Personality

The term personality is used to mean the sum totality of an individual's characteristics and ways
of behaving which determines his unique adjustment to his environment. Personality can be
defined as the unique pattern of behavioural and mental processes that characterizes an
individual and the individual's interaction with the environment. It includes the individual's
traits, abilities, appearance, beliefs, attitudes, values, motives, emotional reactivity, experiences,
and habitual modes of adjustment. The personality is thus a very inclusive one. But the mere
inclusion of all the above factors does not constitute personality. It is the unique organization of
these factors to which we ascribe the term personality which makes the individual as he is.

The description of characterization of personality

There are numerous ways of characterizing an individual. Allport 91960) has listed ten kinds of
units used in describing personality, ranging from ideational schemes to unconscious motives.
Guilford (1959) offers seven modalities of traits; pointing out the kind of trait we see depends
upon the direction from which we view personality. The common properties that appear in
various descriptive characterization of personality are discussed below.

1. The physical properties and temperament

A person's physical built-up, his bodily size, height, strength, grace and appearance become
aspects of his personality. If a person is unusually tall or short, this will affect his personality.
The bodily appearance also goes to build up one's personality. If he is ugly, for example, his
personality will be affected.

The psychological temperament also forms part of one's personality. A temperament is a

person's characteristic mood of behaviour. A person may be even-tempered or odd-tempered;
that is, he may be hot -tempered or cool-tempered. A person's temperament, in turn, may be
influenced by certain inherited psychological patterns, such as the general responsiveness of the
automatic nervous system or the activities of the various endocrine glands.

2. Intelligence and other abilities

Intelligence is a major aspect of personality. If a person is of below average intelligence he will
get a very low score in his personality rating. An idiot cannot have a superior personality. Other
abilities include perseverance, musical ability, a good sense of humour etc.

3. Interests and values

Personality is said to be reflected in the kinds of things one likes or dislikes, and in the kinds of
things one enjoys and appreciates.

4. Motivational and emotional dispositions

A person's level of activity, aspiration, achievement motive, emotional disposition - all go to
constitute his personality. An energetic person with a high achievement motivation will be rated
as having a superior personality. On the other hand, a lazy, lethargic person with a very limited
life goal will be assessed as having inferior personality. Emotional stability is also an important
element of personality.

5. Expressive style
Expressive styles are commonly revealed in interaction with other people. Thus, a person may
display any or more of the following characteristics: politeness, talkativeness, consistency,
hesitancy, sociability etc.

Thus the description of personality is nothing but an analysis of personality into traits. A trait
signifies a dimension of personality. It is an enduring characteristic of the individual which is
manifested in a consistent way of behaving in different situations. When we say that an
individual is social, we mean that he is friendly to others and receives visitors cordially. The
difficulty of describing personality by enumerating the traits is that traits will go on multiplying.
There arises the problem of reducing the number of traits to manageable proportions. In the
above description of personality we have classified known traits into five general categories.

Personality types

Another way of describing personality is to assign simple types to individuals. Certain

individuals showing some similar characteristics are designated as a particular type of
personality. For example, there is dominant type or submissive type.

Schizoid vs. cyclothymic type

The schizoid (the term is derived from schizophrenia) type of personality is said to be shy,
sensitive, aloof, and withdrawn. The cyclothymic (the term derived from manic-depressive
psychosis which is cyclical in character) type, on the other hand, is said to be jovial, lively,
outgoing, and inclined to mood fluctuations.

Introvert vs. extrovert

The introversion-extroversion type was introduced by Jung. The introvert type is described as
subjective in orientation; as primarily interested in ideas, imagination, and inner life; as tender-
minded and idealistic. The extrovert type, on the other hand, is described as having interest in
outside world; as primarily interested in social activities, and as having poor ideas and
imagination.

It is very difficult to categorize people as being either extroverted or introverted as there are
many people who would fall on the middle point of the introversion-extroversion scale.

Value types
Attempts have also been made to classify people in to value types. The principle behind this
type of classification is that each person has some sort of unifying philosophy of life, a
dominant value, which shapes his personality. Spranger (1928) classified all people into six
value types: (i) the theoretical (ii) The economic (iii) the aesthetic (iv) the social (v) the
political, and (vi) the religious. The theoretical type has dominant interest in discovery of truth.
The economic type has dominant interest in what is useful. The aesthetic type has dominant
interest in form and harmony. Beauty is regarded as the greatest truth. The social type has
dominant interest in love of people. The political type has dominant interest in power. The
primary aim is to gain influence and control over people and events. The religious type has
dominant interest in what is divine in every phenomenon. His main concern is with mystical
experience.

Measurement of personality

We often judge the personality of our associates and friends. We say, for example, that he is
nice, social, or self-centred, etc. when we say this, we assess the personality informally. But
sometimes we may have to assess the personality of many individuals most formally. This we
are to do in selecting personnels for jobs or in psychiatric clinics. The following techniques may
be adopted for the assessment of personality.

1. Performance tests
In performance test individuals are given certain tasks to perform. He may be put into certain
job situations to observe his reactions to these situations. In performance test the individuals
may be examined for general information, social acquity, perceptual efficiency, and creativity.
In general information, the individual is tested whether he knows something about the world,
whether he knows important things and events of history and science, whether he has enough
experience about current events.

In social acquity, the individual is tested how effectively he can establish good relationships
with others. His social awareness is tested. For perceptual efficiency, the individual is tested
how quickly he can perceive relations in a situation. In creativity, the individual is tested for his
ideas, imagination, and for his organizational ability.

2. Personality inventory
Personality inventory is an important instrument for assessing personality. It is a self-rating
device consists of many questions. The person taking the test is to answer the questions in the
form of either 'yes' or 'no'. Some typical questions are as follows:

Yes No Do you like to be with other people a great deal?

Yes No Do you take responsibility for introducing people?
Yes No Do your interests change quickly?

Personality inventories are usually constructed on the basis of responses of both the well-
adjusted and the poorly adjusted persons. The test is initially administered to groups of well-
adjusted and groups of maladjusted persons. Only those questions which the two groups answer
differently are finally retained. The test thus constructed will then discriminate between well-
adjusted and poorly adjusted persons.
A personality inventory may be designed to measure a particular trait such as introversion-
extroversion, ascendance submission etc. Or, it may be designed to measure the overall personal
adjustment in an attempt to distinguish between the adjusted and the neurotic persons.

3. Projective tests
The chief characteristic feature of projective techniques is found in the presentation of relatively
unstructured task which permits all sorts of possible responses. The underlying hypothesis is
that the way the individual perceives and interprets the test material will reveal the fundamental
aspect of his psychological functioning. It is expected that the unstructured test material will
serve as a screen over which the individual will project his ideas, experience, attitudes, beliefs,
emotions, anxiety, fears, aspirations, aggressions, and the like. By doing this he reveals his
inner personality structure. That is why the projective test is said to measure personality as a
whole. The test is characterized by a global approach to the assessment of personality.

There are two important projective tests, namely the Thematic Apperception Test and the
Rorschach Test. We shall deal with these two tests in short in the following pages.

The Thematic Apperception Test

The Thematic Apperception Test (abbreviated TAT) consists of twenty pictures. The subject
writes stories on the pictures. The subject's anxiety, emotion, fear, aspiration etc. may reveal
through these stories. A skilled interpreter may interpret the responses and make possible
discovery of the personality pattern of the individual.

Why is it called a Thematic Apperception Test? The name of the test is Thematic Apperception
because the test is assumed to reveal the basic 'themes' that recur in the imaginative productions
of a person. Apperception means the readiness to perceive objects in certain ways, based on
past experience. The name therefore implies that a person perceives and interprets an
unstructured, ambiguous stimulus situation according to his individual readiness to perceive in
certain ways and that he narrates the stories in terms of imagination.

The Rorschach Test

The test is named after Hermann Rorschach, a Swiss psychiatrist, who first prepared it. The test
consists of ten ink-blot cards. The cards actually do not represent any objects. They are merely
ink-blots. One may easily prepare similar cards. Take a piece of paper and throw some ink over
it. Now fold the paper and give pressure over it. The pressure should be equal over each part.
Now unfold the paper, you will find some bisymmetrical figures.

The subject is given the ten cards one by one and asked to report what he sees there. As the
cards contain ambiguous figures different people will see different objects in them. In his
responses the subject is said to structure the figures according to his level of intelligence,
emotional and motivational dispositions, inner anxiety, and the like.
The interpretation of Rorschach responses is not very easy. It requires the help of a skilled tester
for which training for several months is necessary. There are certain standardized keys for
scoring the responses. For example, if the subject's response includes the whole picture he will
be given one score, but if the response is about a part of the figure a different score is given. If
the response is about human figure there will be one score, but if it is about animal or other
object a different score is given. Colour, shades, darkness etc. in the response will also
determine the score. There is also direction for interpreting the scores. For example, response
relating to human figure (with movement) indicates high intellectual ability and creative
capacity. Predominance of colour indicates less emotional control. Darkness, shades, clouds etc.
indicate anxiety.

Rorschach test is a comprehensive test than TAT. It measures the subject's intellectual and
creative capacity as well as his emotional development and anxiety level.

4. Situational test

We can ascertain the subject's leadership quality and the mode of his social interaction better if
we can observe him against the background of some actual situations. So situational tests
provide certain actual situations where several persons are given a topic for discussion or a task
for group activity. Through this group activity the individual's leadership quality and mode of
interpersonal relationship are judged.

Sometimes the subject's honesty may be judged through a situational test. The situation is so
arranged that there will be a example, the subject may be left alone in a room giving a task
involving mathematical calculation. Books are placed before him and not to consult them. He is
observed from another room through one-way mirror but he does not know. If he consults the
books he shows disobedience to the instruction.

5. Rating scale

The rating scale is a device by which a rater records his judgment of another person in terms of
the traits defined by the scale. It is a bipolar scale having several points over it. The two ends of
the scale represent the opposite extremes of a particular trait. The rater places a check mark at
an appropriate place on the scale to represent the degree to which the subject possesses the trait.

The rater must be a person who is sufficiently acquainted with the person rated. The rater may
be the teacher, employer or colleague who had occasions to observe the person rated in different
situations.

Developmental theories

A developmental theory stresses the importance of the life history of the individual. It does not
deny that hereditary or constitutional factors play a role in personality. It merely points out that
within the biological limit personality is determined by the type of experience the individual has
had in the past.

There are a number of varieties of developmental theories such as the psycho-analytic theory,
the learning theory, and the role theory to mention a few names only. Here we shall deal only
with the first two theories.

The psychoanalytic theory of Freud

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) of Vienna developed the psychoanalytic theory of personality
purely on the basis of his clinical experience. His theory has three distinct aspects, namely the
structure of personality, the development of personality, and the dynamics of personality. These
will be discussed here in brief.

■ The structure of personality

Personally, according to Freud, is made up of three principal systems, the id, the ego, and the
superego. These three systems are not isolated and independent. Though the properties and
functions of each system are different, they interact so closely with one another that it is
difficult to isolate their effects and weigh their relative contribution to the individual's
behaviour. Normal behaviour is the product of an interaction among these three systems.

The id
The id is the primitive system of personality out of which the ego and the superego become
differentiated. It is the reservoir of psychic energy. Id represents what we call the bundle of
instincts or desires.

The id always demands the gratification of its desires without having any regard to the
consequences. Whenever any desire arises, the id wants its immediate gratification. This
principle of immediate gratification of needs is known as pleasure principal.

Another characteristic of id is that it has no reality sense. It is the unconscious part of

personality. The unconscious motives belong to the id. Many of our errors, forgetting, and
lapses are due to the unconscious motives. Freud, in his Psychopathology of Everyday Life,
assembled hundreds of examples of such errors, forgetting, and lapses.

The ego
The ego is that part of the personality which has a reality sense. It is confronted by the realities
of the physical and social environment. Id demands the gratification of its needs. But id itself
cannot do it. It is the ego who actually does it. It makes the appropriate transactions with the
objective world of reality. A hungry person wants to satisfy his hunger. The food must be
identified in the objective world and procured before the hunger can be satisfied. This job is
performed by the ego.

The ego is actually the executive of personality. It controls the courses of action, selects the
features of the environment to which it will respond, and decides which instincts will be
satisfied and in what manner. In performing this highly important executive function, the ego is
to integrate the conflicting demands of the id, the superego, and the external world. When the
ego fails to maintain a balance among these forces, personality disintegration starts.

The superego
The superego is the latest system of development in personality. It corresponds to what we call
conscience. The superego represents the internalised values and ideals of the society as
interpreted to the child by his parents. It is the moral arm of the personality.

The superego represents the ideal rather than the real and it strives for perfection rather than
pleasure. The superego may sometimes become the source of personality problem when it sets a
very high standard beyond the capability of the individual. Some neurotic patients become
hyperconscientious. They are never satisfied with their own behaviour but always accuse
themselves for very minor offences. They are always haunted by a guilty feeling for acts which
they have not performed if they merely thought of doing them. The superego is very strict and
retentless. They may go through useless rituals of self-punishment, making life miserable for
themselves and their families.

■ The development of personality

Freud gave major emphasis on the developmental aspect of personality and stressed in
particular the decisive role of the early infancy and childhood in shaping personality. he arrived
at this conclusion on the basis of his experience in treating patients through psychoanalysis. It is
interesting to note that Freud rarely studied young children though many of his assertions
regarding the role of childhood experience in personality development are true. His technique
was to reconstruct the past life of a person from evidence furnished by his adult recollections.

Stages of personality development

Broadly speaking, Freud conceived of four major stages of development, the early childhood
(the first six years of life), the period of latency (The second six years of life), period of
adolescence, and adulthood. Of these four stages, Freud considered the early childhood as the
most crucial period for the development of personality. For this reason he made a detailed
analysis of this period. The early childhood period was divided into three phases according to
the modes of reaction of a particular zone of the body. These are: the oral phase, the anal phase,
and the phallic phase.

The oral phase

In the oral phase, the child's erotic zone is said to be located in the mouth. The child gets
pleasure in sucking and swallowing. Later on, when teeth appear, biting and chewing become
the dominant source of pleasure. Many of our personality traits may develop from these modes
of oral activity. Pleasure derived from oral region may be displaced to the pleasure gained from
acquiring knowledge or possessions. Oral aggression may be displaced in the form of sarcasm
and argumentativeness. Nail-biting and thumb sucking may be result of oral fixation.
Dependency is a trait which develops during this period as the child is almost completely
dependent upon his mother for feeding.
The anal phase
In this phase the pleasure centre shifts to the anus. The child gets pleasure through the expulsion
of the faces. In this period the child plays with faces. When toilet training starts the child first
experiences the external regulation in his anal pleasure. The toilet-training method may have
far-reaching consequences upon the formation of specific traits and values. If the mother is too
harsh in her methods, the child may hold back his faces and thus become constipated. When the
mode of reaction generalizes, the child develops a retentive character. He may become obstinate
and stingy. Anal retentiveness may be sublimated into miserliness.

The phallic phase

During this phase of personality development erotic zones are localized on the genital organs.
The feeling of pleasure is associated with the functioning of the autocratic activity. Several
important events take place during this phase which is much important for personality
development. These are Oedipus complex, castration complex, and penis envy.

The Oedipus complex

The Oedipus complex consists of sexual attachment for the parent of the opposite sex and
hostility to the parent of the same sex. The Oedipus complex undergoes modification and
suffers repression after the age of five, but it remains a powerful force in the personality
throughout life. Attitudes towards the opposite sex and towards people in authority, for
examples, are largely determined by the Oedipus complex.

The castration complex

The Oedipus complex gives rise to the castration complex. The body considers that this rival
father will remove the offending organs. This fear of castration, which Freud calls castration
anxiety, causes a repression of the sexual desire for the mother and hostility towards the father.
It also helps to bring about an identification of the boy with his father.

The penis envy

The penis envy is the female counterpart of castration anxiety in the boy. The girl soon
discovers that a boy possesses a protruding sex organ, while she has only a cavity. She also
feels inferior in her competition with a boy of her age in urination. She, however, holds her
mother responsible for her castrated condition. This feeling is generalized to determine her
characteristics reactions to other people. Thus her love for the father and other men is mixed
with a feeling of envy while her reactions to persons of the same sex are characterized by a
feeling of suspicion because of her original feeling towards the mother.

■ The dynamics of personality

Freud not only formulated principles of personality structure and development but also laid
down principles how personality acts and reacts. He proposed a form of psychic energy which
determines the working of the personality as it does. The psychic energy releases itself in terms
of different instincts.

According to Freud there are two powerful, but opposing instincts, the life instinct, and the
death instinct. The life instinct serves the purpose of survival and racial propagation. Hunger,
thirst, and sex fall in this category. The form of energy by which the life instinct performs its
work is called libido. The death instinct represents the desire to kill and be killed. Outwardly, it
is the hostility or aggressive motive. Other forms of death instinct include self-punishment, self-
condemnation, jealousy among rivals and rebellion against authority.

One important aspect of Freud's theory of instinct is that the psychic energy may be transformed
from one object to another and even from one emotion to another or from one kind of behaviour
to another. This transformation of energy is an important feature of personality dynamics. It
accounts for the flexibility of human behaviour. A person's interests, preferences, tastes, habits,
and attitudes represent the displacement and transformation of energy from original forms.

Evaluation of Freud's theory

Several criticisms have been levelled against Freud's theory of personality. There are two sets of
criticisms, first against the methodology used and second against the theory itself.

The first criticism against Freud's methodology is that the theory is exclusively based on
information available from mentally ill persons. But the theory is said to be applicable to the
mentally ill as well as the mentally healthy persons. As his sample of subjects was limited to
those already suffering from mental illness, the validity of some of hic concepts, so far the
normal, adjusted persons are concerned, is open to question.

Another criticism is that he obtained his information from adult subjects but built in retrospect a
theory dealing with the psychosexual development of children. He seldom made any studies
with children.

Another criticism that has been levelled against Freud is that he made his observations under
uncontrolled conditions. Freud himself admitted that he did not keep a verbatim record of what
he and the patient said during the psychoanalytic session, but that he worked from notes made
several hours later. Further, Freud never made any effort to quantify his data. What we get in
Freud's theory is the end result of his thinking, a conclusion, without the original data, arrived at
without an account of his methods of analysis, and without any systematic presentation of his
empirical findings. Thus, the theory cannot be considered scientific at all.

The second set of criticism was brought against the theory itself. The most general criticism
against Freud is that he gave too much emphasis on sexual energy as the driving force in
personality development and functioning. Even his disciples, such as Jung and Adler, disagreed
with him on this fundamental point. Adler, for example, gave emphasis on ego rather than
libido as the great motivating force in personality and the source of neuroticism.
Another defect of the theory is that many parts of it do not have and cannot be made to have
empirical consequences, For example, it is impossible to make any deduction from the
postulation of the death instinct. For this reason, the death wish remains a scientific nonsense.

Another more general criticism of the theory is that it emphasizes almost exclusively the role of
biological drives or instincts, but ignores completely the influence of socio-cultural factors. The
non-Freudians and the contemporary psychologists reversed this trend so that more emphasis
was given on socio-cultural influence upon personality.

In spite of its shortcomings, the psychoanalytic theory of Freud remains as one of the most
significant advances in human history. Perhaps the major contribution of the theory is that it
generated great controversy and interests in this area, and consequently led to the accumulation
of a great store of information concerning personality. Moreover, many parts of the theory are
still widely accepted. Freud's emphasis on early childhood experiences for personality
development, the concept of the unconscious and the role of unconscious motives in behaviour,
and finally the concept of defense mechanism in the explanation of personality dynamics have
been accepted by virtually every modern personality theorist.