Starting the Discussion of Personality

• What is the definition of “personality"?”

• One definition of Personality is “The distinctive patterns of behavior (including thoughts and emotions) that characterize each individual’s adaptation to the situations of his or her life.”

• Personality involves three main characteristics but have much more. The main three are: Uniqueness of the individual, consistency of behavior, and personality is greatly influenced by social interactions.

  The Three Main Components of Personality

1. Uniqueness of the individual describes the things that make a person who they are. One theoretical explanation for this can be from a biological perspective (which can be interpret the word “uniqueness” to describe bodily processes, also known as hormonal levels.) Another theoretical explanation can be from the psychoanalytic perspective (which means that personality can be determined from early experiences in one’s life.)

2. Consistency of Behavior describes the degree of continuity across time and through situations in life. A main point that can be said is how personalities can change, but to what degree is what is an important factor. One thing that can help make up one’s personality are “traits.”

3. “Personality is greatly influenced by social interactions” describes how people learn from each other and can adapt qualities for themselves that they see in others in their environment. This information comes from: https://www.iedunote.com/personality

Personality Dichotomies

• Personality Dichotomies are Unique and typical, Central and peripheral, stable and evolving, “normal” and “abnormal,” “nature and nurture,” and involve the body and mind.

• When discussing the unique and typical aspect, we question how we define “unique” or “typical.” A word that helps us learn more about the unique and typical aspects of personality is called “type.” Type describes how a kind or category of features share similar characteristics or qualities.

• When discussing the Central and Peripheral aspect, it involves traits, behaviors, and emotions. Central discusses the wide-ranging and present (to varying degrees) in most people all the time. For example, the feeling of “disgust.” Peripheral involves more specific to individual or cultural circumstances, for example, incest which is frowned upon but was important for European royalty many centuries ago.

• When discussing stable and evolving, we question how personalities stay the same or if it can change over time. The answer to this is yes, personality can change over time based on many interconnected influences, some examples may be family, work, stability in one’s life. Central features tend to change slowly, and peripheral features change faster.

• When discussing “normal” and “abnormal,” we question the meaning of those two words and who draws them. Tolerance threshold is a measure of tolerance or intolerance toward specific personality traits or within a cultural group. Personality disorders are enduring patterns of behavior and inner experience that deviate markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture.

• When discussing nature and nurture, it describes the debate about where to draw the line of influence on behavior.

• When discussing the body and mind, it is a discussion much older than the subject of psychology itself and describes how active and reactive mindsets that affect the body. Two important concepts that are examples of how the mind and body can react to certain changes in life are the scarcity mindset and determinism. Scarcity mindset describes how one can react to a lack of resources and determinism describes how every action that someone makes has already been determined before they make the decision to commit to an action.

(These notes contain content from the Personality 210 course at Reinhardt University from 2021)

The definition for “determinism” can be found here: https://www.britannica.com/topic/determinism