Personality in Psychology An overview of Personality, Definition of Personality , Nature and Determinants of Personality , Types of Personality, Theories of Personality and Measurement of Personality

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2. Personality Introduction
Introduction:
 Originates from the Latin word Persona which means Mask. In
the ancient world, a persona was a mask worn by an actor.
 Different qualities of a person’s character that makes him/her
different from other people.
 Personality refers to individual differences in characteristics
pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving.
 Good Personality: Respect for life, person needs are satisfied
and so that the person will grow in awareness, competence,
and capacity to love the self, natural environment and other
people.
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3. Define Personality?
According to Watson
 A sum of activities that can be discovered by actual
observations over a long period of time to give reliable
information.
 Personality describes the unique patterns of thoughts,
feelings, and behaviours that distinguish a person from
others.
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4. Nature of Personality
 Personality is relatively stable but dynamic in nature
 Personality helps in adjusting the individual with the
environment
 Personality is consistent
 Personality is unique
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5. Determinants of Personality
 1. Personal & Environmental Factors
 2. Biological, Psychological, Social & Cultural Factors
 3. Physical, Social, Psychological & Intellectual
 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.
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6. Determinants of Personality
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 Environment: The culture in which people are brought up in their
lives and they type of socialization process such as family’s child
rearing practices, socio economic status of the family, number of
children in a family, birth order, education of the parents, friends
and peer group pressures, religious practices, the type of
schooling and recreational activities.
 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.
 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.

7. Types of Personality
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 Psychologists have attempted to study personality in their
own way. They have formulated various theories to explain
personality.
 These are divided into two types
Types and Trait Theories.
 Both these theories of personality focus on people’s personal
characteristics. The type theorists and trait theorists differ in
the ways they use characteristics to describe people.

8. Type Theory of Personality
Jung’s Classification
Kretschmers’s Classification
Sheldons’s Classification
Friedman & Rosenman’s Classification
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9. Jung’s Classification
CG Jung has classified on the basis of sociability character as
Introvert, Extrovert and Ambivert.
 Introvert: Characteristics such as shyness, social withdrawal
and tendency to talk less. People appear to be self centered,
unable to adjust easily in the environment. They are not easily
suggestible
 Extravert: Tendency to be outgoing, friendly, talkative, and
social in nature. They prefer social contacts, sportive &
courageous. They express their feeling openly.
 Ambiverts: There are only few people who are pure introverts
or pure extraverts. The remaining majority of the people
possess both qualities of introverts and extraverts.
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10. Kretschmer’s Classification
 Kretschmer has classified personality into 4 types
 1. Pyknic type
 2. Asthenic type
 3. Athletic type
 4. Dysplastic type
 Pyknic Type: In pykinc type, people who are short and having
round body type. They will have the personality trait of extrovert.
 Asthenic Type: In asthenic type, people who have slender or
slim body. They will have the personality trait of introvert.
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11. Kretschmer’s Classification
 Athletic Type: In athletic type, people who have strong
body. They are more energetic and aggressive. They will be
strong enough, determined, adventurous and balanced.
They are comparable with ambiverts.
 Dysplastic Type: In dysplastic type, people who have
unproportionate body and do not belongs to any of the
three types. This disproportion is due to hormonal
imbalance.
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12. Sheldon’s Classification
Sheldon has divided people into 3 types
 1. Endomorphic
 2. Ectomorphic
 3. Mesomorphic
 Endomorphic: People who are soft, fat and round body and
having predominance of abdominal region. They are sociable
and relaxed.
 Ectomorphic: People who are tall, thin and flat chested. They
are shy and reserved.
 Mesomorphic: People who are well build with heavy muscles
and strong muscles appear predominantly. They are physically
active and adventurous by nature.
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13. Friedman & Rosenman’s Classification
 Personality theory describes two contrasting types, Type-A
& Type-B.
Type A Personality
 The theory describes Type-A Individuals (High achieving
Workaholic’s) are rude, ambitious, rigidly organized, impatient,
anxious, proactive and concerned with time management.
Type B Personality
 Type B individuals are noted to live low stress levels. They
typically work steadily and may enjoy achievement. People are
sometimes attracted to careers of creativity: writer, therapist,
counsellor, actor.
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14. Trait Theories
 Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurements of
traits which can be defined as habitual patterns of behaviour,
thought and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are
relatively stable over time, differ across individuals
 E.g. some people are out going whereas others as shy.
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15. Allport’s Trait Theory
 Allport organized traits into a hierarchy of 3 levels i.e.,
cardinal, central and secondary traits
 Cardinal Traits:
 The top of the hierarchy known as Individuals Master
Control. They are considered to be an individuals ruling
passions.
 Cardinal traits are powerful. It often develop later in life
and serve shape almost all aspects of an individual’s
purpose, behaviour, and attitudes.
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16. Allport’s Trait Theory
 Central traits:
 These traits comes next in the hierarchy. These are general
characteristics found in varying degrees in every person
such as
 Loyality
 Kindness
 Friendliness.
 Secondary traits
 Secondary traits exist at the bottom of the hierarchy and
not quite as obvious or consistent as central traits. For
example, a friendly person gets angry when people try to
tickle him; another is anxious person but always feels
nervous speaking publicly.
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17. Cattell’s Trait Theories
 The most recent advance theory of personality based on
trait approach has been developed by Cattell.
 A structure of the personality inferred from behaviour in
different situations and describes 4 types of Traits.
 1. Common traits
 2. Unique traits
 3. Surface traits
 4. Source traits
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18. Cattell’s Trait Theories
 Common traits:
 The trait found widely distributed in general population like
honesty, aggression, and cooperation.
 Unique traits:
 It’s unique to a person as temperamental traits, emotional
reactions.
 Surface traits:
 It’s recognized by our manifestation of behaviour like
curiosity, dependability, tactfulness.
 Source traits:
 It determine one’s behaviour such as dominance, submission,
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19. Type cum Trait Theories
 Type cum trait theories has both characteristics feature of
type approach as well as trait approach. Hence it is called
Type cum Trait approach.
 Eysenck has classified the personality by having
coordination between type and trait approach.
 Fours levels of behaviour organization
 1. Lowest Level
 2. Second Level
 3. Third Level
 4. Fourth Level
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20. Type cum Trait Theories
 Lowest Level:
 At the lowest level we have some specific responses. For
eg: Red face/Blushing in a certain situation.
 Second Level:
 We have some habitual responses. People react in similar
fashion when the same situation reoccurs. Example, not
easily picking up the friendships, hesitant to talk to
strangers.
 Third Level:
 People have organization of habitual acts into traits.
Example Shyness
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21. Type cum Trait Theories
 Fourth level:
 It is defined as a group of correlated traits. Example
shyness make the person introvert.
 He describes four types based on the aspects as
 Introversion
 Extroversion
 Neuroticism (Negative emotions)
 Psychoticism (Aggressive, Anger)
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22. Developmental Theories
 Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
 Adler’s Personality Theory
 Carl Rogers Theory
 Learning Theories
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23. Sigmund Freud Theory
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24. Sigmund Freud Theory
 Freud proposed that the mind is divided into three
components: id, ego, and superego, and that the
interactions and conflicts among the components create
personality.
 According to Freud's psychoanalytic theory, the id is the
primitive and instinctual part of the mind that contains sexual
and aggressive drives and hidden memories, the super-ego
operates as a moral conscience, and the ego is the realistic
part that mediates between the desires of the id and the
super-ego.
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25. Sigmund Freud Theory
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26. Adler’s Theory
 Adler's Personality theory was created by Alfred Adler
(1870-1937)
 Adler called his theory Individual Psychology because he
believed that people were unique and that no theory to be
applied to all people.
 Adler Personality theory is similar to that of Freud’s
Personality Theory except that Adler's drive for human
behaviour is the need to overcome the feelings of inferiority.
 Inferiority is a feeling that humans feel since they are born.
It is humans drive to overcome inferiority and become
superior which causes human to act.
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27. Adler’s Theory
 His theory also contains the effects of the order of the
family. Children who are the only child will get pampered
which cause the child to feel inferior when left to do things
on their own.
 Those who are firstborn get all the attention at first but then
all that attention goes towards the middle child. Now
firstborn feels neglected and inferior and develops to
reserved and conservative.
 The middle child will be competitive and constantly try to
beat the first born.
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28. Adler’s Theory
 Ruling type
 a person with little social interest but high energy may take a
dominating approach to society.
 Learning type
 A person with sensitive and build a shell around themselves. They
are dependent on others to help them with life difficulties.
 Avoiding type
 A person with low social interest and energy may avoid failure
by avoiding involvement with friends, occupation, and family.
 Socially Useful type
 a person with high social interest and energy may like to help
others.
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29. Carl Roger’s Theory
 Roger believed that a person's behaviour is a factor
motivated by self-actualization tendencies to work and
achieve the highest level of their potential and
achievement.
 During this process, a person forms a structure of self or
self-concept. A positive self-concept is associated with
feeling good and safe.
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30. Type-A vs Type-B vs Type-C vs Type-D
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31. Measurement of Personality
 1. Subjective Methods
 Observation
 Interview
 Case Study
 Autobiography
 2. Objective Methods
 Rating Scale
 Inventory or Questionnaire
 Situation Test
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32. Measurement of Personality
 3. Projective Methods
 Association Technique
 Construction Technique
 Completion Technique
 Expression Technique
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33. Subjective Methods
 Observation: Observation of behaviour of a person over a
long period is one of the techniques of assessing personality
traits.
 Interview: t is a process of communication or interaction in
which the interviewee gives the needed information verbally to
the interviewer in a face-to-face situation or one-to-one
situation.
 Case Study Method: In this method the case history has to be
re-organized and re-written from infancy upto adulthood.
Really speaking, on the basis of this method, the reality of the
personality is found out.
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34. Subjective Methods
 Autobiography: Autobiography method is also used to assess
personality. The child is asked to write his own autobiography
and certain personality characteristics can be studied from
them.
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35. Objective Methods
 Rating Scales: Rating scales are used to rate the various
personality traits, adjustment, emotions, interests, attitudes
performance on a task.
 Inventories: Individual’s written account of the past behaviour,
feelings and wishes can be a good source of information about
his personality. Self-ratings can be done through personality
inventories and paper and pencil test.
 Situation Test:
 Sociometric - social acceptance (i.e., how much an individual is
liked by peers)
 Psychodrama - action-based type of psychotherapy that
involves acting out scenes from a person's life in order to gain
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36. Projective Methods
 Children’s Apperception Test (CAT):
 It was developed by Leopold Bellak. The test consists of ten
pictures meant for children of the age group 3 to 10.
Pictures are shown one after another and reactions
(responses) are noted and interpreted.
 Thematic Apperception Test (TAT):
 The TAT was developed by Morgan and Murray in 1935. It
requires the subject to look at the picture and to interpret it
by telling a story. He is invited to say what led up to the
scene in the picture.
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37. Projective Methods
 Rorschach’s Ink-Blot Test:
 This test was developed by Hermann Rorschach in 1921. It
uses ten irregular-ink-blots standing against a white
background. Each inkblot is shown in a fixed number of
ways and the testee is asked to report what he sees.
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38. References
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 R. Sreevani, Applied psychology for nurses
 Robert S Feidman, Understanding psychology
 SK Mangal, Applied psychology for nursing
 Jacob Anthikad, Psychology and sociology for GNM
& BPT Students

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