PERSONALITY

The word personality is derived from the latin word “persona” which means a
mask. Personality refers to the characteristic ways of responding to individuals
and situations. Personality refers to the unique and relatively stable qualities that
characterize an individual’s behavior across different situations over a period of
time. For example- an honest person is more likely to remain honest irrespective
of time or situation. Character refers to value judgments made about a person’s
morals or ethical behavior. Temperament refers to the enduring characteristics
with which each person is born, such as irritability or adaptability.

FEATURES OF PERSONALITY
Personality is characterized by the following features:

1. It has both physical and psychological components.

2. Its expression in terms of behavior is fairly unique in a given individual.

3. Its main features do not easily change with time.

4. It is dynamic in the sense that some of its features may change due to internal
or external situational demands.

-Thus, personality is adaptive to situations. Once we are able to characterize

someone’s personality, we can predict how that person will probably behave in a
variety of circumstances. An understanding of personality allows us to deal with
people in realistic and acceptable ways.

-For example, if you find a child who does not like orders, the most effective way
to deal with that child will be not to give orders, but to present a set of acceptable
alternatives from which the child may choose. Similarly, a child who has feelings
of inferiority needs to be treated differently from a child who is self-confident.

APPROACHES TO PERSONALITY
-The type approaches attempts to comprehend human personality by examining
certain broad patterns in the observed behavioral characteristics of individuals.
Each behavioral pattern refers to one type in which individuals are placed in terms
of the similarity of their behavioral characteristics with that pattern.

-In contrast, the trait approach focuses on the specific psychological attributes
along which individuals tend to differ in consistent and stable ways. For example,
one person may be less shy, whereas another may be more; or one person may
be less friendly, whereas another may be more. Here “shyness” and “friendliness”
represent traits along which individuals can be rated in terms of the degree of
presence or absence of the concerned behavioral quality or a trait.

-The interactional approach holds that situational characteristics play an

important role in determining our behavior.

A trait is considered as a relatively enduring attribute or quality on which one

individual differs from another. They include a range of possible behaviors that
are activated according to the demands of the situation. Traits are relatively
stable over time. They are generally consistent across situations. Their strengths
and combinations vary across individuals leading to individual differences in
personality.

ALLPORT’S TRAIT THEORY

-Gordon Allport is considered the pioneer of trait approach. He proposed that
individuals possess a number of traits, which are dynamic in nature. They
determine behaviour in such a manner that an individual approaches different
situations with similar plans. The traits integrate stimuli and responses which
otherwise look dissimilar. Allport categorized traits into cardinal, central, and
secondary.

-Cardinal traits are highly generalised dispositions. They indicate the goal around
which a person’s entire life seems to revolve. Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence
and Hitler’s Nazism are examples of cardinal traits. Such traits often get
associated with the name of the person so strongly that they derive such
identities as the ‘Gandhian’ or ‘Hitlerian’ trait.
-Less pervasive in effect, but still quite generalised dispositions, are called central
traits. These traits (e.g., warm, sincere, diligent, etc.) are often used in writing a
testimonial or job recommendation for a person.

-The least generalised characteristics of a person are called secondary traits.

Traits such as ‘likes mangoes’ or ‘prefers ethnic clothes’ are examples of
secondary traits.

-Allport considered traits more like intervening variables that occur between the
stimulus situation and response of the person. This meant that any variation in
traits would elicit a different response to the same situation.

CATTELL: PERSONALITY FACTORS

-Raymond Cattell believed that there is a common structure on which people
differ from each other. This structure could be determined empirically.

-He tried to identify the primary traits from a huge array of descriptive adjectives
found in language. He applied a statistical technique, called factor analysis, to
discover the common structures. He found 16 primary or source traits.

-The source traits are stable, and are considered as the building blocks of
personality. Besides these, there are also a number of surface traits that result
out of the interaction of source traits.

-Cattell described the source traits in terms of opposing tendencies. He developed

a test, called Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), for the assessment
of personality. This test is widely used by psychologists.

PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH
Freud used free association (a method in which a person is asked to openly share
all the thoughts, feelings and ideas that come to her/his mind), dream analysis,
and analysis of errors to understand the internal functioning of the mind.

LEVELS OF CONCIOUSNESS
-Freud’s theory visualises the human mind in terms of 3 levels of consciousness.
The first level is conscious, which includes the thoughts, feelings and actions of
which people are aware. The second level is preconscious, which includes mental
activity of which people may become aware only if they attend to it closely. The
third level is unconscious, which includes mental activity that people are unaware
of. According to Freud, the unconscious is a reservoir of instinctive or animal
drives. It also stores all ideas and wishes that are concealed from conscious
awareness, perhaps, because they lead to psychological conflicts. Most of these
arise from sexual desires which cannot be expressed openly and therefore are
repressed. People constantly struggle to find either some socially acceptable ways
to express unconscious impulses, or to keep those impulses away from being
expressed. Unsuccessful resolution of conflicts results in abnormal behaviour.

-Analysis of forgetting, mispronunciations, jokes and dreams provide us with a

means to approach the unconscious. Freud developed a therapeutic procedure,
called psychoanalysis.

-The basic goal of psychoanalytic therapy is to bring the repressed unconscious

materials to consciousness, thereby helping people to live in a more self-aware
and integrated manner.

STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY
-According to Freud’s theory, the primary structural elements of personality are
three, i.e. id, ego, and superego. They reside in the unconscious as forces, and
they can be inferred from the ways people behave.

-Id: It is the source of a person’s instinctual energy. It deals with immediate

gratification of primitive needs, sexual desires and aggressive impulses. It works
on the pleasure principle, which assumes that people seek pleasure and try to
avoid pain.

-Freud considered much of a person’s instinctual energy to be sexual, and the rest
as aggressive. Id does not care for moral values, society, or other individuals.
-Ego: It grows out of id, and seeks to satisfy an individual’s instinctual needs in
accordance with reality. It works by the reality principle, and often directs the id
towards more appropriate ways of behaving.

-For example- the id of a boy, who wants an ice-cream cone, tells him to grab the
cone and eat it. His ego tells him that if he grabs the cone without asking, he may
be punished. Working on the reality principle, the boy knows that the best way to
achieve gratification is to ask for permission to eat the cone. Thus, while the id is
demanding, unrealistic and works according to pleasure principle, the ego is
patient, reasonable, and works by the reality principle.

-Superego: The best way to characterise the superego is to think of it as the moral
branch of mental functioning. The superego tells the id and the ego whether
gratification in a particular instance is ethical. It helps control the id by
internalising the parental authority through the process of socialisation.

-For example- if a boy sees and wants an icecream cone and asks his mother for it,
his superego will indicate that his behaviour is morally correct. This approach
towards obtaining the ice-cream will not create guilt, fear or anxiety in the boy.

EGO DEFENSE MECHANISMS

-Freud believed that people avoid anxiety mainly by developing defence
mechanisms that try to defend the ego against the awareness of the instinctual
needs. Thus, defence mechanism is a way of reducing anxiety by distorting reality.

-Repression- anxiety provoking behaviours or thoughts are totally dismissed by

the unconscious. When people repress a feeling or desire, they become totally
unaware of that wish or desire.

-Thus, when a person says, “I do not know why I did that”, some repressed feeling
or desire is expressing itself. Other major defence mechanisms are projection,
denial, reaction formation and rationalisation.
-Projection- In projection, people attribute their own traits to others. Thus, a
person who has strong aggressive tendencies may see other people as acting in
an excessively aggressive way towards her/him.

-Denial- In denial, a person totally refuses to accept reality. Thus, someone

suffering from HIV/AIDS may altogether deny her/ his illness. In reaction
formation, a person defends against anxiety by adopting behaviours opposite to
her/his true feelings.

-A person with strong sexual urges, who channels her/his energy into religious
fervour, presents a classical example of reaction formation.

-Rationalisation- In rationalisation, a person tries to make unreasonable feelings

or behaviour seem reasonable and acceptable.

-For example- when a student buys a set of new pens after doing poorly in an
examination, s/he may try to rationalise her/his behaviour by asserting, “I will do
much better with these pens”.

STAGES OF PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

-Freud proposed a five-stage theory of personality (also called psychosexual)
development.

-Oral Stage: A newborn’s instincts are focused on the mouth. This is the infant’s
primary pleasure seeking centre. It is through the mouth that the baby obtains
food that reduces hunger. The infant achieves oral gratification through feeding,
thumb sucking, biting and babbling.

-It is during these early months that people’s basic feelings about the world are
established. Thus, for Freud, an adult who considers the world a bitter place
probably had difficulty during the oral stage of development.

-Anal Stage: It is found that around ages two and three the child learns to
respond to some of the demands of the society. One of the principal demands
made by parents is that the child learns to control the bodily functions of
urination and defecation. Most children at this age experience pleasure in moving
their bowels.

-The anal area of the body becomes the focus of certain pleasurable feelings. This
stage establishes the basis for conflict between the id and the ego, and between
the desire for babyish pleasure and demand for adult, controlled behaviour.

-Phallic Stage: This stage focuses on the genitals. At around ages four and five
children begin to realise the differences between males and females. They
become aware of sexuality and the sexual relationship between their parents.

-During this stage, the male child experiences the Oedipus Complex, which
involves love for the mother, hostility towards the father, and the consequent
fear of punishment or castration by the father. A major developmental
achievement of this stage is the resolution of the Oedipus complex. This takes
place by accepting his father’s relationship with his mother, and modelling his
own behaviour after his father.

-For girls, the Electra Complex follows a slightly different course. By attaching her
love to the father a girl tries to symbolically marry him and raise a family. When
she realises that this is unlikely, she begins to identify with her mother and copy
her behaviour as a means of getting (or, sharing in) her father’s affection.

-The critical component in resolving the Oedipus complex is the development of

identification with the same sex parents. In other words, boys give up sexual
feelings for their mothers and begin to see their fathers as role models rather
than as rivals; girls give up their sexual desires for their father and identify with
their mother.

-Latency Stage: This stage lasts from about seven years until puberty. During this
period, the child continues to grow physically, but sexual urges are relatively
inactive. Much of a child’s energy is channelled into social or achievement related
activities.

-Genital Stage: During this stage, the person attains maturity in psychosexual
development. The sexuality, fears and repressed feelings of earlier stages are
once again exhibited. People learn to deal with members of the opposite sex in a
socially and sexually mature way.

-Failure of a child to pass successfully through a stage leads to fixation to that

stage. In this situation, the child’s development gets arrested at an earlier stage.
For example, a child who does not pass successfully through the phallic stage fails
to resolve the Oedipal complex and may still feel hostile toward the parent of the
same sex. Such a boy may come to consider that men are generally hostile, and
may wish to relate to females in a dependable relationship.

-Regression is also a likely outcome in such situations. It takes a person back to an

earlier stage. Regression occurs when a person’s resolution of problems at any
stage of development is less than adequate. In this situation, people display
behaviours typical of a less mature stage of development.

HUMANISTIC APPROACH- ROGERS AND MASLOW

-Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow have particularly contributed to the
development of humanistic perspective on personality.

-The most important idea proposed by Rogers is that of a fully functioning person.
He believes that fulfilment is the motivating force for personality development.
People try to express their capabilities, potentials and talents to the fullest extent
possible. There is an inborn tendency among persons that directs them to
actualise their inherited nature.

-Rogers makes two basic assumptions about human behaviour. One is that
behaviour is goal-directed and worthwhile. The second is that people (who are
innately good) will almost always choose adaptive, self-actualising behaviour.

-Rogers’ theory grew out of his experiences of listening to patients in his clinic. He
noted that self was an important element in the experience of his clients. Thus,
his theory is structured around the concept of self. The theory assumes that
people are constantly engaged in the process of actualising their true self.
-Rogers suggests that each person also has a concept of ideal self. An ideal self is
the self that a person would like to be. When there is a correspondence between
the real self and ideal self, a person is generally happy. Discrepancy between the
real self and ideal self often results in unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Rogers’
basic principle is that people have a tendency to maximise self-concept through
self-actualisation. In this process, the self grows, expands and becomes more
social.

-Rogers views personality development as a continuous process. It involves

learning to evaluate oneself and mastering the process of self-actualisation. He
recognises the role of social influences in the development of self-concept.

-When social conditions are positive, the self-concept and self-esteem are high. In
contrast, when the conditions are negative, the self-concept and self-esteem are
low. People with high self-concept and self-esteem are generally flexible and
open to new experiences, so that they can continue to grow and self-actualise.

MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS

Transcendence needs: to find spiritual meaning beyond one’s immediate self
Self-actualization needs: to find self-fulfillment and realize one’s potential
Aesthetic needs: to appreciate symmetry, order, and beauty
Cognitive needs: to know, understand, and explore
Esteem needs: to achieve, be competent, gain approval and recognition
Belongingness and love needs: to be with others, be accepted, and belong
Safety needs: to feel secure and safe, out of danger
Physiological needs: to satisfy hunger, thirst, fatigue, etc.