Concept of Personality

This paper is an examination of the concept of personality. Psychologists disagree on the number of elements that are key to defining personality. Some contend that only two factors are needed to analyze the essential qualities that distinguish an individual's particular styles of thought, behavior, and emotions, while others argue for between five and 13 distinctive scales for defining personality. Psychologists also disagree on the extent to which personality traits are part of an individual's genes, rather than being influenced by environmental factors. Psychologists debate the permanence of personality: will an introvert always remain essentially introverted, even if he or she learns to behave in an outgoing way? Personality, more than any of the other differences among individuals, is especially difficult to study objectively, since the personality of the scientist inevitably becomes part of the research. Nevertheless, insights into personality provide invaluable information, useful to everyone who deals with other human beings, from international diplomats to the parents of an adolescent. Understanding the roots of personality differences can also be extraordinarily illuminating for the individual who seeks to understand his or her own motivations and ways of dealing with the world.

Although individuals can be classified according to physical and genetic differences, one of the most striking distinctions that psychologists are concerned with is the collection o

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y where style ends and disorder begins" (p. 21), suggesting that flexibility and adaptability are essential in keeping an individual from the extremes of psychopathology. Their 13 styles are conscientious, self-confident, dramatic, vigilant, mercurial, devoted, solitary, leisurely, sensitive, idiosyncratic, adventurous, self-sacrificing, and aggressive. All these different attempts to classify personality types acknowledge that each individual falls somewhere along a scale for each dimension within the classification system. Although psychologists differ in the particular qualities each believes necessary to delineate fully an individual personality, all agree that personality offers insights into the individual mind, even the mind experiencing psychological disorder. Some psychologists contend that even elements of psychopathology can be useful to certain personalities. Stanton Peele (1986, Summer) recounts an argument that filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock's personal disorders were precisely the factors that made his art so compelling. Although Peele does not accept this suggestion, he acknowledges those who believe that "an artistic vision can be reduced to a specific set of psychological - or psychopathological - elements" (p.

Category: Psychology - C