What is Personality?

Definition,
Determinants, Characteristics,
Nature
What is Personality?

• Personality can be defined as those inner psychological

characteristics that both determine and reflect how a person think and
act in an environment.
• The inner characteristics of personality are specific qualities,
attributes, traits, factors and mannerism that distinguish one individual
from other individuals. Personalities are likely to influence the
individual’s product and store choices. They also affect the way
consumer responds to a firm’s communication efforts.
Personality Meaning

• The word personality is derived from a Greek word “persona” which

means “to speak through”. Personality is the combination of
characteristics or qualities that forms a person’s unique identity.
• It signifies the role which a person plays in public. Every individual
has a unique, personal and major determinant of his behavior that
defines his/her personality.
Personality Definition

• “The dynamic organisation within the individual of those

psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his
environment”Gordon Allport
• “Personality is a broad, amorphous designation relating to fundamental
approaches of persons to others and themselves. To most psychologists
and students of behaviour, this term refers to the study of the
characteristic traits of an individual, relationships between these traits
and the way in which a person adjusts to other people and situations”
J.B Kolasa
 Elements of personality
• Behaviour
• Freedom
• Peculiarity
• Physical, metal and moral qualities
• Adaptability to environment
• Psychological system
• Habits
Determinants of Personality

• The determinants of personality can be grouped in five broad

categories:
1.Biological Factors
2.Cultural Factors
3.Family Factors
4.Social Factors
5.Situational Factors
Biological Factors

• The study of the biological contributions to personality may be studied under three heads:
• Heredity
• Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception. Physical stature, facial
attractiveness, sex, temperament, muscle composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological
rhythms are characteristics that are considered to be inherent from one’s parents.
• The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality is the
molecular structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes.
• Brain
• The second biological approach is to concentrate on the role that the brain plays in personality.
The psychologists are unable to prove empirically the contribution of the human brain in
influencing personality.
• Preliminary results from the electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) research give
an indication that a better understanding of human personality and behaviour might come
from the study of the brain.
• Biofeedback
• Until recently, physiologists and psychologists felt that certain biological functions such as
brainwave patterns, gastric and hormonal secretions, and fluctuations in blood pressure and skin
temperature were beyond conscious control.
• Now some scientists believe that these involuntary functions can be consciously controlled
through biofeedback techniques. In BFT, the individual learns the internal rhythms of a particular
body process through electronic signals that are feedback from equipment that is wired to the body.
• Physical Features
• A vital ingredient of the personality, an individual’s external appearance, is biologically determined.
The fact that a person is tall or short, fat or skinny, black or white will influence the person’s
effect on others and this in turn, will affect the self-concept.
Cultural Factors

• Among the factors that influence personality formation is the culture in which we
are raised, early conditioning, norms prevailing within the family, friends and
social groups and other miscellaneous experiences that impact us.
• The culture largely determines attitudes towards independence, aggression,
competition, cooperation and a host of other human responses.
• According to Paul H Mussen, “each culture expects, and trains, its members to
behave in ways that are acceptable to the group. To a marked degree, the child’s
cultural group defines the range of experiences and situations he is likely to
encounter and the values and personality characteristics that will be reinforced
and hence learned.”
 Family Factors

• Whereas the culture generally prescribes and limits what a person can
be taught, it is the family, and later the social group, which selects,
interprets and dispenses the culture. Thus, the family probably has
the most significant impact on early personality development.

• A substantial amount of empirical evidence indicates that the overall

home environment created by the parents, in addition to their direct
influence, is critical to personality development.

• The parents play an especially important part in the identification

process, which is important to the person’s early development.
• According to Mischel, the process can be examined from three different
perspectives.
• Identification can be viewed as the similarity of behaviour including feelings and
attitudes between child and model.

• Identification can be looked at as the child’s motives or desires to be like the model.

• It can be viewed as the process through which the child actually takes on the attributes
of the model.
• From all three perspectives, the identification process is fundamental to the
understanding of personality development. The home environment also influences the
personality of an individual. Siblings (brothers and sisters) also contribute to
personality.
Social Factors

• There is increasing recognition given to the role of other relevant persons, groups and
especially organisations, which greatly influence an individual’s personality. This is
commonly called the socialization process.
• Socialization involves the process by which a person acquires, from the enormously
wide range of behavioural potentialities that are open to him or her, those that are
ultimately synthesized and absorbed.
• Socialization starts with the initial contact between a mother and her new infant. After
infancy, other members of the immediate family – father, brothers, sisters and close
relatives or friends, then the social group: peers, school friends and members of the
work group – play influential roles.
• Socialization process is especially relevant to organisational behaviour because the
process is not confined to early childhood, taking place rather throughout one’s life. In
particular, the evidence is accumulating that socialization may be one of the best
explanations for why employees behave the way they do in today’s organisations.
Situational Factors

• Human personality is also influenced by situational factors. The effect

of the environment is quite strong. Knowledge, skill and
language are obviously acquired and represent important
modifications of behavior.
• An individual’s personality, while generally stable and consistent, does
change in different situations. The varying demands of different
situations call forth different aspects of one’s personality.
• According to Milgram, “Situation exerts an important press on the
individual. It exercises constraints and may provide a push. In certain
circumstances, it is not so much the kind of person a man is, as the
kind of situation in which he is placed that determines his actions”. We
should therefore not look at personality patterns in isolation.
Personality Characteristics

• Managers should learn as much as possible about personality in order to

understand their employees. Hundreds of personality characteristics have
been identified.
• personality characteristics that influence individual are:
1.Locus of Control
2.Self-Efficacy
3.Self-Esteem
4.Self-Monitoring
5.Positive/Negative Affect
6.Risk-Taking
7.Type A and Type B Personality
• Locus of Control
• The degree to which individuals perceive control over a situation being internal or
external is called locus of control.

Locus of control refers to the range of beliefs that individuals hold in terms of being
controlled by self (internal locus) or controlled by others or the situation (external
locus).

• Self-Efficacy
• Generalized self-efficacy refers to a belief about one’s own ability to deal with events
and challenges.

High self-efficacy results in greater confidence in one’s job-related abilities to function

effectively on the job. Success in previous situations leads to increased self-efficacy for
present and future challenges.
• Self-Esteem
• An individual’s self-worth is referred to as self-esteem. Individuals with high self-esteem have
positive feelings about themselves.

Low self-esteem individuals are strongly affected by what others think of them, and view
themselves negatively.

• Self-Monitoring
• The extent to which people base their behavior on cues from other people and situations is self-
monitoring.

Individuals high in self-monitoring pay attention to what behavior is appropriate in certain

situations by watching others and behaving accordingly.

Low self-monitoring individuals prefer that their behavior reflects their attitudes, and are not
as flexible in adapting their behavior to situational cues.
• Positive/Negative Affect
• Individuals exhibit attitudes about situations in a positive or negative fashion.

An individual’s tendency to accentuate the positive aspects of situations is referred to as positive

affect, while those accentuating less optimistic views are referred to as having negative affect.

Employees with positive affect are absent from work less often. Negative affect individuals
report higher levels of job stress.

• Risk-Taking
• People differ in their willingness to take chances. High-risk-taking managers made more rapid
decisions and used less information in making their choices than low risk-taking managers.
• Type A and Type B Personality
• Type A personality individual is aggressively involved in a chronic,
struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and if
required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things or other
persons.

Type B personalities are rarely harried by the desire to obtain a wildly

increasing number of things or participate in an endless growing series
of events in an ever decreasing amount of time.
Theories of Personality
• The theories of personality can be conveniently grouped under four
types:
• 1. Psychoanalytic Theory
2. Type Theories
3. Trait Theories
4. Self-theory
• Psychoanalytic Theory
• The Psychoanalytic Theory of personality has held the interest of
psychologists and psychiatrists for a long time. Sigmund Freud, its
formulator, was quite an influence.
• It attends to emphasizes three main issues i.e. the id, the ego and
the superego. Psychoanalysts say that all human personality is
comprised of these closely integrated functions.
• Type Theories
• The type theories represent an attempt to put some degree of order
into the chaos of personality theory. The type theory represents an
attempt to scientifically describe personality by classifying individuals
into convenient categories.
• Two categories of type theories are explained below:
• Sheldon’s Physiognomy Theory: William Sheldon has presented a
unique body-type temperamental model that represents a link between
certain anatomical features and psychological traits with
distinguishing characteristics of an individual and his behaviour.
• Carl Jung’s Extrovert-introvert Theory: The way to type
personality is in terms of behavior or psychological factors. Jung’s
introvert and extrovert types are an example.
• Trait Theories
• Some early personality researchers believed that to understand individuals, we must break
down behaviour patterns into a series of observable traits.
• According to trait theory, combining these traits into a group forms an individual’s
personality. A personality trait can be defined as an “enduring attribute of a person that
appears consistently in a variety of situations”. In combination, such traits distinguish one
personality from another.
• Gordon Allport’s Personality Traits: Claims that personality traits are real entities,
physically located somewhere in the brain. We each inherit our own unique set of raw
material for given traits, which are then shaped by our experiences.
• Raymond Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors: Raymond Cattell considered personality to
be a pattern of traits providing the key to understanding and predicting a person’s
behaviour.
• Cattell identified two types:
• Surface Traits
• Source Traits
• Self-theory
• The psychoanalytic, type and trait theories represent the more traditional approach
to explaining the complex human personality.
• Carl Rogers is most closely associated with his approach of self-theory. Rogers and
his associates have developed this personality theory that places emphasis on the
individual as an initiating, creating, influential determinant of behaviour within the
environmental framework.
• According to Rogers basic ingredients of personality:
• Self Actualization: Carl Rogers believed that humans have one basic motive that is
the tendency to self-actualize – i.e. to fulfil one’s potential and achieve the highest
level of ‘human-beingness’ we can.

• Self-concept: Self-concept is defined as “the organized, consistent set of

perceptions and beliefs about oneself”.