Ways of Defining The Nature of Personality and Approaches in Personality...

There are few words in the English language that have such a fascination for the general public as the term Personality. An individual's personality is assessed by the effectiveness with which he/she is able to elicit positive reactions from a variety of persons under different circumstances; the personality of the individual consist of the most salient or outstanding impression that he/she creates to others. Personality maybe hard to define but we know it when we see it.

This blog will help you to get versed about this particular domain, to cementing your areas of expertise. It provides content to people who are interested in becoming psychologists, addition to help the non-psychologists people as well. Also people who are pursuing UG/PG in Psychology, this content will help you to be prepared with your exam notes!!!

Let the learning begin....hope it helps!!!

What is Personality or The Nature of Personality

The term 'personality' is derived from the Latin word "persona" which means "mask". It refers to the relatively enduring characteristics of an individual that makes him/her distinct from others.

When psychologists define personality, they tend to refer to qualities within a person, characteristics of a person's behavior or both - 

• According to Gordon Allport (1937), "Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psycho-physical systems that determine his unique adjustment to the environment."
• According to Guildford (1959), "An individual's personality is his unique pattern of traits."

Approaches in Personality

Personality has been studied in a number of different ways. Theory construction was popular for many years. Most of these broad theories can be grouped into 4 categories - 

1. Type and Trait approaches : It emphasizes on people's characteristics, such as - stubbornness, shyness and so forth and how these characteristics are organized into systems. 
2. Psycho-dynamic approaches : It emphasizes on-going interactions among motives, impulses and psychological processes.
3. Learning and Behavioral Approaches : It focuses on the ways habits are acquired through basic conditioning or learning processes.
4. Humanistic approaches : It emphasizes the self and the importance of the individual's subjective view of the world.

 

Type Theories

One of the first type theories that we know of was proposed about 400 B.C. by Hippocrates, a Greek physician now known as the Father of Medicine. He grouped people into 4 temperament types, such as - 

1. Sanguine : cheerful, vigorous, confidently optimistic.
2. Melancholic : depressed, morose.
3. Choleric : hot-tempered.
4. Phlegmatic : slow-moving, calm, un-excitable.

A type is a higher order or super-ordinate construct comprised of a set of correlated traits - a class of individuals sharing a common collection of characteristics.  For example, introverts could be described as people who share characteristics such as shyness, social withdrawal, tendency not to talk much and so forth; while extroverts could be described as people who share characteristics such as friendly, outgoing, talkative and so on.

The groupings or sets of types are called typologies. For example, in American cultures, people are often classified as leaders or followers, liberals or conservatives, losers or winners and so on.

Here is a little fact for you guys...

Personality Types and Heart Disease :

We are inclined to think of heart attacks as a purely medical problem as their connection with lifestyle factors such as - smoking, obesity and inactivity. However, during recent years, a connection with personality type has also emerged. It probably lies in the chemical substances released by the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in response to stressors. Two specific behavior patter types - Type A and Type B, are now known to be associated with increased and decreased likelihood of Coronary-Artery Disease.

Type A persons are hard driving and competitive. They live under constant pressure, largely of their own making. They seek recognition and advancement and take on multiple activities with deadlines to meet. Most of the time they may function well but when put under stressful situations, they cannot control, however, they are likely to become hostile, impatient, anxious and disorganized.

Type B persons are easy going, noncompetitive, placid, unflappable. They handle stress easily; they work harder when given a deadline. Type B's maybe a little dull but they are likely to live linger than hairlike Type A's.

On a Treadmill test, Type A's expend more energy and use a greater proportion of their oxygen capacity than do Type B's, yet they rate their fatigue as less severe. If asked to judge when a minute has elapsed (Timing), Type A's show a push toward achievement, a suppression of the cost (fatigue) to themselves and impatience with delay.

All this suggests that programs to help Type A persons cope more constructively with stressors might be helpful.

Trait Theories

Trait is relatively stable characteristic that causes individuals to behave in certain ways. According to DSM, personality traits are prominent aspects of personality that are exhibited in a wide range of social and personal contexts.

Various psychologists have given various trait theories - 

• Gordon Allport : Years ago, psychologist Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert counted about 18,000 trait-like terms in the English language - terms that designated "distinctive and personal forms of behavior (1937)". From those terms, they reduced a number of words to approximately 4500 objectives which they considered to describe observable and relatively permanent personality traits. 

Allport organized these traits into a hierarchy of 3 levels - 

1. Cardinal Traits : It dominates and shapes an individual's behavior. These are powerful as they are considered to be an individual's ruling passions. Persons become historical figures specifically for having these traits. These traits are rare and tend to develop later in life.
2. Central Traits : Allport believed that most people have no true cardinal traits. People who are without a cardinal trait, central traits become crucial. He described it as characterizing an individual's behavior to some extent but not in such a complete way as cardinal traits. General characteristics such as - loyalty, kindness, agreeableness etc. have been found in varying degrees in every person; they are the basic building blocks that shape most of our behavior.
3. Secondary Traits : These are traits such as "like chocolates" or "prefers foreign cars" - traits that are influential but only within a narrow range of situations.

• Hans Eysenck : He focused on temperament - innate, genetically based, biological dimensions of personality. He believed that the characteristics functioning of the central nervous system (CNS) predisposes to respond in certain ways to their environment. He identified 2 dimensions (1947) -

1. Extroversion - Introversion : Extroverts are outgoing, sociable, friendly, talkative, sensation seeking, dominant and so on; Introverts are shy, do not like to talk much, pessimistic and so on.
2. Neuroticism - Emotional Stability : anxious, low self-esteem, depressed, moody, emotional and so on.

In 1952, Eysenck added one more dimension - 

     

      3. Psychoticism - Impulse control : aggressive, cold, egocentric, anti-social, non-empathetic etc.

• Raymond Cattell : In an effort to make Allport's list of  4000 traits more manageable, Cattell took the list and removed all the synonyms reducing it to 171 traits. Mainly he talked about 2 types of personality traits - 

1. Source Traits : These traits are promised to be the real structural influences underlying personality; temperamental factors, degrees of dynamic integration, exposed to social intuitions.
2. Surface Traits : These traits are produced by the interaction of source traits. These traits are expected to be less stable, however, source traits prove to have the most utility in accounting for behavior.

Type and Trait approaches are close enough to our everyday way of thinking about people as to have a certain ring of truth.

Hope this piece of information helped you to understand what personality actually is as a start. But there's more to come...In my next blog, I'll continue with some other theories to get another view of personality approaches.

If you have any doubts, please feel free to write it in the comment section...will be happy to help...

Thank you for having a look at this.

See you in the next post :)

~ Mousumi Gayen