BLOG #3 Sample Introduction

(Despite my enthusiasm to do research on my original topic, I have narrowed it down as follows after reconsidering.)

     Alexander Nininger, twenty-three years old then, was newly commissioned as a lieutenant in the United State Army and sent to the South Pacific to serve with the 57^th Infantry of the Philippine Scouts. Quiet and thoughtful by nature, he loved theater, would spend many hours with a friend and often sit by the fireplace in the living room, having tea and listening to Tchaikovsky. When he went serve in South Pacific, he wrote a letter to a friend, saying that he had no feelings of hate and didn’t think that he could ever kill anyone out of hatred.  In January of 1942, when Japanese attacked, slipping hundreds of snipers through the American lines, Nininger went to his commanding officer and told him that he wanted to be assigned to another company so he could go hunting for Japanese snipers. He carried several weapons such as grenades, ammunition belts, a Garand rifle and a submachine gun. He crawled through the jungle and shot and killed snipers. He was wounded in the leg but kept going, shooting Japanese snipers for the comrades behind him. He was wounded again but waved off a medic who tried to bring him back; he saw a Japanese bunker and two enlisted men up ahead. He kept charging at the bunker although he was shot in the shoulder. He killed one soldier with a double thrust of his bayonet, clubbed down the other, and bayoneted the officer. Then, with outstretched arms, he collapsed face down. He was awarded the Medal of Honor.

       How could we know Nininger’s personality beforehand? A man who loved theater and afternoon with tea and Tchaikovsky and who was so fearless and tenacious. Knowing one’s personality helps us predict his or her behavior. But asking Nininger himself or his friends to describe his personality would not be of any help. He did not even know that he was fearless. His friends would only recall him as a quiet and thoughtful person. Then, how can we get to the heart of one’s personality? What we need is psychological assessments of great delicacy and sophistication. There are twenty-five hundred kinds of personality tests based on each theory and testing is a four-hundreds-million-dollar-a year industry. However, personality tests are fundamentally flawed with controversial aspects and issues regarding reliability, validity and limitations and they cannot predict behavior.

-Additional resource-

Gladwell, Malcolm. “Personality Plus.” The New Yorker 20 Sept 2004: 42-48. Print

Keiko Matsuura