What is Personality?, Who defined the word personality?, What and how many Personality Traits?

 

                                                          

History of word Personality

Personality has come from the Latin word ‘Persona’ meaning a theatrical mask used by players to either project multiple roles or conceal their identity. In Greece and Rome, as in earlier times, actors wore masks when performing plays. Therefore, personality is employed to influence others through physical attributes. However, personality is more than just physical looks.

In general, three main fields of study have contributed to the knowledge of human personality. The first is biological and is thought to have both genetic and environmental roots. The second is the social sphere, which includes how social factors affect a child as they develop and have an impact on things like motives, traits, behavior, and attitudes. The third is the analysis of clinical encounters with individuals who have experienced failures in adjusting and adapting. Some scholars have proposed that the development of reliable knowledge about personality would be accelerated by a greater degree of integration of all three kinds of information and the methodologies generated from them.

Who defined the word personality?  

Gordon Allport, the full name Gordon Willard Allport, was an American psychologist and educator who created a novel theory of personality. He was born in Montezuma, Indiana, U.S. on November 11, 1897, and passed away in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 9, 1967.

Gordon Willard Allport was hired as a social science lecturer at Harvard University in 1924. Six years later, he was promoted to professor of psychology, and in the final year of his life, he was promoted to professor of social ethics. He was one of a rising number of psychologists who attempted to infuse psychology with the leavening impact of humanism. He continually tied his approach to the study of personality to his social interests. Personality: A Psychological Interpretation, an essential foundational work on the notion of personality, was written by him (1937).

What is personality?

Personality refers to a person's mental and physical health characteristics. The distinctive pattern of behavior that characterizes a person's response to their surroundings or circumstances can be referred to as their personality.

The sum of a person's physical, psychological, and behavioral characteristics determines whether that person has a "good personality" or none at all, depending on the presence or absence of the defining characteristics. Some of these, particularly the noteworthy ones, merit consideration. Indeed, other people rarely have access to an individual's psychological makeup. A person's personality cannot be inferred from simply his or her outward appearance as an apparent reality or manifestation. From a broad perspective, a person's personality is every characteristic of that person. It covers a person's physical, mental, and emotional components.

Although the term "personality" has been used to mean many different things, as a psychological notion, two basic definitions have emerged. The first is related to the enduring distinctions that exist among individuals; in this sense, the study of personality is concerned with categorizing and understanding generally constant human psychological traits. The second meaning stresses the traits that unify all people and set psychological man apart from other species. It instructs personality theorists to look for these traits among all people that characterize human nature as well as the variables that affect how lives develop.

 The two directions personality studies have taken—on the one hand, the examination of ever-more-detailed human characteristics, and, on the other, the search for the organized totality of psychological processes, which emphasizes the interaction between organic and psychological events that take place inside of individuals and those social and biological events that surround them—can be explained by this duality. The majority of the below-discussed subjects involve elements of the dual concept of personality. However, it should be noted that no definition of personality has gained widespread agreement in the industry.

The nature of every individual is attributed to his personality. Generally, an individual asserts this through his behavioral characteristics. Matured persons with their longstanding experience, take an objective attitude toward themselves and others. They also introspect, to help improve their nature and behavior. Personality embraces moods, attitudes, and opinions and is most clearly expressed in interactions with other people. It includes behavioral characteristics, both inherent and acquired, that distinguish one person from another and that can be observed in people's relations to the environment and to the social group.

Some of the most preferred definitions of personality are:

Each individual’s characteristically recurring patterns of behavior are known as personality.

 L. Kolb: Personality is that which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a given situation.

R. B. Cattell: In the words of Munn, “Personality may be defined as the most characteristic integration of an individual’s structure, modes of behavior, interest, attitude, capacities, abilities, and aptitudes.” 

Woodworth and Marquis: Personality is “the total quality of an individual’s behavior as it is revealed in his characteristic habit of thought and expression, his attitudes, interests and his own philosophy of life.”

All-port:  who devoted most of his time to research on personality defines: “personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment.” This definition is very comprehensive and includes all aspects of an individual’s personality. Here, the word „dynamic‟ means that personality is undergoing constant change but is still organized. It constitutes two types of systems: mental and physical, and these two systems interact with the internal and external environments. The word „determine‟ emphasizes that it is the psychophysical system, which activates the organisms for action.

In layman’s: Terminology, by personality, we mean the sum total of the ways we behave, especially towards others. For instance, based on one’s good physical appearance, good character, and aggressive or good manners, a person may be categorized as having a “fine”, “strong” or magnetic personality.

Example: How we characterize the traits of other people shows their personalities. For instance, "They are devoted and protective of their friends," or "He is giving, caring, and a little bit of a professional."

What is Personality Traits?

Personality Traits People's unique thoughts, feeling, and behavior patterns are reflected in their personality traits. A person who scores highly on a certain personality trait, such as Extraversion, is likely to be gregarious in various contexts and over time. Personality traits imply consistency and stability. So, the foundation of trait psychology is the idea that individuals differ from one another based on where they stand on a set of fundamental trait dimensions that hold true throughout time and in various contexts. The Five-Factor Model is the most extensively utilized system of attributes.

This approach contains the five broad attributes of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism, which can be recalled by the abbreviation OCEAN. To provide a more detailed examination of a person's personality, each of the Big Five's key characteristics can be broken down into aspects. Additionally, some trait theorists contend that the Five-Factor Model cannot account for all of the qualities that exist. Critics of the attribute notion contend that humans lack consistency in their behavior from one circumstance to another and are heavily impacted by environmental factors. As a result, a key topic of discussion in the discipline is how much influence people's qualities and environmental factors have on how they behave.

 The number of possible personality qualities has been estimated by psychologists, and the estimates differ greatly from one expert to the next. For instance, Hans Eysenck proposed that there were just three different personality qualities, whereas Gordon Allport suggested that there were more than 4,000.

The most widely accepted theory today claims that personality can be divided into five categories. One of these five fundamental aspects would encompass a lot of the words we might use to characterize someone's personality. Therefore, many experts would propose that personality is made up of several broad groupings that include all of these character descriptions rather than conceiving it as made up of hundreds of discrete individual qualities.

How many specific personality traits exist?

According to the trait theory of personality, personality is made up of a variety of broad traits. Some words that could be used to characterize some of these characteristics include outgoing, kind, aggressive, and enthusiastic. How many different personality qualities exist?

 1. Allport's Thousands of Traits

 Gordon Allport, a psychologist, was one of the first to classify these traits: He compiled a list of almost 4,000 character qualities. Allport divided these characteristics into three groups: cardinal characteristics, central characteristics, and secondary characteristics.

 Major qualities are those that are so pervasive that they show up in a variety of contexts and areas of a person's life. It's rare to have a trait like this.

•  Cardinal traits are those that are so dominant that they are expressed across situations and various parts of a person's life. This type of trait is considered rare.
• Central traits are the core traits that tend to remain relatively stable throughout life. Many trait theories of personality focus on these traits. These traits serve as the "building blocks" of personality.
•   Secondary characteristics are those that emerge in certain situations. These can be inconsistent and may not remain stable over time.

2. Eysenck’s 3 Traits

The number of qualities was further condensed by psychologist Hans Eysenck, who proposed that there were only three. He first suggested that human personality could be characterized using just two factors: extraversion/introversion and emotional stability/emotional instability because he felt that Cattell's theory comprised too many identical features. Later, he introduced a third component, called psychoticism, which had to do with a person's propensity for psychosis or sociopathic behavior.

3. Cattell’s 16 Traits

Raymond Cattell, a psychologist, reduced this lengthy list to only 16. Cattell reduced Allport's initial list of over 4,000 traits using the statistical method known as factor analysis to the 16 "source traits." He thought that the basic characteristics that makeup personality was what influenced behavior. Apprehension, emotional stability, openness to change, self-reliance, and sensitivity were among the 16 characteristics he listed. Each factor is a dimension, and he proposed that individuals may fall in the high or low (or in the intermediate) range for a given feature.