PERSONALITY

PERSONALITY

What is Personality

v Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes.

v Investigating individual differences how people are unique.

v Investigating human nature how people are a like.

“Personality” can be defined as a dynamic  and organized set of characteristic possessed by a person that unique influences his or her cognitions, emotions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations.

Personality may also refer to the patterns of Thoughts, feelings and behaviours consistently exhibited by an individual over time that strongly influence our expectations, self-perceptions, values and attitudes and predicts our reactions to people problems and stress.

Personality :

          The world personality comes from the latin root persona, meaning “mark” according to this root personality is the impression we make on others the mask we present to the world.

Definition

          “A unique set of traits and characteristics relatively stable over time”

          Clearly personality is unique insofar as each of us has our own personality different from any other person’s.

Warran and Cormichael, 1930

          Personality is the entire mental organization of a human being at any stage of his development. It embraces every phase of human character. intellect, temperament, skill, morality and every attitude that has been built upin the course of one’s life.

Hall and Lindzey

          Personality is the essence of a human being Mayer 2005

          “An individual’s pattern of psychological processes arising from motives, feelings, thoughts and other major areas of psychological function, personality is expressed through its influences on the body, in conscious mental life, and through the individual’s social behavior carl Gustav Sung, 1934.

          Personality is the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of high courage flung in the face of life the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal condition of  existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom for self determination.

G.W. Allport 1961

          Personality is a dynamic organization, inside the person of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts and feelings child 1968.

          More or less stable,  internal factors make one person’s behavior consistent from one time to another and different from the behavior other people would manifest in comparable situations.

          Both these definitions emphasize that personality is an internal process that guides behavior Gordon Allport (1961) makes the point guides personality is psychophysical, which means both  physical and psychological, Recent research has shown that biological and genetic phenomena do have an impact on personality child(1968) makes the point that personality is stable. Or at least relatively stable. We do not change dramatically from week to week, tively stable, we do not change dramatically from week to week, we can predict how our friends will behave, and we expect them to behave in a recognizably similar way from one day to the next.

          Child (1968) includes consistency (within an individual) and difference (between individuals) in his definition and Allport (1961) refers to characteristic patterns of behavior with in an individual these are also important considerations so personality is what makes our actions thoughts and feelings consistent (or relatively consistent) and it is also what makes us different from one another.

THE ORIGINS OF PERSOALITY

Heredity

Culture

Family Background

Our experiences through life

Add the people we interact with

THEORY

Five relatively recent sources of influence upon personality theory.  

v Psychoanalytic theories – Freud and Beyond

v Humanistic theories – Individuality

v Trait Theories – Aspects of Personality

v Biological and Genetic Theories – the way we are made

v Social – Cognitive Theories – Interpreting the World

Psychoanalytic Theories – Fred and Beyond

          By the early years of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) had begun to write about psychoanalysis which he described as a theory of the mind or personality a method of investigation of unconscious process and method of treatment (1923/62) central to a psychoanalytic approach is the concept of unconscious mental processes the idea that unconscious motivations and needs have a role in determining our behavior  this approach also emphasizes the irrational aspects of human behavior and postrays aggres sive and sexual needs as having a major impact on personality.

          Unconscious mental processes processes in the maind that people are not normally aware of

Humanistic Theories – Individuality

          Humanistic, or phenomenological, theories of personality present a positive and optimistic view of human behavior.

          In complete contrast to theories from the psychodynamic tradition, people are viewed as experiencing beings rather than victims of their unconscious motivations and conflicts so the emphasis here is on individual experiences relationships and ways of understanding the world. Fundamental to these theories are the beliefs that everyone’s experience is unique, and the individual’s perception of the world is critical to their  understanding and behavior Humanitic theories have farmed the basis of many therapeutic procedures on which moden counseling techniques are based.

          Humanistic a branch of personality theory that emphasizes the capacity for personal growth.

Trait Theories – Aspects of Personality

          Traits or discripttors used to label personality have their origin in the ways we describe personality in everyday language.

          In the early years of personality theory, many theorists used the term types of describe differences between people, Sheldon (1954), for example, categorized people according to three body types and related these physical differences to differences in personality endomorphic body types are plump and round with a tendency to be relaved and outgoing mesomorphic physique and strong and muscular  and usually energetic and assertive in personality Ectomorphic body types are tall and thin and tend to have a fearful and restrained personality.

          Traits labels given to consistent and on during aspects of personality, viewed as continuous dimensions

Biological and Genetic Theories – the Way we are made

Inhibition and Arousal

          In 1967 Eysenk developed inhibition theory. He argued that individual differences in eatsavension introversion are strongly determined by heredity and have their  origins in the central nervous system. According to this theory information from the environment is transmitted from the sense organs along neural pathways to the brain where excitatory and inhibitory contical processes result in either the facilitation or inhibition of behavioural and cognitive responses in certain specific ways.

          Egsenck maintained that extraverts have relatively strong inhibitory processor and weak excitatory processes their ‘strong’ nervous system enables them to tolerate a high degree of stimulation the brains slower and weaker reaction to stimuli creates a hunger or desire for strong sensory stimulation so extraverts seek excitement from the environment.

          Introverts, on the other hand, have strong excitary processes and weak inhibitory process. Their nervous systems are ‘weak’ but they have brains that react more quickly and strongly to stimuli. So they can tolerate only relatively small amounts of stimulation.

Social – Cognitive Theories – Interpreting the world

          How do cognitive and social processes affect behavior? And how do different processing strategies result in differing personalities?

          Types of cognitive affective units in the personality system cognitive affective units in the personality system Encodings units or constructs for categorizing events, people and the self.

Expectancies and beliefst – relating to the social world and about outcomes for behavior, self afficacy affects – feelings, emotions and affective responses to stimuli.

Goals and values: Desirable and aversive affective states and outcomes, life goals, values.

Competencies and self regulatory plants: Behaviours and strategies for organizing actions and influencing outcomes one’s own behavior and reactions.

          Mischel helps as to answer these questions in 1973 he proposed a set of psychological person variables for analyzing individual differences in cognitive terms these variables are assumed to interact with each other as we interpret the  social world and act on it. After a number of developments and refinements, Mischel and Shoda (1995) renamed the variables as cognitive – affective units in the personality system, integrating constructs from research in cognition and social learning.

          This model provides a classification system of brood cognitive categories, which describe interacting processes that may lead to personality differences, we will explore social congnitive theories by taking one category at a time.

CONCLUSION :

It has examine different theortical explanations of why we show consistency in our behavior, thoughts and actions and why these consistencies make us different from each other.

Psychoanalytic theorists focus on unconscious process and the impact of early childhood experience, in contrast,  humanistic theorists emphasize human experience and positive  aspects of behavior, Trait theorists have been concerned with the labeling and measurement of personality dimensions, based on assumptions of stable genetic and biological explanations for personality, the complex way in which genes and environment determine personality has presented an important puzzle for personality theory, social cognitive theories provide on explanation for differences in personality in terms of the ways we process information and perceive our social world.

Within psychology the complexities of now our personality develops and determines our behavior have resulted in a number of differing theoretical perspectives and debates. These  debates about interactions between genes and environment. Biology and experiences the person and the situation will continue to engage psychologists in the twenty first century.

References:

Hall. C.S. & Lindzey, G. (1957) Theories of personality carves, C.S. & Scheies. M.F. (2000) perspectives on personality Burges S.M. (1993) Personality.

Schultz’s & Schultz, S.E (1994) Theories of Personality.