In some ways, we're all the same. We all have the same human nature, we share a common humanity, and we all have human thoughts and human feelings. Yet in other ways, we're completely different and unique. No two people are truly alike. No two people can ever have the same experience of life, the same perspective, the same mind. Even identical twins are unique in this respect: twin 1 will always be twin 1, and will never know what its like to be twin 2, to experience life & see the world through twin 2's eyes. Somewhere between these two- our common humanity and our unique individuality- lies personality. Personality is about our different ways of being human.
Personality can be defined as the organized patterns of thought and feeling and behavior. To some extent, people generally do tend to operate in a similar way day after day, year after year. Not specific actions being repeated, but overall patterns, tendencies, and inclinations. Someone who's been quiet and reserved up to now will probably tend to be so tomorrow. Its this general predictability in individuals' thought patterns, behavior patterns, and emotional patterns which defines personality. Or, put differently:
"Your personality style is your organizing principle. It propels you on your life path. It represents the orderly arrangement of all your attributes, and coping mechanisms. It is the distinctive pattern of your psychological functioning- the way you think, feel, and behave- that makes you definitely you."
In ancient times, it was thought that all people could be divided into 4 personality types: Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, and Phlegmatic. This was supposedly something to do with the dominant fluids in their bodies (blood, yellow bile, black bile, or phlegm). This idea was briefly relived in Renaissance Europe.
Deapite the universal appeal of this approach, trying to fit all the world's people with their amazing range of differences into so few boxes is not easy. For example, Sanguine people are supposedly extroverted, creative, sensitive, compassionate, thoughtful, tardy, forgetful, and sarcastic. But in fact, there's no evidence that these characteristics go together at all. You can certainly be creative without being extroverted, and can be compassionate without being sarcastic.
An alternative approach used by modern psychologists is to look at the words we actually use to describe each other's personalities. This is called the Lexical approach.
When we describe someone's personality, we use words which characterize whatever makes that person distinctive and unique. This is partly because we tend to notice people's most outstanding characteristics. We remember, and talk about, the things that stand out most. Paychologists have found again and again, is that there are just 5 clusters, or sets, of words- including their opposites- which contain pretty much all of the words we might use to describe personality. These are known as 'The Big Five". They have been labeled as follows:
1. EXTROVERSION- The tendency to be outgoing, energetic, and sociable. 2. OPENNESS- The tendency to enjoy variety, novelty, challenge, and intellectual stimulation. 3. NEUROTICISM- The tendency to experience unpleasant emotions. 4. AGREEABLENESS- The tendency to be friendly, compassionate, and cooperative. 5. CONSCIENTOUSNESS- The tendency to show self discipline and self control.
It's as if everything we have to say about personality falls under one of these headings. One of the most robust findings to come out of decades of research into human personality.
So, in contrast to the 'types' approach, many psychologists now understand personality as how we all vary on these five dimensions or five factors. It's not that the world is divided into the 4 types, but rather we are all variations of the same 5 themes, and these variations define our personality traits.
The 5 factors aren't etched in stone- many studies show that we can include a 6th factor, called 'HONESTY/HUMILITY'- or the H factor. This is essentially a dimension of character maturity, ranging from high selfishness to high integrity.
Funny enough, despite the discovery of the Big Five, there's still no agreed psychological understanding of personality. That's because psychologists have yet to agree on their understanding of human nature. Different psychologists hold fundamental beliefs that are diametrically opposed. For instance, is there such a thing as free will, or is everything we do determined by factors beyond our control, such as unconscious processes? Some psychologists believe in free will, some don't. This has a dramatic effect on how they study human behavior and personality, how they interpret research findings, and what they believe is possible for humans to achieve.
Some psychologists, such as Carl Rodgers & Abraham Maslow, have emphasized the importance of free will & individual experience in the development of personality. From their 'humanistic' perspective, personality development is at least partly the reault.of our conscious choices in life. It's this perspective that has given birth to the hugely popular self help & personal growth movements.
To the psychologists who are committed to a mechanical view of life & refuse to believe in free will, personality is entirely the result of genetics, or unconscious forces, or environmental conditioning; basically, out of our control.
Beyond all those one-sided psychological theories lies the general consensus: that our personality is built on a combination of conscious (voluntary) and unconscious (involuntary) factors. To some extent, our genes and environment play a role, and to some extent, our free will plays a role. But probably the greatest role is played by the interaction of these two- how we learn to cope with life using the limited resources we've got. Recently, psychologists have come to see personality as a product of nature interacting with nurture. Basically: Personality= temperament + character. Bottom line: it depends upon your perspective on human nature.
If you believe in a mechanical universe in which people are just puppets driven by their genes, their brains, and their environment, then the personality is simply temperament: it's a set of hard-wired behacioral tendencies forged by all those genetic, biological, and environmental factors.
If you believe that people can forge themselves to some extent, then personality is more to do with character: a set of strengths and virtues, as well as weaknesses & vices, that each individual develops through life, and sometimes struggles to get to grips with.
If you believe that the universe is a self creating consciousness, exploring and expressing itself through the myriad forms of humanity & other creatures, then personality is an individually-tailored vehicle for such exploration.
Source: {http://www.personalityspirituality.net/articles/what-is-personality/}
Question for you lovelies. Whats YOUR opinion? What do YOU think.of personality? :)
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