You may have heard the saying "you are what you eat," but have you ever heard the saying "you are what you drive?" Regardless of whether or not you have ever heard of such sayings, the point that these saying are trying to make is that your lifestyle is a reflection of your personality. I cannot say that I entirely disagree, but sometimes, the things that we do and the way we think are not always in agreement. As such, even though you may be able to tell a lot about a person by the way the live, you may not discover anything.

Cars are one thing that can reveal a person's lifestyle but may not reveal a lot about that person's personality. For example, let us a pretend that a middle aged man drives up in a $200,000 sports car. You may be thinking the old stereotypes that the driver is going through mid-life crisis and is insecure. However, how come that driver simply cannot be a wealthy individual who likes to drive expensive cars? Why does that driver have to be going through mid-life crisis or be insecure? Would your analysis be different if you knew that the driver purchased the cars when he was in his twenties and had restored it? The point is, even though a car may reveal some information, it does not mean that it will be able to reveal the entire makeup of a person's personality.

Let us look at another situation as an example. Let us pretend that particular driver drives a hybrid car. What could you possible derive from that person's personality based solely on the car? Maybe the person is economical and wants to save money; maybe the person is downright cheap and is sick of paying so much money on gas; maybe the person is a big environment buff and a hybrid car is the only thing that he/she will drive; or maybe the driver is borrowing the car from a friends and has nothing to do with the car at all. With all of these possibilities and more, the question becomes, can you really tell something about a person's personality by the car they drive or can you tell what kind of car somebody is going to drive based on their personality? In other words, does the car define the person or does the person define the car? Based on everything discussed so far, the latter choice must be the correct choice.

A person defines a car and not the other way around. Therefore, if you know somebody's personality you may be able to choose what kind of car they are going to drive. If, however, you know nothing about a person's personality, simply seeing the car they drive will not tell you much about anything.

Learn more about this author, Marco Angioni II.
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