Fingerprints, no two are alike, that’s what makes them the ‘go to’ marker of identification. It’s relatively easy to give one’s fingerprint. However, if you push too hard or too lightly the print is obscured. If you don’t do the ‘roll’ you don’t reveal all the print’s elements, there could be missing pieces of arches, whorls, and loops. Enough about fingerprints, this is about personality and revealing the inner fingerprint. Most people can monitor and control how much of themselves they want to show in general social situations, like on a morning commute. However when it comes to circumstances where there is a little more on the line – from networking on a social media site, at a job interview or the office, to how we come across to friends and family – things can get in the way of the character one tries to convey. The unconscious, subconscious, and conscious mind of the sender can whip up waves of interference not to mention the receiver having their own assumptions that jam up reception.

What follows is an excerpt from the article Mixed Signals By Sam Gosling, published on September 01, 2009 in Psychology Today

Are You Sending the Wrong Signals?
Many of us have times when we are misunderstood. People perceive us as cold and unfriendly when we’re really just feeling shy, as flirtatious when we’re just trying to be friendly, or as depressed when we’re just tired. Being misunderstood is largely a problem of a lack of information—not communicating effectively with the people around you through your words and body language.
For many years, Randall Colvin of Northeastern University has been studying the attributes of people who are easily judged—people others just “get.” Colvin found that easily judgeable people tend to be extroverted, warm, consistent, and emotionally stable. These traits are known as “amplifiers” because they increase the expression of other traits. It’s easier to judge the creativity of an extrovert than that of an introvert, for example, because the extrovert sends a barrage of thoughts your way, while the introvert might keep them to herself.
Extroversion amplifies other traits because extroverts simply say and do more. The enormous amount of verbal and behavioral information they furnish makes extroverts easier to understand on all aspects of personality, not just their extroversion.
People are also easier to judge if they have a quality called “blirtatiousness,” the tendency to respond to others quickly and effusively. It’s one of the best amplifiers identified to date—blurters are open books.
So if you feel misunderstood, say and do more. Even introverts can train themselves to communicate more through their words—telling people directly what they like and how they feel. But before you can work on making sure you’re sending the right signals, you’ll need to know how others perceive you.
Why are we so hopeless at knowing how we come across? Because we not only fail to consider the information used by observers, but we also actively take into account information observers fail to consider, according to John Chambers, a psychologist at the University of Florida.
You may know you’re less reckless than you used to be, more talkative than your friends, and less productive than you might wish. But such information about your past, your friends, and your wishes is not easily accessible to others. Even so, when guessing what others think of you, you’ll find it almost impossible to disregard all the things you know about yourself to which others don’t have access.
How you’re seen does matter. Social judgment forms the basis for social interaction itself. Almost every decision others make about you, from promotions to friendships to marriages, is based on how people see you. So even if you never learn what you’re really like, learning how others perceive you is a worthwhile goal.
The solution is asking others what they see. The best way to do this is to solicit their opinions directly—though just asking your mom won’t cut it. You’ll need to get feedback from multiple people—your friends, coworkers, family, and, if you can, your enemies. Offer the cloak of anonymity without which they wouldn’t dare share the brutal truth—the Facebook app “Honesty Box,” for instance, allows people to send you anonymous notes. You may also want to videotape yourself to get a more objective perspective.
To provide users with systematic feedback on how their personality traits were viewed by multiple others, my collaborators David Evans and Anthony Carroll and I developed a Facebook application called YouJustGetMe, which helped users understand the signals they were sending with their Facebook profiles. Sure enough, people were surprised by the feedback they got. People were seen as less open-minded and neurotic than they saw themselves—but more dependable, warm, and outgoing.
Getting an outsider’s perspective actually provides you new information. In a classic study, Richard Robins of the University of California at Davis and Oliver John of Berkeley examined how people viewed their own contributions to a group discussion task. First, subjects were asked to rate their own performance. Then they watched a video of the discussion. When asked again what they thought of their performance after seeing the video, people downgraded their evaluations of how well they did—bringing their assessments more in line with those of others.
In Akira Kurosawa’s epic movie Rashomon, four witnesses provide only partially overlapping—and at times contradictory—accounts of the same robbery. In the same way, no single perspective on the self is complete. That’s why we need to augment our self-views with the views of others, not only to overcome our personal biases, but also because other people have access to information we miss.
There’s a lot to be learned about ourselves and others by seeking multiple perspectives. Even Kirsten could learn something about her punctuality issues by supplementing her own views with information provided by others. All she needs to do is set up a meeting to solicit feedback from them. Oh, wait!
Even if you’re clueless about how you’re seen, you may occasionally stumble onto a glimpse of how others see you. An overheard conversation or a carelessly forwarded email may allow us, as the 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns put it, “To see oursel’s as ithers see us.” I had my own moment of self-insight recently, accidentally furnished by a group of friends as I was recounting a story. “Now, I see myself as a pretty sensitive guy,” I began—at which point my audience simultaneously did double takes and exchanged stunned looks. Huh. Perhaps I’m not as sensitive as I imagine!

Millions of first impressions are now formed online. So along with Simine Vazire and my student Sam Gaddis, I decided to examine how well people understand the impressions they’re making with their Facebook profiles. We found that people know how extroverted they seem, but are clueless about the other impressions they convey. So Danielle knows she’s seen as an introvert, but doesn’t realize she’s also seen as dependable, laid-back, and creative.