personality

What is personality? Personality is partly reflected in what we do and say. For example, an optimistic person will work joyfully and speak about positive things while a pessimistic person will work sorrowfully and speak about negative things. Personality captures the central features of a person and it influences the person in different aspects of life such as work, marital life, studies and so on. Thus, people have interest to find out about themselves. In addition, this explains the reason of the popularity of personality test and quizzes. The results of the personality test and quizzes provide insight to the person good and bad traits. Virtually, personality defines who we are. Our behavior predicts our personality and inform how different each of us from one to another. In overall, the study of personality in psychology is mainly concerned with measuring the patterns of behavior using a scientific method, describing individual differences in personality, and explaining how those differences in personality came about.

Why our personality is different from others? There are many factors that determine our personality. Among them include heredity, brain, family background, social group, situation, cultural factor and also physical features. Heredity is the transmission of qualities from generation to generation. This can happen due to chromosomes of the germ cell. Heredity predisposes to certain physical, mental, emotional states. It has been established through research on animals that physical and psychological factors may be transmitted through heredity. It has been concluded from various researches that heredity plays an important part in determining an individual’s personality. Brain is the second biological factor that affects the personality of a person. The role of brain in personality formation is very important. If a person’s brain is sharp, he can understand the situation better and take prompt decision. This improves his personality.

Parent and other family members have strong influence on the personality development of the child. Parents have more influence on the personality development of a child as compared to other members of the family. Family influences the behavior of a person especially in early stages. The nature of such influence will depends upon the family size, birth order, race, religion, geographic location, parent’s educational level and also socio-economic level of family. For example, the study made by Newcomb showed that there is higher co-relation between attitude of parents and children than that between the children and their teachers. Besides a person’s home environment and family members, there are other influences arising from the social placement of the family as the person is exposed to agencies outside the home such as social group. These social groups include school mates, friends, and colleagues at work place or any other group to which an individual belongs. Similarly, socio-economic factors also affect personality development.

Situational factors may also play an important role in determination of human personality. Many a times, the behavior of a person is determined not by how that man is but by what the situation is in which he is places. An employee who is hard working and always gets ahead may prove lazy and trouble maker if he is put under unfavorable situation. This aspect is very important because it can keep in control by the management. Culture is the factor which determines the decision making power of an individual. It includes independence, competition, artistic talent, and aggression. Each culture expects that the person should behave in a way, which is accepted by the group. Personal belonging to different cultural groups has different attitudes. Every culture has their own sub-culture also. However, a direct relationship cannot be established between personality and given culture. The physical features of the individual also have a great impact on personality of an individual. Physical features include height, weight and such other physical aspect of an individual.