Personality

The word personality is derived from the word

persona‘, has Greek and Latin roots and refers
to the theatrical masks worn by Greek
actors.
Psychologists, personality is the unique pattern
of enduring thoughts, feelings, and actions
that characterize a person. Personality should
not be confused with character, which refers to
value judgments of a person‘s morals or ethical
behavior; nor a temperament, the enduring
characteristics with which each person is born,
irritability or adaptability. However, character
and temperament are vital personalities.
According to G. Allport(1937), personality is
the dynamic organization within the
individual of psycho-physical systems to
determine his unique adjustment to the
environment. It means:
• Personality is unique
• It is the product of its own functioning
• It leads to grasp individual differences
Important elements of personality
• Physical appearance
• Emotion of the individual
• Intelligence
• Social conditions
Theories of Personality
a) Type and trait theories of personality
Psychologists who take the trait approach
see personality as a combination of stable
internal chxs to consistently over time &
across situations. Here, 2 assumptions
can be identified:
1. Personality traits are relatively stable,
and therefore predictable, over time.
2. People differ in how much of a
particular personality trait they possess;
no two people are alike on all traits.
The dimension personality has the five-
factor model or the Big Five theory.
Openness can best be described as a
person‘s willingness to try new things and
be open to new experiences. People who try
to maintain the status quo and who don‘t
like to change score less on openness.
Seriousness is a person‘s organization and
motivation, with people who score high in
the dimension being those who are careful
about being in places on time and careful
with belongings as well. Someone might
always be late to important social events or
borrow belongings and fail to return scores
Extraversion is a term first used by Carl Jung,
who believed that all people could be divided into
two personality types: extraverts and
introverts. Extraverts are outgoing and sociable,
whereas introverts are more solitary and dislike
being the center of attention.
Agreeableness refers to the basic emotional
style of a person, who may be easygoing, friendly
and pleasant (at the high end of the scale) or
grumpy, crabby and hard to get along with (at the
low end).
Neuroticism refers to emotional instability or
stability. People who are excessively worried,
overanxious and moody would score high on this
dimension, whereas those who are more even-
tempered and calm could score low.
 Hippocrates, a Greek physician, grouped
people in to 4 temperament (disposition)
types:
 Sanguine-cheerful, positive, optimist
and confident
 Melancholic- sad, discontented,
sorrowful, miserable and gloomy
 Choleric-hot tempered, irritability, quick
to anger
 Phlegmatic-slow moving, calm,
unexcitable and temperamentally
sluggish/not very active or quick.
The groupings or sets of types are called
typologies, or type theorists
b) Dynamic Personality/psychoanalytic theory
of personality
The psychoanalytic theory was formulated by
the Austrian physician named Sigmund Freud.
According to Freud, personality is formed within
ourselves, arising from basic inborn needs,
drives, and characteristics. The psychoanalytic
theory includes a theory of personality
structure. In Freud's view, personality has
three parts which serves a different function
and develops at different times: the id, the
ego, and the superego. According to Freud,
the way these three parts of personality
interact with one another determines the
structure of personality of an individual.
Id: If It Feels Good, Do It-The first and
most primitive part of the personality in
the infant is the id. The Id is a Latin word
that means ‘it’. The id is a completely
unconscious amoral part of the
personality that exists at birth,
containing all of the basic biological
drives; hunger, thirst, sex, aggression,
etc. When these drives are active, the
person will feel an increase in not only
physical tension but also in psychological
tension that Freud called libido, the
instinctual energy that may come into
When libidinal energy is high, it is
unpleasant for the person, so the goal is
to reduce libido by fulfilling the drive; Eat
when hungry, drink when thirsty, and
satisfy sex when the need for pleasure is
present. Freud called this need for
satisfaction
the pleasure principle, which can be
defined as the desire for immediate
satisfaction of needs with no regard
for the consequences. The pleasure
principle can be summed up simply as
―if it feels good, do it.
Ego: The Executive Director- According
to Freud, to deal with reality, the second
part of personality develops called the
ego. The ego, from the Latin word for ―I,
is mostly conscious and is far more
rational, logical and cunning than the
id. The ego works on the reality
principle, which is the need to satisfy the
demands of the id and reduce libido only
in ways that will not lead to negative
consequences. This means that sometimes
the ego decides to deny the id its
drives because the consequence
would be painful or too unpleasant.
Superego: The Moral Watchdog-Freud
called the third and final part of the
personality, the moral center of
personality, the superego. The superego
(also Latin, meaning ―over the self)
develops as a preschool-aged child
learns the rules, customs, and
expectations of society. There are two
parts to the superego: the ego ideal and
the conscience. The ego-ideal is a kind of
measuring device. The conscience is part
of the personality to makes people pride
when they do the right thing& guilt, or
For Freud, our personality is the outcome of the
continual battle for dominance among the id, the
ego, and the superego. This constant conflict
between them is managed by psychological
defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are
unconscious tactics that either prevent
threatening material from surfacing or disguise it
when it does.
Types of psychological defense mechanisms
• Repression is a defense mechanism that
involves banishing threatening thoughts,
feelings, and memories into the unconscious
mind. Example: an Ethiopian husband who is
defeated by his wife will not remember/ talk it
out again.
• Denial: is refusal to recognize or
acknowledge a threatening situation. E.g;
John is an alcoholic who denies/ doesn‘t
accept being an alcoholic.
• Regression: involves reverting to immature
behaviors that have relieved anxiety in the
past. Example: a girl/a boy who has just
entered school may go back to sucking
her/his thumb or wetting the bed.
• Rationalization: giving socially acceptable
reasons for one's inappropriate behavior.
Example: make bad grades but states the
reason as being knowledge rather than
grade oriented; and grades only showing
superficial learning.
• Displacement: the defense mechanism that involves
expressing feelings toward a person who is less
threatening than the person who is the true target of
those feelings. Example: Hating your boss but taking
it out on family members.
• Projection: the defense mechanism that involves
attributing one's undesirable feelings to other people.
Example: a paranoid person uses projection to justify
isolation and anger.
• Reaction formation: a defense mechanism that
involves a tendency to act in a manner opposite to
one's true feelings. Example: a person who acts
conservation but focuses on violence in their behavior.
• Sublimation: defense mechanism that involves
expressing sexual or aggressive behavior through
indirect, socially acceptable outlets. Example: an
aggressive person who loves playing football.
Freud five stages of psychosexual development
Freud has given five stages of psychosexual
development as critical to the developing child. His
assertion was that any crisis or conflict that occurred
and left unresolved at any of these stages would give
rise to fixation or an arrest in development that might
persist throughout life. Freud also suggested that a
positive fixation results when the child received too
much gratification, and a negative fixation results
when the child receives too little gratification at any of
these stages, with both of these lead to personality
problems. The stages are as follow:
• The oral stage (birth to 18 months)
• The anal stage (18-36 months)
• The phallic stage (3-6 years)
• The latency stage (6 to puberty)
• The genital stage (Puberty)
Educational implications of Freud’s theory
Freud’s important contribution was to recognize
child hood as critical period of development, and
to identify sexual (physical) and unconscious
influences. The theory has a major impact on
the methods of child- rearing practices and on
the clinical treatment of emotionally based
problems. Freud also made us aware of infantile
sexuality, the nature of unconscious thoughts
and emotions, defense mechanisms, the
significance of dreams, the importance of early
child –parent relationship and many other
aspects of emotional functioning that may have
direct or indirect contribution to the teaching
and learning process.
 Humanistic theory of personality
Humanistic approaches to personality
emphasize people‘s inherent goodness
and their tendency to move toward higher
levels of functioning instead of seeing
people as controlled by the unconscious,
unseen forces (psychodynamic
approaches), and a set of stable traits
(trait approaches). It is this conscious, self-
motivated ability to change and improve,
along with people‘s unique creative
impulses, that humanistic theorists argue
make up the core of personality.
Carl Rogers and Self-Concept
Like Maslow, Rogers believed that human
beings are always striving to fulfill their innate
capacities and capabilities and to become
everything that their genetic potential will
allow them to become. This striving for
fulfillment is called self-actualizing
tendency. An important tool in human self-
actualization is the development of an image
of oneself or the self-concept. The self-
concept is based on what people are told by
others and how the sense of self is reflected in
the words and actions of important people in
one‘s life, such as parents, siblings, coworkers,
friends, and teachers.
Real and Ideal Self - Two important
components of the self-concept are the real
self (one‘s actual perception of characteristics,
traits, and abilities that form the basis of the
striving for self-actualization) and the ideal self
(the perception of what one should be or would
like to be). Rogers believed that when the real
self and the ideal self are very close or similar
to each other, people feel competent and
capable, but when there is a mismatch between
the real and ideal selves, anxiety and neurotic
behavior can be the result. According to
humanistic theorists, personality is conscious,
self-motivated ability to change and improve,
along with people‘s unique creative impulses.