PERSONALITY

Dr. Narayana Simha R L

Associate Professor

Department of Education

Central Sanskrit Unicrsity

Bhopal

• No topic in the field of psychology is more fascinating than personality.
• Tremendous research has been done on the topic but no final conclusions have been drawn as regards the nature of personality.
• Human personality is so complex a phenomena that it can be interpreted in many ways.

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MEANING OF PERSONALITY

• Etymologically, the word personality has been derived from the Latin word ‘Persona’, the mask worn by the actors to change their appearance in ancient times.
• But later on, it began to be used for the actors themselves.

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WRONG NOTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS OF PERSONALITY

• Since the derivation of the term ‘personality’ we developed a wrong notion about the term personality. We try to paste such labels as fine, good or poor on individuals on the basis of their physical make-up, their manner of walking, talking, dressing and host of other similar characteristics.

• Sometimes, we use personality as equivalent to one’s character. This too is a wrong notion. Whereas personality is purely a psychological term and hence it is not proper to use it in reference to the study of ethical values.

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• Moreover, we can not take personality as an equivalent word for outward appearance. It would be a very superficial approach. Personality includes the totality of one’s behaviour and hence, both covert as well as overt.

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DEFINITIONS OF PERSONALITY

Psychologically speaking, personality is all that a person is. It is the totality of one’s behaviour towards oneself as well as others. It includes everything about the person, his physical, emotional, social, mental and spiritual make-up. It is all that a person about him.

• According to cattell, ‘Personality is that which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a given situation’
• Acc. Eysenck ‘Personality is the more or less stable and enduring organization of a person’s character, temperament, intellect and physique, which determine his unique adjustment to the environment.

After evaluating 49 definitions of personality written by many eminent persons, Allport summarizes-

“Personality is a dynamic organization within the individual of those psycho-physical systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment”.

• Dynamic means that personality is undergoing a constant change but is still organized.
• It consists two types of systems, psycho(mental) and physical and these two systems interact with internal and external environment.
• The word ‘determine’ lies emphasis that it is the psychophysical system that activates the organism for action.
• The unique adjustment of the individual to his environment means that each individual employs different method of adjustment resulting in unique adjustment.

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NATURE OF PERSONALITY

• Firstly, Personality is something unique and specific.
• The second main characteristic of personality is self-consciousness Personality includes everything about a person.
• It is not just a collection of many traits or characteristics that is known as personality
• Personality is not static, it is dynamic and ever in the process of change and modification.
• Every personality is the product of heredity and environment.
• Learning and acquisition of experiences contribute towards.
• Everyone’s personality has one more distinguishing feature, that is aiming to an end or some specific goal.

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TYPES OR THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

1. TYPE APPROACH:-

Type approach advocate that human personalities can be classified into a few clearly defined types and each person can be put in one or the other type depending upon his behavioural characteristics, somatic structure, blood types fluids in the body .

HIPPOCRATE’S CLASSIFICATION

KRETSCHMER’S CLASSIFICATION

SHELDON’S CLASSIFICATION

SPRANGER’S CLASSIFICATION

1. Theoretical type
2. Economic
3. Social
4. Aesthetic
5. Political
6. Religious

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JUNG’S CLASSIFICATION

1. Introvert:- A predominant concern with one’s with own thoughts and feelings rather than the outside word or social interaction.
2. Extrovert:- An outgoing, socially confident person.
3. Ambivert:- A person who has a balance of extrovert and introvert features in their personality

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2. TRAIT APPROACH

Typology and trait approaches are interrelated to each other in the sense that typology includes a wide variety of traits in classifying human beings in broad types while in trait approach we label or call a person by a specific mode of behaviour which he shows in a wide variety of circumstances.

In our daily life, we label traits to our friends or other persons as honest, aggressive, fearful, dependent, lazy and dull, etc.

In the simplest sense by trait we mean a mode of behaviour which is manifested in a number of life situations consistently.

Walter Michel in his book, Introduction to Personality defined, “trait is a continuous dimension on which individual differences may be arranged quantitatively in terms of the amount of the characteristics the individual has”.

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Trait in daily life, first, is used simply as an adjective as Ram behaves in a lazy way in several situations. When this description is generalized from his behaviour to the person(Ram), we say that he (Ram) is lazy. Laziness becomes a trait of his personality, a characteristic mode of his behaviour.

ALPORT’S TRAIT APPROACH

1. Cardinal Traits:-

Most active and dominant traits of personality. Although present in a very small number as one or two, these are enough to color the personality according to their characteristics. As an example we can cite sense of humor as a cardinal trait in one’s personality.

This trait may color a person’s personality in a specific way so much so that he may be identified or known through his behaviour almost dominated by sense of humor at all the times and occasions.

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2. CENTRAL TRAITS:-

Frequently employed for identifying and describing one’s personality, e.g. Honesty, kindness, shyness, cruelty etc.

Usually seven or eight such central traits are enough for knowing and describing the personality of an individual.

3. SECONDARY TRAITS:-

These are those traits of an individual’s personality that play quite a secondary of insignificant role in the identification and description of one’s personality. These are in fact not the essential part of one’s personality. E.g. selfish, greedy.

So according to Allport, one’s cardinal trains along with a few selected central traits may play a dominant and signifiacant role in the proper identification of one’s personality from others.

The rest of central traits along with a few secondary traits can then make a group of common traits which are generally found in most of the people.

CATTLE’S TRAIT APPROACH

R.B. Cattell, a British-born American researcher, tried to further advance the trait approach advocated by Allport. For this he made use of the same 17,953 dictionary words pointed out by Allport.

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1. He began his task in 1956 with approximately 4,ooo of Alloprt’s 17,953 terms and narrowed the list down to 171 by eliminating the repeated ones and synonyms. In this war he arrived at the final list of 171 words (dictionary words) related with personality and called them trait elements.

2. The next step was to find out how they are related. He found that each trait element correlated high with some and low with others. In this way, he managed to form some specific groups and called them surface Traits. These identified surface traits were 35 in number.

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• He once again went on to examine these surface traits in terms of their correlations. There was overlapping. The removal of such overlapping gave him the desired basic dimensions which he called Source Traits, i.e., the real structure influence underlying personality.

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4. He ultimately concluded that 16 Factors or Basic Dimensions of personality given bellow are sufficient to describe one’s personality. Each of these factors may be seen to carry a set of opposite personality traits, i.e., Relaxed v/s Tense or Practical v/s Imaginative etc. as shown in the table.

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• Cattell made use of his 16 factors or basic dimensions of personality in the construction of a personality inventory known as Cattell’s Sixteen Personality Factors or Sixteen P.F. Inventory. This inventory is widely used for the measurement of the personality.

Eysenck's Personality Theory

Eysenck's theory of personality was created in 1947. He figured out that all human traits can be broken down into two different categories-

Emotionally stable - Neuroticism and Introversion-Extroversion.

Neuroticism ranges from normal and fairly calm to people that are very nervous. This doesn't mean that someone is neurotic but people who fall into this category are more likely to develop neurotic disorders later in life.

Extraversion-introversion, this term means shy, or quiet people versus out going or loud people. Extroversion types of personalities need a lot of stimulation and often express emotions. They are usually relaxed and very confident. Introversion personality types need little external stimulation. They focus more on their inner feelings and bottle them up. They do explode if they are pushed too far.

After a lot of research Eysenck realized that his theory didn't reach all people. He started to study in mental institutions and he labeled a new category, he called it Psychoticism. People who fell into this category were not necessarily psychotic or you will be, only that you show some of the same traits that people who are psychotic have.

Eysenck's test of personality is a series of questions that you rate yourself on. All of the questions have to do with the four categories that Eysenck discovered. At the end of the test Eysenck would read all the data and determine which traits fit the best.

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FACTORS AFFECTING PERSONALITY

1. Biological determinants
2. Psychological determinants
3. Social and cultural determinants

1. BIOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS

1. HEREDITARY INFLUENCES:- Heredity influences transmitted at the time of conception through genes and chromosomes provide the base and structure of personality.
2. NERVOUS SYSTEM:- How one behaves in a particular situation depends upon the judgment of one’s brain. How intelligently we would react or make use of our mental power is directed by our nervous system, particularly by the brain apparatus.
3. ENDOCRINE SYSTEM:-
4. PHYSIQUE OR SOMATIC STRUCTURE:-
5. BODY CHEMISTRY:- Our behaviour and functioning is largely governed by our body chemistry [E.g. Sugar is converted into glucose, food is digested, oxidation takes place through the intake of oxygen and a number of similar chemical reactions takes place continuously in our body]. In case there is some irregularity or malfunctioning in our body chemistry, it seriously affects our behaviour and personality make-up.

2. PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINANTS

1. INTELLIGENCE AND MENTAL FUNCTIONING
2. INTERESTS AND ATTITUDES
3. LEVEL OF ASPIRATION AND ACHIEVEMENT MOTIVATION
4. WILL POWER
5. EMOTIONAL AND TEMPERAMANTAL MAKE-UP

3. SOCIAL & CULTURAL DETERMINANTS

1. HOME & FAMILY:- Parents, parents attitude, size of the family and birth order, economic and social status of the family.
2. SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT:-
3. Neighborhood
4. Religious institution
5. The other social groups and institution
6. The cultural environment.

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ASSESSMENT OF PERSONALITY

METHODS OF PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT

• PERSONALITY ASSESMENT
• SUBJECTIVE METHODS
• OBSERVATION

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• INTERVIEW

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• CASE STUDY

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• OBJECTIVE METHODS
• RATING SCALE

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• INVENTORY or QUESTIONNAIRE

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• SITUATION TESTS

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• PROJECTIVE METHODS
• ASSOCIATION
• CONSTRUCTION
• COMPLETION
• ORDARING
• EXPRESSION

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SUBJECTIVE METHODS

1. OBSERVATION:- Observation is a popular method to study the behaviour pattern of an individual in actual life situation. What personality traits or characteristics the observer needs to know are first decided by him and then he observes relevant activities of the subject in real life situation. It can be done in two ways.

i) Non participative observation

ii) Participative observation

2. INTERVIEW:- Interview is a technique of getting information directly from the subject about his personality in face-to-face contacts. It gives an opportunity for mutual exchange of ideas information between the subject and the psychologists.
1. Free interview
2. Standardized interview

3. CASE STUDY:- A research method involving a detailed investigation of a single individual or a single organized group.

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OBJECTIVE METHODS

1. RATING SCALE:- Rating scale is used to know from others where an individual stands in terms of certain personality traits
2. INVENTORY OR QUESTIONNARE:- In general the word questionnaire refers to a device for securing answers to questions by using a form which the respondent fills in himself.

Personality inventory is specially designed to seek answers about the person and his personality

E.g. Do you enjoy being alone? Yes/No

Do you enjoy seeing others success? Yes/No

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MINNESOTA MULTIPHASIC PERSONALITY INVENTORY

3. SITUATIONAL TESTS:- Here the situation is artificially created in which an individual is expected to perform acts related to the personality traits under testing. E.g. to test the honesty of an individual, some situations can be created and his reaction can be evaluated in terms of honesty or dishonesty. E.g. psychodrama

3. PROJECTIVE METHODS

These techniques are based on the phenomenon of projection. In this techniques relatively indefinite and unstructured stimuli(like vague pictures, ink blots, incomplete sentence etc.) are provided to the subject and he is asked to structured them in any way he likes.

In doing so he unconsciously projects his own desires, hopes, fears, repressed wishes etc. and thus not only reveals his inner or private world but gives a proper clue to estimate his total personality.

CHARACTERISTSICS OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

1. AMBIGUOUS MATERIAL:-Ambiguous material means that every subject can interpret the test stimuli in his own way.
2. EVOKE RESPONSES FROM THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS:- Projective tests are based on the implicit assumption that the test stimuli evoke responses from the unconsciousness of the subject.
3. FREEDOM TO RESPOND:- He is not restricted as regards the nature of responses.
4. HOLISTIC APPROACH:- Projective tests attempt to study the totality of behaviour. They emphasize the molar approach to understand personality.
5. ANSWERS ARE NOT RIGHT OR WRONG:-

1. ASSOCIATION TEST:- In this technique, a list of stimulus words is read out, the subject responding to each word quickly .
2. CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUE:- In this technique, the subject has to respond(write a story etc.) for given stimulus(abstract paintings etc.).
3. COMPLECTION TECHNIQUE:- These tests include a list of incomplete open-ended sentence or picture, which require completion by the subject.

E.g. My hope is……

I fee proud when……..,

My hero is……………..

4. ORDERING:- The subject has to arrange some words or things in order.
5. EXPRESSION:- The subject has to express his response(feelings) for his given stimulus (pictures) in a oral or written form.

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RORSCHAK INK BLOT TEST

This technique has been developed by Swiss psychologist, who was the son of an art teacher. Material of the test consists of 10 cards with ink blots, those are completely unstructured.

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THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST

Developed by Murray and Morgan.

It consists of 30 pictures which portray human beings in a variety of actual life situation. 10 for male, 10 for female and 10 for both.

MERITS OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

• The subject is ordinarily not aware of the true purpose of the test and even if he has knowledge, he can not know what aspects of his responses are significant or what significance do they have.
• The subject cannot depend upon on an established, conventional and stereotyped pattern of responses. He has to respond quite independently.
• They make little or no demand on literacy or academic skills and are equally useful for children as well adults.
• Most of the essential aspect of the unconsciousness behaviour, of which the subject himself has no knowledge, can be revealed through this techniques.

LIMITS OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

• Standardized projective tests are so costly.
• Proper norms and objective interpretation are hardly available for these tests.
• Time consuming both in administration and scoring.
• The interpretation task is subjective and needs well trained and experienced persons, who are generally not available.