Personality the Definition of Personality

Personality

The definition of personality can loosely be referred to as what encompasses the directly recognizable psychological orientation of an individual in the daily life. It portrays whether the individual is a bright or dull, happy or sad, quiet or extrovert, energetic or withdrawn person. Personality involves majorly the mental disposition of an individual. It deals more with the psychological aspect than the physical, which include the thoughts, motives, emotions and even intentions of a person.

Warren & Carmichael, (1930) further describes it as "the entire mental organization of a human being at any stage of his development. It embraces every phase of human character: intellect, temperament, skill, morality, and every attitude that has been built up in the course of one's life."

There have been over time varying approaches to personality postulated geared towards explaining the numerous human behavior and psychological disposition. However, there are three major approaches that are seen to capture the entire personality study in totality as below.

Biological approach

This approach presumes that the genetic composition of an individual is solely responsible for the personality that the individual displays or shows. There is an assumption that the personality that is displayed is passed on from one generation to another, in a nutshell, personality is heritable.

One of the major proponents of this theory is Hans Eysenck who argued that the introverts are so because they have high cortical arousal which makes them evade stimulation, and extroverts on the other hand possess low cortical arousal hence look for stimulation. This genetic orientation can therefore be passed from the parents to the offspring hence dictating whether the children will be extroverts or introverts.

Psychodynamic Theories

This theory has been widely influenced by Sigmund Freud's view of psychology. It emphasizes that personality is influenced by the unconscious mind as well as the experiences of the childhood life. Freud say, under this theory, that personality is composed of the id, ego and the superego. Where the id dictates the needs of the person, the superego dictates the ideas and morals and the ego comes in to harmonize between the dictation and direction of the id and the superego and links them to reality in the daily life.

Erik Erikson postulated that personality is a progress through a number of stages and facing conflicts in the course of progression and the in order to pass through a process, the individual has to overcome these conflicts. These internal conflicts therefore aroused defense mechanisms that thereafter dictated the personality of an individual (Kendra, 2010).

Humanistic approach

Humanistic approach emphasizes the individual worth and the centrality of the value of a person. It is pegged on the philosophy of existentialism and emphasized on creativity, spontaneity and activeness of human beings. The approach focuses on the development and possibility of humans to defeat hardship and misery as opposed to defeat and pessimis.