Personality concepts

DEFINATIONS OF CONCEPTS RELATED TO PERSONALITY 

There are so many concepts in personality psychology and they have been operationalized by psychologist in diverse ways. Among many of these concepts below are some of them and their operational definitions:

ACTION

Action refers to the process of doing something, especially in order to achieve a particular thing. 

AFFILIATION

This Is the tendency to be in social contact with others. 

AGGRESSION 

Aggression refers to behavior that is intended to harm another individual who does not wish to be harmed (Baron & Richardson, 1994).

ATTITUDE 

This refers to any belief or opinion that has an evaluative component, that is a belief that something is good or bad, linkable or unlikable, attractive or repulsive

BEHAVIOR 

This is any observable action or response. It is seen in term of an identifiable and measurable response to external or internal, recognizable and measurable stimuli. 

CULTURE

The term culture refers to all of the beliefs, customs, ideas, behaviors, and traditions of a particular society that are passed through generations. Culture is transmitted to people through language as well as through the modeling of behavior, and it defines which traits and behaviors are considered important, desirable, or undesirable.

Within a culture there are norms and behavioral expectations. These cultural norms can dictate which personality traits are considered important. The researcher Gordon Allport considered culture to be an important influence on traits and defined common traits as those that are recognized within a culture. These traits may vary from culture to culture based on differing values, needs, and beliefs. Positive and negative traits can be determined by cultural expectations: what is considered a positive trait in one culture may be considered negative in another, thus resulting in different expressions of personality across cultures.

COGNITIVE 

Cognitive refers to the processes of acquisition and understanding of knowledge, formation of beliefs and attitudes, and decision making and problem solving. 

COVERT

Covert refers to behaviour in which mental, social, or physical action or practice is not immediately observable. Some examples of covert behaviour include deception and lying, systemic discriminatory practices against certain social groups, and political candidates omitting important information to make their case seem strong.

EMOTION

Emotion is a complex experience of consciousness, bodily sensation, and behaviour that reflects the personal significance of a thing, an event, or a state of affairs (Solomon, 2019). 

FEELINGS 

Feelings are mental experiences of body states, which arise as the brain interprets emotions, themselves physical states arising from the body’s responses to external stimuli. 

GENES

This is define as the unit of heredity that determine a particular characteristics in an organism

INSTINCT

Instinct describe a set of behaviors that are both unlearned and set in motion as the result of some environmental trigger. Instincts are also often discussed in relation to motivation since they can also occur in response to an organism's need to satisfy some innate internal drive tied to survival (Clause, 2019). 

INTROSPECTION

This is a systematic examination of subjective mental experiences that requires people to inspect and report on the content of their thought 

LEARNING 

This is the process or set of processes through which sensory experience at one time can affect an individual's behavior at a future time (Gray, 2007). 

OVERT

Overt behaviour is any bodily action that persons can directly and sensorily observe. Some examples of overt behaviour include walking, dancing, running, using body language such as hand gestures and facial expressions.

PERCEPTION 

This refers to the processing, organization and interpretation of sensory signals that result in an internal representation of the stimulus. 

Temperament

Temperament refers to the personality tendencies that we show at birth (and that are therefore biologically determined). For example, Thomas and Chess (1977) found that babies could be categorized into one of three temperaments: easy, difficult, or slow to warm up. After birth, environmental factors (such as family interactions) and maturation interact with a child’s temperament to shape their personality (Carter et al., 2008)

THOUGHT 

Thought refers to an "aim-oriented flow of ideas and associations that can lead to a reality-oriented conclusion. 

UNCONSCIOUS 

According to Sigmund Freud unconscious is a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories. It is also an information processing of which we are unaware. (Myer, 2008). 

CONCLUSION

Its pertinent that personality is one of the difficult concept in psychology that has had a controversial views by different psychologist. Some proposed "biology" to be a concern of personality others posit "culture" while to others is "Somatotype" that is, body type. Another group of psychologist opines that personality should be seen as art or philosophy if it cannot be measure. However, looking at this argument individually and apply it to personality one would not have good understand of personality. But when these whole argument are been put together and harmonize them, it will give us better understanding of personality. In the same way with definition of personality which psychologist have defined in diverse ways, even though there is no general agreed definition of personality but when the basic characteristics of personality are considered one will be at better position to understand the concept of personality. 

References 

Allport's, G. W. (1961). Pattern and growth in personality. New York: Holy, Rinehart & Winston. 

Bisahan, R. (2012).  GC 209- PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY. Retrieved from https://www.scribd.com/document/79827223/Personality-as-Defined-by-Psychologists

Gazzaniga, M. S. & Heatherton, T. F. (2003) Mind, Brain, and Behavior: psychological science. USA:Norton and Company, inc

Gray, P. (2007). Psychology 5th (ed). New York: Worth Publishers

Cherry, K. (2018). Personality Psychology. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/personality-psychology-4157179

Clause, C. (2019). Instinct: Definition & Explanation. Retrieved from https://study.com/academy/lesson/instinct-definition-lesson-quiz.html

Mangal, S. K. (1998), General psychology. New Delhi. Sterling pubnlishers private limited 

Mayer, J. D. (2007), Asserting the definition of personality. The online newsletter for personality service issues1. 

Morgan, C. T., King, R. A., Weisz, J. R., Schooled and John (1993), Introduction to psychology. New Delhi. Tata McGraw-Hill publishing company Limited. 

Myer, D. G. (2008). Exploring Psychology 7th (ed). New York: Worth Publishers

Olivola, C. Y., & Todorov, A. (2010). Fooled by first impressions? Reexamining the diagnostic value of appearance-based inferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46(2), 315–324.

Rule, N. O., & Ambady, N. (2010). Democrats and Republicans can be differentiated from their faces. PLoS ONE, 5(1), e8733.

Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., & Hallett, K. C. (2009). Female sexual orientation is perceived accurately, rapidly, and automatically from the face and its features. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(6), 1245–1251.

Rule, N. O., Ambady, N., Adams, R. B., Jr., & Macrae, C. N. (2008). Accuracy and awareness in the perception and categorization of male sexual orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1019–1028.

Scott, J. & Marshall, G. (2005). Oxford dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Simpson, D. (2005). Phrenology and the neurosciences: Contributions of F. J. Gall and J. G. Spurzheim. ANZ Journal of Surgery, 75(6), 475–482.

Solomon, R. (2019). Emotion Personality. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/science/emotion