Personality

What is Personality?

Definition:

Personality is a complex hypothetical construct that has been defined in a variety of ways. Following are some of its more prominent definitions:

1. Personality is the pattern of enduring characteristics that produce consistency and individuality in a given person.

2. The sum total of characteristics on the basis of which people can be differentiated from each other.

3. Relatively stable pattern of behaviours and consistent internal states that explain a person's behavioural tendencies.

Main points:

From above definitions we extract the following common points:

Characteristics / traits / behaviors: Personality is an aggregate of consistent behaviors or traits on the basis of which we can differentiate one person from the other.

Consistency: The stability in a person’s behavior over time and across situations. Distinctiveness: The behavioral differences among people reacting to the same situation.

Personality refers to a relatively stable set of feelings and behaviors that have been significantly formed by genetic and environmental factors.

What are the factors that shape our personality?

Personality is a product

of Nature and

Nurture

NatureHereditary

forces

Nurture

Pattern of life

experiences

Factors influencing personality: Following are some major forces that influence our personality:

How psychologists understand and explain personality?

Personality has always been an interesting topic for psychologists. We can say this convincingly when we observe their efforts in this area of psychology. Despite its wide spread importance, studying and knowing about personality has further increased in the organization settings. All types of organizations require human capital with particular abilities to perform particular tasks, both effectively and efficiently. This has led the organizations to know more about personality and its constituents. Theories of personality can help managers in this regard. Theories of personality, in simple words, are the explanations given by psychologists concerning what personality is, how and what differentiate one individual from the other.

Theories of Personality: We can classify theories explaining personality into the following categories.

1. Trait approaches / theories2. Psychodynamic approaches3. Behavioral perspectives4. Humanistic perspective

Explanation: Now we explain each perspective separately.

1. Trait approach to personality: This model of personality seeks to identify the basic traits that are necessary to describe personality. This approach states that all human beings possess certain traits that determine their personality. Traits are personality characteristics and behaviors that individuals display in different situations. There are various theories categorized under this approach, however, following theories are very common:

IndividualPersonalityIndividual

PersonalitySocial class

and other group

membership forcesFamily

relationship forces

Hereditary forces

Cultural forces

Envrionment

Physical

Social

Political

Economic etc

a. AllPort ‘s trait theory: Gordon Allport reviewed dictionary and identified words that describe some traits of a person. He then categorized these traits into different determine a person i.e. cardinal, central, and categories. According to him, there are three fundamental categories of traits that secondary.

b. Cattel and eysneck theory: Cattel and esyneck analyzed traits identified earlier. Through factor analysis they came up with different pairs of traits that represent various dimensions of personality. According to Eysneck, Personality could best be described in terms of just three major dimensions: extraversion (sociable), neuroticism (emotionality), and psychoticism. On the basis of these three diemensions, we can predict a person’s personality.

c. The big five personality trait model: There’re five set of traits that lie at the core of personality. These traits

are especially more relevant to organizations. A person, who is high on all of these five traits, is considered to be an asset for that organization.

The traits include OCEAN (Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism).

All of these five sets of traits are positively related to organizations; high would be leaders / successful in organizations and could take the orgazniation forward. Organizations / managers should look for these traits while recruiting and selecting new incumbents into their existing lot. Means, if there ‘re two candidates who share the same experience, education etc, however, one between them is high in these five traits, then HR manager should prefer him over the other.

These five traits are related to both intrinsic (job satisfaction) and extrinsic (income, status, reward) career success.

Here is detail of these five traits:

• Extroversion: Refers to the tendency to be sociable, friendly, and expressive.

• Neuroticism (Emotional Stability): Refers to the tendency to experience positive emotional states.

• Agreeableness: Being courteous, forgiving, tolerant, trusting, and self-hearted.

• Conscientiousness: Is exhibited by those who are described as dependable, organized, and responsible. They are more cautious while doing any task.

• Openness to Experience: Reflects the extent to which an individual has broad interests and is willing to be a risk-taker. They like new challenges and experiences.

2. Psychodynamic approach: It is an approach to personality that states personality is the outcome (result) of psychological forces within a person. The most prominent in this approach is Sigmund Freud who emphasized on the role of unconsciousness. According to him, personality is what a person’s unconscious makes him. He thought that there’re three parts of personality i.e. ID, EGO, and SUPEREGO. Majority of them is made of unseen forces. These unconscious forces express themselves in dreams, mistakes of everyday’s life, in a person’s mental disorders. In short, unconscious plays predominant part in a person’s personality and drive him towards what he is.

C.G Jung: Personality is predominantly determined by collective unconscious. The unconscious that we have inherited from our ancestors / forefathers as a result of their experiences. these experiences are preserved in the collective unconscious of a person in the form of archetypes. Archetypes are different patterns that make us behave in a certain way. Personality according to Jung is determined by collective unconscious (Personal unconscious plus unconscious inherited in us).

Adler’s theory of Personality: Adler believes that the feelings of inferiority or inferiority complex plays predominant role in a person’s personality. According to him, inferiority complex is the motivation / variables that predominantly determine the nature of personality of a person. Human beings have a tendency to become superior. This tendency to become superior makes him what he is.

3. Behavioristic theories of personality: This category of personality theories contains theories from the behavioral school of thought. These theorists stress more on the role of external reinforcements and system of rewards and punishments. They believe that personality is determined by environment. This most prominent in this category is J.B Watson, who stress more on external reinforcements. Personality is predominantly determined by what the environment reinforces. Any behavior that is rewarded by environment is likely to be repeated. "He said “give me a child and let me control his environment. Thus, I can make him a thief or a prince.” If one can control external reinforcements then he can influence personality. In short, Personality is what environment writes on it.

Outgoing, talkativeCourteous, empathic

Caring, dependablePoised, secure

Sensitive, flexibleExtroversion

Agreeableness

ConscientiousnessEmotional stability

Openness to experience

Albert Bandura, a Canadian psychologist, who puts across the view that it is the contingent factors (the system of rewards and punishments in the environment) that determines what a person is going to become. Personality to him is the sum total of contingent rewards and punishments. Further, he puts forward the view that personality is influenced / determined by role models e.g. a cricketer likes to become like a legendary player of his interest.

4. Humanistic theories of personality: In this category, we have included theories of Karl Rogers and Abraham Maslow. The former believes that every person has been born with certain potential and he is propelled /motivated / pushed from within to fulfill that potential and makes him what he is. Whereas, the later believes that the need for self actualization motivates a person to become what he is. If someone has potential in sports, music, mathematics and logic and he actualizes this then he can become great personality.

How to assess personality?

Assessment of personality: Over the passage of time, psychologists have come up with many ways through which we can measure personality. Following list contain some of these methods:

1. Interview2. Observation and behavioral assessment3. Psychological tests

a. Self report measuresb. Projective tests

Hence, the first two are very common and known to everyone; therefore, we skip them in our discussion. We will explain remaining methods in the following discussion.

3. Psychological tests: These are standardized measures devised to assess behavior objectively, to help people make decisions about their lives. There are many psychological tests devised for assessing personality, however, we have included two broad types of tests in our discussion.

a. Self report measures of personality: in this type of test, subject is asked questions. His replies to questions are recorded and then analyzed. The very common type of this test is MMPI-2

MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multiple Personality inventory) is a widely used self report test that identifies people with psychological difficulties. It is used to predict every day behavior. The questions contained in this test are of true and false type questions. The test contains questions on 567 items.

b. Projective tests: In this type of test, subject is shown an ambiguous stimulus and is asked to describe it in his own words e.g. tell a story about it. The most common type of project tests includes:

Rorschach test Thematic apperception test (TAT)

Conclusion: Personality test must have the following three characteristics:

Validity: Test should measure accurately for what is it devised. Reliability: The test should be consistently measure it. Norms: The test should allow us to compare results of one person with another.