collection of autistic traits that are present in different magnitudes for each autistic person. Does that mean we could describe an autistic person’s personality based exactly where they sit on each of the different dimensions on the spectrum?
Could personality be thought of as being on a spectrum as well?
In my deep dive of ADHD and personality last week, I looked at a number of studies that correlated ADHD and its different aspects with personality. There were two personality measurements used across the studies but from here on in, I want to focus on one, and that’s the Five Factor Model or the Big Five personality traits.
I spoke about it in a bit more detail last week but if you’re not familiar, the main traits of this are Conscientiousness, Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism.
Across the studies, themes emerged surrounding in particular conscientiousness and neuroticism which across the board seemed to be highly correlated with ADHD. Some studies also suggested that agreeableness and extraversion might also be related (Knouse et al, 2014).
Typically these studies found that low conscientiousness and high neuroticism tended to be associated with the inattentive symptoms of ADHD, whereas agreeableness and extraversion were more associated with hyperactive-impulsive symptoms (Krieger et al, 2020). In some ways that makes the case like I speculated with autism, that by plotting our level of symptoms on the ADHD traits of inattentive, hyperactive and impulsive, we might be able to paint a picture of someone’s Big Five personality based on these relationships.
However, you’ll notice that I didn’t mention anything about openness to experience. While some studies found that openness was higher in people with ADHD, there doesn’t really seem to be evidence linking it to ADHD traits directly which suggests that at least one aspect of the big five is purely idiosyncratic, purely our personality (Knouse et al, 2014).
It’s also just not that simple. There are environmental factors that affect how our personalities develop, there are issues with bias in self-reporting, but one thing that I didn’t see spoken about in my research on ADHD and personality was the overlap between all of the different forms of neurodivergence.
I’ve had it in the back of my mind to do a video unravelling all of the different ND overlaps for a while now…
Did you know that between 20 and 50% of children with ADHD also meet the diagnostic criteria for Autism (Rommelse et al, 2010)? And the other way round is even higher at somewhere between 30 and 80% depending on study.
Did you know that 50% of children with ADHD are diagnosed with a comorbid tic disorder or that between 35 and 90% of people with Tourette’s Syndrome also have ADHD (Oluwabusi, 2016)?
For dyslexia, there’s a 25-50% overlap in both directions (McGrath & Stoodley, 2019).
When I first started researching these overlaps it actually blew my mind. When you go for an ADHD assessment, one of the things they look at is whether your symptoms can be better explained by another diagnosis (and in fact in hindsight I did get a fair few questions related to autism) but no one tells you there’s a significant chance that you might not just have ADHD.
Most studies, resources, conversations talk about these topics in isolation, something I know I myself am bad about doing too even though in the back of my mind I know it’s not that simple. I imagine a lot of the time we do this because the complexity is just too high when considering all of these overlaps and it’s easier to… just ignore them.
And on a side note, this is why I love coaching for people who are neurodivergent because I’m not telling you to do something or pretending I’m the expert in whatever you’re facing. Coaching is exploring together to find a way forward that works for you.
Because even if I was the best ADHD expert in the world, your blend of neurodivergence might well include dyslexia or dysgraphia and ADHD-tailored advice might not be suitable for where those two intersect, so we have to work together to find the way forward for you instead of me straight up telling you what to do.
These overlaps increase the complexity exponentially. Now I’m not speculating whether I can map my personality onto dimensions of ADHD, but I have to also include dimensions of autism and try to eliminate any other form of neurodivergence to make sure they’re not having compounding effects.
For example, one of the Big Five traits I’ve always resonated the most with is conscientiousness. I’m an incredibly hard worker. I’m ambitious. I work hard to be organised and build systems to combat my chaotic brain. I am achievement oriented and one of the most highly driven people I’ve ever met. Yet ADHD is correlated as having a significantly lower consciousness than the general population.
The fact I wear glasses means I’m hardworking. That’s how this works, right?…
Is this my potential autism affecting conscientiousness? Some studies suggest not (Lodi-Smith et al, 2019). So is this something that is completely me?
In the paper “Clinical reflections on the intersections of autism and personality development” by Meng-Chuan Lai (2022), the author talks about the prevalence of diagnosing autistic people with personality disorders before considering autism, diagnoses often dropped after the diagnosis of autism has been made.
Lai points out that the general modern conceptualizations of personality structure like the Five Factor Model that we have been talking about do not take into account how neurodivergence intersects with personality development and this also holds true for clinical diagnoses of personality disorders.
Now you might be listening to me discuss this topic with interest but at the back of your mind you might be thinking that this is all a bit abstract, maybe a bit self-indulgent. But actually, this does have real world implications, specifically in the world of work and the rise of personality screening.
From what I can tell, there seem to be no laws against employers using personality tests as part of their hiring decisions. Some employers argue that they are a good predictor of job performance, or enable them to balance out their team personalities. It’s been estimated that 60-70% of Americans have taken a personality test as a prospective employee (Hawkins, 2021).
The thing is, if we know that there’s a positive correlation between our personalities and our neurodivergence, could companies be discriminating against neurodivergence through personality tests?
A 2023 article in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal called “Screening Out Neurodiversity” has examined exactly this question from the perspective of autism and suggest that, while there is still not enough evidence to point directly towards discrimination, they found that pre-employment personality tests prey on features of autism in an unfair way.
Personality tests can be fun if done for just that reason but making big decisions based on the results is not great…
One of the most scary statistics from this point of view was their reference to a 2014 study by Schriber et al which posed the question of how well do Big Five test results predict being autistic versus their typically developing group and found that the Big Five scores successfully predicted the correct group 70% of the time.
So if a company is either knowingly or unknowingly filtering to avoid autistic traits, it’s a scary thought that they could successfully filter out 70% of applicants just in the initial personality test.
What makes it hard to suggest for immediate outlawing of these personality tests is the fact that in general, they aren’t that accurate. While the Big Five model itself is academically respected, the same cannot be said for the tests that predict it. One reporter took the same test twice identifying as a woman one time and a man the second time with identical answers and received different results, showing that there’s gender bias built into the tests (Goldhill 2018).
On top of this, these Big Five tests are not actually what is being used most of the time. Most companies are using the Myers Briggs tests which lead to inconsistent results when retaken five weeks apart and in one analysis of 1291 students, 83% of the differences between them could not be accounted for by Myers Briggs (Pittenger, 2005).
There’s also the fact that self-report systems are inaccurate. Even for neurotypicals, the person taking the test and someone close to them answering about them can give results that don’t line up. For neurodivergent people, that can be compounded by what we’ve internalised from others, but also potentially from different interpretations of the questions (Schriber et al, 2014).
So I can’t definitively answer the question of how much of my personality is me and how much of it is my neurodivergence and on a personal level, it doesn’t really matter. I am Leigh and all the wonderful parts of my personality that come with being who I am. While I enjoy thinking about the problem and speculating about a mathematical model that could quantify my personality into the various quirks of my brain, ultimately I understand that I am a unique individual who has been shaped by my life experiences, and my neurodivergence is a part of that.
My flavour of neurodivergence is part of what makes me me and I’m pretty happy about how I’ve turned out
But on a society level, the implications of neurodivergence discrimination based on personality is a scary one and one that we are only just starting to realise the implications of. There are enough things getting in the way of us getting the opportunities that we deserve, we don’t need more of them.
And with the increase of AI screening tools, this problem is only going to get more important.
References:
Meta-analysis of Big Five personality traits in autism spectrum disorder, (Lodi-Smith et al, 2018)
The Dark Truth Behind Personality Test. Film. (Hawkins, 2021)
Screening Out Neurodiversity (Wiggleton-Little & Callender, 2023)
Personality and Self-Insight in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder, (Schriber et al., 2014)
Cautionary Comments Regarding the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Pittenger, 2005)
If this resonates with you and feel you would be interested in talking to an adhd and autism-friendly coach, feel free to get in touch. If you’re looking for more blog posts, you can find them here.
Want to see more?
Sign up with your email address to receive the latest thoughts on neurodivergent careers and leadership.