Six main tenets of personality theory and development

NATURE VS. NURTURE

This report will discuss the six main tenets of personality. Each one will be defined and scholarly research will be used to back up and prove what is being asserted in this report. The six tenets that will be discussed are going to be nature vs. nurture, the unconscious, the view of self, development, motivation and maturation. Each of those six has a different part to play in how people develop and change from a personality standpoint. There is a lot of debate as to whether someone's personality and "lot in life" is tied to supposedly "winning the genetic lottery" or if there is much more to it. There are others that say that while some genetic precursors exist, the environment and people that do (or do not) surround a person has a larger effect. This report shall explore that topic using scholarly sources that are from different authors and from all points-of-view.

The Theory of Personality

The field of personality theory is quite complex and ever-evolving. There are six primary components that make up the personality theory debate. These pillars are nature vs. nurture, the unconscious, the view of self, development, motivation and maturation. The first three of those six are the basic components that all people have with their personality and the latter three describe how personality evolves and changes over the year. Nature vs. nurture in particular is quite controversial because even psychologists differ greatly on whether genetics (nature) or environment (nurture) play the bigger or sole role in one or more of the main outcomes of people's lives. While genetics surely plays a large part in many respects, environment and conditioning surely mean a great deal as well.

Building Blocks of Personality

Nature vs. Nurture

When it comes to the basic parts of personality and how they form, one has to speak of nature vs. nurture. The basic idea behind nature is that many traits and/or personality quirks or a person are determined by genetic sequences and heredity. The idea of nurture is that people are basically a "blank slate" when they are born and that how they develop through life is determined by who and what they are exposed to and when. The research regarding this dichotomy has been wide-ranging and far-reaching. One major study on the subject assessed the role of shared environments when it came to academic achievement and verbal intelligence (Daw, Guo & Harris, 2015). Other research has been much more basic and has focused on more baseline concepts like intelligence and general cognitive abilities. The general finding of the latter research states that the "the counter-intuitive finding that most heritable abilities are the most culture-dependent abilities sheds a new light on the long standing nature-nurture debate of intelligence" (Kan, Wicherts, Dolan & Van Der Maas, 2013).

The Unconscious

The basic definition of the unconscious when it comes to psychology are the processes that sort of operate and exist underneath the proverbial surface. The unconscious is the home for memories and thoughts like prior-learned tasks, dreaming (both day-dreaming and while one sleeps) and intuition. Recent research has made the study of the unconscious quite useful. For example, some research has used the activity and presence of the unconscious to aid in the detection of lies (Reinhard, Greifeneder & Scharmach, 2013). Other research reveals that the unconscious can guide and shape our decisions in ways that a person may not be aware of. For example, it is asserted by some that the appearance of an angry face can modulate our decisions (Almeida, Pajtas, Mahon, Nakayama & Caramazza, 2013). The point is that while our immediate level of consciousness obviously affects our lives in demonstrable ways but the same can be said of the unconscious.

Development

When it comes to the development of personality, there are always going to be at least some changes as one lives one's life. However, the time period where personality is most malleable and shaped the most is in the childhood and adolescence years. According to some research, it is also the best time to assess when there are "extremities" in personality because this could point to personality and other developmental problems for a child. As stated by one source, "personality extremity may be important to consider when identifying children at risk for adjustment problems (Van Den Akker, Prinzie, Dekovic, De Haan, Asscher & Widiger, 2013). However, it would be far from accurate to suggest that personality ceases to become important when a person becomes an adult. Indeed, there have been many studies about adult personality traits and how it figures in to the treatment of chronic diseases like mental illness, diabetes and heart disease. Obvious, the behavior of a person has a huge effect on how well the patient is treated and the people treating the patient are obviously not in control of the personality cues of the patient. Indeed, one source consulted for this report says that "the impulsiveness facet of neuroticism was the strongest predictor of developing disease across the follow-up period." Meaning, a person with a defective personality makeup is going to be more likely to regress from a chronic disease standpoint that someone that is more balanced (Sutin, Zonderman, Ferucci & Terracciano, 2013).

Motivation

Motivation, of course, speaks to the idea of how willing and engaged a person is as it relates to completing a task or doing a certain thing. Perhaps one of the best applications of motivation is the workplace for adults. Indeed, many have found that what motivates people can be different from person to person. It can be simple things like advancement opportunities and money. However, the answers can be more complex. To that end, there is an entire field of study that looks at things like employee and organizational engagement and the motivation (or lack thereof) of the people involved would play a huge part in the measured outcomes (Barrick, Thurgood, Smith & Courtright, 2015). However, many motivations are more personal and/or are based on activities that are less organized and established at an institutional level. When it comes to personal behavior, a common practice of many people is to use social media in a common or even compulsory fashion. What motivates this behavior can vary but there are several clearly defined types. For example, there is work that talks about how psychological ownership motivation can drive people to engage in the use of social media. Rather than the stimulus being external to the person to use social media, it is instead internal (Karahanna, Xu & Zhang, 2015).

Maturation

Maturation is the idea that personality changes and evolves over the years as one gets older. This is more commonly referred to as "growing up" by a lot of people. However, maturation takes on many forms. For example, one form of maturation would be to make sure that one is quite, still and listens attentively while another person speaks at a meeting. However, there are some major sub-types of maturation that exist out there. One such form would be moral maturation. Indeed, a person's morality changes and is altered based on the learning, experiences and events that one witnesses and assesses. Indeed, moral maturation and moral conation are seen as enhancing an individual's moral cognition and thus their overall tendency to take the right action from a moral standpoint (Hannah, Avolio & May, 2011). However, a lot of maturation occurs at a physical and hormonal level. Girls that are entering puberty are a perfect example of this fact as their bodies are changing and maturing through their physical changes and development (Buzney & DeCaro, 2012).

Personality as Described in the Bible

The six personality traits mentioned above are actually mentioned implicitly or explicitly throughout the Bible. For example, maturity is spoken about in 1 John 2:12-14. Negative personality traits and such are described all over the bible. There is a reference to ego in Galatians 2:20 from the mouth of Paul. Jesus himself defines maturity in Matthew 16:24-26 when he states that people should give of their own lives lest they lose it because of selfishness and self-centered aims. Moral maturity is referenced in particular in Hebrews 3:13 when it is said "use today for doing good." When it comes to development and changes in personality and behavior, Paul is the quintessential example given his evolution from Saul to Paul and the way he was prior to his transformation. When it comes to the broader nature vs. nurture argument, the author of this report feels that the Bible is quite clear. The verses the author of this report would point to are Romans 1:20-21 in which it is said that there is not a single reason out there to not obey God. That would infer that blaming nature would fall on deaf ears.

Conclusion

As it relates to traditional psychology in the modern sense, the nature vs. nurture debate rages on. People that engage in mass generalizations are almost always going to be wrong but there are some valid questions about what is caused by genetics and heredity and what is caused by environmental factors. The author of this report feels that there are certain some precursors and indicators but that environment surely plays a bigger role more often than not. Children who are raised and socialized in the proper way tend to do just fine while those that are not tend to do quite poorly. It remains to be seen where psychology will take us in regards to this subject.