Personality and Its Assessment
Personality and its Assessment
Personality has different meanings for theologians, philosophers and sociologists, and within psychology it has been defined in many ways (Allport, 1937).
The main reason that leads so many psychologists to explore the human personality is that by doing so, the opportunity to predict a person’s behaviour in a situation presents itself, even before a situation occurs. Knowing more about one’s personality also allows us to learn about his/her dominant traits, information that can be of use in many aspects of everyday life (e.g. recruiting the right people for the right jobs, treating a patient with the most suitable therapy etc.).
Many psychologists today (Block, Weiss and Thorne, 1979) define personality as a “more or less stable, internal factors that make one person’s behaviour consistent from one time to another, and different from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations” (Childe, 1968).
This definition gives us a clear view of the four major assumptions in the concept of personality: stable, internal, consistent and different.
From the constructivist view, personality is seen as the combination of three equally important components: the actor, the observer and the self-observer.
The actor component refers to the characteristics that a person brings to the social situation in which personality is constructed. These include all the genetic factors that may have the influence on a person’s behaviour, what he/she is capable or incapable to perform, as well as the individual’s history and present goals.
The observer component refers to the way the actor is perceived by other people. Observers use the actor’s behaviour to construct an impression of the actor’s personality by adding social significance and meaning to the presented behaviour. As a result of this, we categorize people’s behaviour into different groups (e.g. ‘friendly’, ‘obnoxious’). These categories, apart from telling us about
Personality has different meanings for theologians, philosophers and sociologists, and within psychology it has been defined in many ways (Allport, 1937).
The main reason that leads so many psychologists to explore the human personality is that by doing so, the opportunity to predict a person’s behaviour in a situation presents itself, even before a situation occurs. Knowing more about one’s personality also allows us to learn about his/her dominant traits, information that can be of use in many aspects of everyday life (e.g. recruiting the right people for the right jobs, treating a patient with the most suitable therapy etc.).
Many psychologists today (Block, Weiss and Thorne, 1979) define personality as a “more or less stable, internal factors that make one person’s behaviour consistent from one time to another, and different from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations” (Childe, 1968).
This definition gives us a clear view of the four major assumptions in the concept of personality: stable, internal, consistent and different.
From the constructivist view, personality is seen as the combination of three equally important components: the actor, the observer and the self-observer.
The actor component refers to the characteristics that a person brings to the social situation in which personality is constructed. These include all the genetic factors that may have the influence on a person’s behaviour, what he/she is capable or incapable to perform, as well as the individual’s history and present goals.
The observer component refers to the way the actor is perceived by other people. Observers use the actor’s behaviour to construct an impression of the actor’s personality by adding social significance and meaning to the presented behaviour. As a result of this, we categorize people’s behaviour into different groups (e.g. ‘friendly’, ‘obnoxious’). These categories, apart from telling us about
References: Gleitman, H. (1999) psychology 5th edition, Norton (chapters 16 and 17) Hampson, Sarah E. (1988) The construction of personality: an introduction. 2nd edition, London: Routledge