Habit There Are Many Different Theories Pertaining

¶ … Habit

There are many different theories pertaining to the development of one's personality. While our personalities develop, we adopt different habits over the years. Some of the habits stay with us for the rest of our lives, while the others we abandon either because of social pressure or because our personality is evolving continuously and therefore our habits change. One of my habits that I would like to analyze in this paper that I have a habit of making 'things-to-do -- list."

Analysis of my habit

From the very beginning, since I was a child, I have been very organized. I always make sure that all my tasks are completed and done on time. As I grew up and life became complex and busier, some of the things that I had to do would get missed every now and then. Also, I would feel very confused as to what I should do first and what I should do last. Then I found a way to solve this problem and that was to make a list of the things that I had to do. Now, every morning when I wake up, I spend 15-20 minutes to think of the things that I have to do on that particular day and write them down in their order of priority. As the tasks that I have to do for that day are completed, I place a tick in front of that task in the list. I developed this habit when I was fourteen and have not abandoned it even for a single day since then. I would like to mention here that I did not develop this habit because I was influenced by a certain someone. Also, I did not have any role model for the development of this habit and was only the circumstances that made me develop this habit because it was a characteristic of my personality to be organized. In the rest of this paper I shall discuss what theories of personality development can describe the development of this habit of mine and what theory I consider as the appropriate one for the development of this habit.

Behavioral Personality Theory

One of the theories of personality development that are used by many psychologists and therapists is the behavioral theory. According to this theory, the development of one's personality is a direct reflection of the interaction that a person has with his or her surroundings and the circumstances. Psychologists that use this approach to describe the development of one's personality take into account the behaviors of the people that are measurable and observable; meanwhile they reject the theories that explain personality development with respect to the feelings and thoughts of the people. There are two well-known theorists of this theory who have used this approach and have explained this theory in detail. These are John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner (Cherry, 2013).

Cognitive theory

This theory has been explained in detail by one of the most renowned and popular theorists that have existed in the history of psychology. This theory of personality that has been put forth and explained by Walter Mischel states that the behavior of a person is influenced by two different things; the particular characteristics of a provided situation and the way in which that person has perceived that particular situation. On the other hand, the cognitive theories that have explained by other theorists in the past were contrary to this one. Walter argued that a person behaves in a way that he thinks would cause the best results. Walter also pressed on the fact that since every person has a different and unique identify, the expectancies and values of every individual also varies and no one can really predict what the personality or the behavior of the person might be.

According to this theorist, any specific situation is made by the contribution of five different conditions that are present in every person. These are the conditions that can be used by the psychologists to predict the likely behavior and therefore the personality of an individual. These conditions are described in the following text.

The first of these conditions has been called competencies that are described as the intellectual capabilities of a person as well as their social skills that are developed with the passage of time. The second condition was described by Walter as the cognitive strategies. By cognitive strategies, it was meant that different people perceive the different events in their own ways and all the people have a different opinion about the same situation. For example a situation might be considered as being threatening for one person and it may be challenging for some other person. The third of these conditions are the different expectancies of different people. These are the results that the people make up in their minds for every situation and yet again they differ from one person to another depending on the different thinking patterns of different people.

Then the fourth condition is the subjective values. This is described as the particular value that might result from different behaviors. Self-regulatory systems are the fifth condition that might be used by theorists to predict the behavior and personality development of the people. This condition implies the set of standards as well rules that are adapted by the people so that they can regulate their own behavior and personality.