Personality: Defined

What is Personality? 


The word "personality" has been derived from the Latin word "persona" which means a mask worn by an actor while performing a character on the stage. Thus personality is taken to mean the characteristic pattern or style of behaviour of the person revealed from his external appearance.
The external properties of a person include his dress, speech, bodily actions, postures, habits and expressions. Thus a person endowed with good external properties is considered to possess a good personality and vice versa. But you know this is not the reality. Mere external properties can not make a personality. And if we go by this concept how and where would we rate the personality of persons like Mahatma Gandhi, Lal Bahadur Shastri George Bernard Shaw and many others whose external appearance was not highly endowed. These persons are certainly not favored by nature in external properties. Therefore. it was realised that personality included something more than external properties and the concept of external appearance in personality was relegated to background.
The word personality now stood for an all inclusive concept.
It is the sum total of an individual's properties as a distinct and unique human being. Properties the external properties are directly observed, while the internal are the only e inferred from the behaviour of a person. The concept of personality is a derived concept. The derivation is possible in 3 ways:

1) The first is subjective popular derivation based on subjective impressions formed by the individuals behaviour and is expressed through evaluative expression like charming, dominating, week or bold personality.

2) The second derivation of personality is based on an objective description of the overt responses of the individual.

3) The third division is organismic according to which personality is the inner Titan of a person's characteristics.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THEORY OF HARRY STACK SULLIVAN

Image
HARRY STACK SULLIVAN Harry Stack-Sullivan focused both on social aspects of personality and cognitive representations. This moved him away from Freud's psychosexual development Sullivan, saw anxiety as existing only as a result of social interactions. He described techniques, much like defense mechanisms, that provide tools for people to use in order to reduce social anxiety. He developed a model regarding failures in interpersonal relationships as being largely responsible for mental illnesses. In his words, it is the "interactional," not the "intrapsychic, forces that must be studied in order to find the causes, and develop treatments for, even the most severe psychoses. This search for satisfaction via personal involvement with others led Sullivan to characterise loneliness as the most painful of human experiences. Selective Inattention is one such mechanism. According to Sullivan, mothers show their anxiety about child rearing to their children through...
Read more

Allport Proprium Theory

Image
The Proprium Allport clarified that personality is not bundle of unrelated traits but they are traits in a personality which have between them a consistency, unity and integration. This implies that the personality has a clear organisation and structure and also is governed by certain important principles. This entire orgnisation was called by Allport as the Proprium. Let us see what is proprium. According to Allport, proprium is the highest in the personality structure which consists of all aspects of personality which bring about inward unity and consistency in the personality of the individual together in the proprium goverm the entire organisation of personality. The proprium contains within it dynamic and manifests itself in almost all aspects of human behaviour. Let us see how this Proprium develops. According to Aliport it develops through sevens stages and these stages are given below: 1) Sense of body 2) Self-identity 3) Self-esteem 4) Self-extension 5) ...
Read more

Allport: Traits or Disposition

Image
Allport Traits Theory According to Allport traits constitutes the basic unit of individual personality traits as the predisposition to respond and react in the same or similar manner to stimuli in the environment. According to him, there are two types of traits (i) Common traits (ii) Personal traits or dispositions. Some of the important characteristics of traits are as given below: 1) Traits are not theoretical structures or constructs but are real and found within the individual. 2) Traits guide and direct behaviour and enable the individual to behave in a particular manner. 3) Traits are verified empirically. 4) Different traits are not absolutely independent of each other but have overlapping functions, 5) Stable traits can also change over time. i) Common traits We all are aware that persons belonging to a certain coun try or a community within a society behave similarly in a number of situations. They will hold the same view points a...
Read more