The Quest for the right Donor - Personality Traits

After I had limited my selection of donors because of their medical history and open ID status, I tried to find out more about my donors' personality traits. The sperm bank I chose provided a free donor essay (actually just a handful of questions that the donors answered in a couple of sentences) and I bought a subscription that gave me access to an audio-interview and some additional information about the donors.

Why this mattered to me:
I wanted to get at least a little glimpse into who they were and who the biological father of my child would be. Sometimes, I am a very logical and rational person, e.g. I looked at the medical history of the donors and eliminated people just because of that. But I am also a very emotional person and somehow it is important to me that I "like" the donor. Or at least that I do not find him annoying.
I also would have loved to be able to tell my child later that I picked their donor because I really liked what he was passionate about or what he said about a certain topic. But after looking at donor after donor, I am not sure if this is really going to happen. With every new document or file I opened, my perception of that person changed and I never got the impression that I really knew what they were like. There is no way I am going to find the right guy just based on his personality.


Is personality inherited? - The old question of nature vs. nurture.
When I talked about this with an old friend of mine, he said that he would not care about this aspect at all. He does not believe that personality is inherited. My friend the Power Latina said the exact same. They both believe that it is mostly the upbringing that shapes a child's personality. But I am not so sure about that.
My dad is a twin. He and his brother are different like day and night, even though they grew up in the same household and their parents treated them exactly the same. If personality is acquired or learned, how come one of them turned out more confident than the other? I personally believe that it is a mixture of nature and nurture: The basis for a personality trait may be inherited but if this trait really comes out in the child might be triggered or suppressed by how the child is raised. Believing this leads me to my next question:

Do I pick someone who matches or compliments my personality?
If personality traits are inherited to some extend, should I pick a donor that matches my personality or someone whose personality is the opposite to my weaker traits so that we balance each other out? I thought a lot about this. I tried to pick someone who has some personality traits that I do not have but would like to have. And I also picked one that matches my personality in other areas. I tried to pick someone that I knew I would be able to get along with and then, I hoped for the best...

Donor interviews and what they really taught me
I just spent the last weekend checking out donor essays and audio-interviews with my friend the Power Latina and we think we "cracked the code" to donor personality. Of course, this is not scientific and it probably also does not always hold true, but these are our little theories that we came up with:

(a) The interviewer often says more about the donor than the donor himself
A lot of the donors that we listened to were interviewed by the same woman, but the way she talked to some donors was quite different than how she talked to other donors. She actually seemed to be flirting with some of them, while she seemed to be completely down to business with others. We think that the ones she was flirting with might be more attractive than the others. If the interviewer started giggling during the interview - bingo! we have winner!

(b) If the donor is trying too hard to sell himself, there might be nothing worth buying
This is something that the Power Latina and I learned from years of online dating. If a guy tries really really hard to sell himself, he might really need to sell himself because otherwise people would not be interested in him. If someone is good-looking, an interesting person, or just confident, they usually do not try to sell themselves. Short and brief answers will suffice to make others become interested in them.

(c) The good, the bad, and the totally pointless
Most interviews seem to consist of three kinds of questions: the good, the bad, and the totally pointless. Let's start with the good ones: The good questions are the ones that really tell you a lot about the donor, e.g. If you could spend a day with any person dead or alive, who would you like to spend the day with? If the donor answers with a contemporary slapstick comedian that probably nobody will know in 5 years ... not the kind of donor I am looking for. If the donor answers this question with the name of a good author or artists and gives an intelligent answer why he would like to meet that person-it would definitely be a plus. 
Bad questions are questions that almost every donor will answer the same or almost the same way. For example: I have read that you are (not) religious. Can you tell me a little bit about your moral values? Every donor will answer: "I think we should treat others like we want to be treated ourselves" - or some variation of this answer. If everybody answers the question the same way, the answer does not really tell me anything about the donor. So, it is a bad question.
Pointless questions are those that the donor has already answered multiple times in other parts of his profile. So, for example, if the donor has already written in his profile what he studies, answered one of the essay questions by going into his studies and then gets asked the same question again during the interview, it is kind of pointless.

The bottom line
After looking at a lot of profiles, listening to audio-interviews and reading essay answers, I decided that these are some things that I am looking for in the personality of a donor:
- Does the donor seem at least a little bit intelligent? (Do his answers demonstrate insight? Can he give answers that pertain to the question without going off on other topics? Does his answer demonstrate cohesion and coherence?)
- Is the donor confident without being arrogant?
- How does the donor talk about his family?
- Does the donor have a goal in his life? Does he have a passion? (To me, it does not matter that much, what the passion or goal is, but it is important that the donor has one.)
- Does the donor contradict himself? (Does he walk the walk or just talk the talk? If the donor claims to be shy, does he really appear shy in the audio-interview?)
However, the bottom line really is that no matter what the donors wrote in the essays or said during the interviews. This is only a one-time glimpse into who they are. It is not a complete picture of the donor and should not be treated as such. Maybe a week or a month later, the donor would have given completely different answers to the questions.

I had hoped to get some idea about the donor and with some donors that worked out with others not so much. When it comes down to it, donor personality is only one of many factors that played a role for me. It always was important but never the most important thing about the donors.