Personality Analysis of Jordan Belfort Using Psychological Theories

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of Jordan Belfort's character from the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" using personality theories. The essay begins with a brief overview of Belfort's life as a stockbroker, his involvement in corruption, and his eventual downfall. It then delves into the appl...Read More

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
PSYCHOLOGY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to analyze a character from a popular American movie
The Wolf of Wall Street using various personality theories. In this paper the character of
Jordan Belfort is analyzed using behavioral theories to support the discussion. The movie was
directed by Martin Scorsese based on the real life character Jordan Belfort who was a stock
broker and he got involved in corruption and eventually he became a fraud and that resulted
in his downfall. In this assignment the character of Jordan Belfort is analyzed by considering
two types of personality theories.
In the movie Jordan Belfort is seen employed as a stockbroker under Mark Hanna,
who spots him in the workplace and gave him lessons like the stockbroker’s aim should be
fetching money at any cost and introduced him to the sex and drugs fueled culture of the
stockbrokers (Yadvizhyna, 2014). Due to a crash in the stock market he lost his job and
somehow got himself employed in a stock broking firm which has specialization in penny
stocks. In that organization with aggressive selling capability Jordan makes a lot of money
and later he befriends with a person named Donnie and soon they became business partners
(INTAN, 2015). They founded a company and the job of their organization was pump and
dump scam. After getting recognition in Forbes magazine many job seekers joined their
organization and that made Jordan even more successful monetarily. After getting huge
success, Jordan had an affair with Naomi and eventually got divorced with his previous wife
and married Naomi (Goodman, 2014). In the meantime FBI and SEC were after him to gather
information about the scams he and Donnie made in the land of USA. Then to hide money
Jordan opened an account in Swiss Bank because the American Government would not be
able to track his money then. Then seeing the tables have turned he tried to settle the bank
accounts in Switzerland he tried to reach there but due to some unavoidable situation he

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failed to do so. Then he had a settlement with FBI where he was asked to gather evidence of
all the scams he and his partners made and then he would not have to serve a prison. Jordan
accepted the terms but reaching office wearing a wire, he warned his partners by informing
them by writing small notes. Somehow, FBI found out about this incident and arrested Jordan
and raided his office and confiscated everything (Suskie, 2015). Then his sentence was a bit
lowered as he helped government a bit by wearing a wire and giving them some important
information about the scam. Later after serving 22 months in prison he came out clean and
now he arranges seminars and workshops on selling skills to earn his living (Fibiarty, 2015)
Character development
To analyze the character of Jordan Belfort, various personality theories can be used as
tools, as the study of personality is based on the necessary insight that every individual is
similar in some ways but still different from one another. Personality type refers to the
categorization of various types of people (Wulandari et al., 2013). According to personal
theories, Jordan Belfort is seen having some strong weak points and strengths. From
Friedman’s framework it can be said that Jordan belongs to the Type A personality group
and thus he has a competitive streak, he is very much hardworking and thrives in challenges
and that sometimes lead to coronary diseases, but in Jordan’s case he took refuge to drugs
and other things to bypass the pressure and earned a name, and that is Stress-junkie. He is a
genius in his field of work and it is seen that he knows that he is good in broking business but
he grooms others too to become great stockbrokers and it is seen that knowing that the results
would not be in his favor, he decided to help out his friends and partners from legal issues.
He had a go getter attitude that fueled his ambition and helped him to achieve the success that
made him the man as we have known him to be. His confidence is something of a spectacle
and this helps him to seize any opportunities that come his way. This risk taking attitude does

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indeed work in his favor and tremendous profits are often yielded. Another thing that is
important in Jordan’s personality is his immense power of convincing people that earned him
huge success in his career (Wardani, & Mustofa, 2017). Narcissism is evident in his
personality and like the most of the successful salesmen he looks at people like pawns who
can be manipulated for their own interest.
Carl Jung is another renowned person in the field of personality theories and he came
up with an intriguing idea which was different from any other personality theories (Yudha,
2016). According to Jung, any individuals can be categorized in two parts, and those are
introvert and extrovert. Introverts gather energy from the internal world that is keeping own
self secluded from the outside world. On the other hand, the Extroverts find energy from the
outside world or by interacting with others. In today’s world, Jung’s unique ideas are pretty
helpful to analyze a person’s character using his theories. According to Jung, Thinking,
Feeling, Sensation and Intuition are the most important psychological functions (Allen,
2015). He stated that each of these functions can be experienced by an individual regardless
of his category, be it introvert or extrovert, and one function among these four must be
dominant in a particular individual. In this case, it can be said that, the function of Intuition is
dominant in the case of Belfort and for that he is seen being a huge risk taker and sort of
impulsive at some cases.
Jordan’s mind is enriched with the ideas of freedom and motivation that lead to his
organization’s huge success. The aggressive desire for success lead him choosing the path of
corruption and scams, and that resulted in all the problems of his life. Jordan is seen as
immensely enthusiastic in grabbing the opportunities and he made the most out of each
opportunities. It can be said that the character of Jordan Belfort is a mixture of opportunism,
ambition, sales skills and high entrepreneurship skills (Yudha, 2016).

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Conclusion
Thus, it can be said that, as a character Jordan Belfort is an intriguing character with his huge
ambition quite like Julius Caesar of Rome and that high ambition lead to their downfall. It is
a fact that, Jordan is an extremely interesting character who lives a drug sex and money
fueled life that he acquired by implementing his innovative ideas and techniques. He cannot
be designated as an antagonist as he did look after his partners and friends, and he did not
ever wanted to climb up the ladder of success all alone.

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References
Allen, B. P. (2015). Personality theories: Development, growth, and diversity. Psychology
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Fibiarty, A. M. (2015). THE REPRESENTATION OF SPEECH DISFLUENCY MADE BY
LEONARDO DICAPRIO AND MARTIN SCORSESE DURING INTERVIEW
PROGRAM IN BLOOMBERG TV (Doctoral dissertation, UIN Sunan Ampel
Surabaya).
Goodman, D. R. (2014). The Wolf of Wall Street. Journal of Religion & Film, 18(2), 2.
INTAN, M. (2015). The Strategies of Translating Dirty Words and Phrase in The Wolf of the
Wall Street Film Subtitles. Skripsi, Fakultas Ilmu Budaya.
Suskie, K. J. (2015). Crossing the Tracks.
Wardani, A. K., & Mustofa, A. (2017). Metrosexual Masculinity Performance in Jordan
Belfort’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Litera~ Kultura, 5(2).
Wulandari, R., Kusumawardhani, P., Nurhayati, N., & Nurdini, R. A. (2013). A Literature
Analysis Of Ambition Of Jordan Belfort In The Wolf Of Wall Street Movie Directed
By Martin Scorsese. Simposium Nasional Ilmu Pengetahuan dan Teknologi
(SIMNASIPTEK), 1(1), 1-6.
Yadvizhyna, A. S. (2014). Cult of drugs in contemporary cinema.
Yudha, B. S. (2016). WOMEN’S OPPRESSIONS AS REFLECTED IN JORDAN BELFORT’S
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (Doctoral dissertation, Diponegoro University).