Week 10 - Personality

Personality

Personality is the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character, Google definitions [online]. It is also described as the way an individual reacts to and interacts with others.

It is well known that things such as eye colour and hair colour are inherited from our parents, but the nature debate takes this further in saying that traits such as personality are also inherited. There is a debate as to whether personality is inherited or developed in response to environmental conditions. The nature side of the debate suggests that we are born with certain traits which make up our personality; these traits come from our genes so are inherited from our parents. This is a nomothetic approach to personality traits and two examples are Hans Eysenck’s type and Raymond Cattell’s 16 personality factor trait theories; they both assume that there are a small number of traits that account for the basic structure of all personalities and that this is how individual differences can be measured. The main five traits are considered to be extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience. From a nomothetic point of view these are considered to adequately describe the psychologically significant aspects of any personality, Mcleod, S. A. (2007).  This theory assumes that our traits our fixed and we are born with a certain personality, suggesting that we have no free-will over how we are and how we become as we grow up; a lot of people disagree with this and support the nurture debate.

The nurture debate assumes that certain conditions in our environment help us to develop traits of our personality; suggesting we are all born as blank slates and how we are brought up changes our personality. We can adapt to change in our lives and are influenced by social and environmental changes. Two psychologist who support this theory are George Kelly  and Carl Rogers.

I feel that the nurture debate is more dominant than the nature debate as it takes into account free-will and individual differences; I believe that the nature debate is too simplistic as it suggests that our personality is made up of only genes and does not consider social and environmental factors.

A trait cluster is a cluster of traits which make up a certain type of characteristic in a personality; one example of a nomothetic trait cluster is an extrovert and another is emotionally stable. The Myers-Briggs type indicator is used to test which trait clusters a person has.

The personality test results:

I took part in the BBC personality test and my results were: for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion and agreeableness I scored medium, and for neuroticism I scored highly.

References

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=personality&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=t0PjTsGdAcng8gOW_O3nAw&ved=0CC8QkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=55a4c209c8b7f252&biw=1121&bih=534

Mcleod, S. A. (2007). Simply Psychology; Nomothetic Idiographic Debate in Psychology.Retrieved 3 January 2012,from http://www.simplypsychology.org/nomothetic-idiographic.html