Psychology Personality Psychology Personality, a Term Rooted
Personality, a term rooted from the Latin word "persona" means ‘mask'. According to Allport (1937), personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to the environment. It also refers to the characteristic set of views, feelings and behaviors constantly reflected in an individual's conduct over time (Flanagan C., 2004). These characteristics are relatively stable, implying that a certain human being generally behaves in a typical manner. Further elaborated by Allport (1937), there are two ways to study personality, namely, the ‘nomothetic' and the ‘idiographic'. The former of the two studies personality by contriving general laws that can be applied to different people, such as the traits of ‘self-actualization' or ‘extraversion'.