3 – Personality

Introduction

Thus, personality is the sum of numerous aspects manifesting in an individual. The ability of the individual to organise and integrate all of the qualities so that life has meaning and the uniqueness of the circumstances that determine an individual’s behaviour. As a result, personality is a fairly broad psychological notion.

3.1 Theories On Personality

There are various theories, the most prominent of which are:

1. Type Theory

Type theories classify people into distinct categories based on their egos. Most sciences begin with classification–types of rocks, kinds of plants, and so on. As a result, it is not strange that the earliest student of human nature attempts to categorise different types of people. The association between features of the face or body and personality was sought to be established in type theories. Person classification based on body type is subjective. Type theories are simple and popular, yet they are devoid of substance. Psychological variables make up the second basis for personality type. Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist and one of Freud’s followers, classified all personalities as introverts or extroverts. These terms are typically connected with an individual’s friendliness and interpersonal orientation. While introverts are introverted, quiet, and retiring, extroverts are gregarious and outgoing.

Thus, type theories, whether body or psychological, while appealing because they provide a simple way of looking at personality, fail to disclose all its intricacies.

2. Trait Theories

Another approach to studying personality is through trait theories. A persistent characteristic of a person that occurs consistently in several situations is understood as a personality trait.

Situations. An individual’s traits are abstracted from his behaviour to understand personality better.

Trait theorists believe a person’s personality can be defined by where they fall on several continuous dimensions or scales, each representing a trait. As a result, we may assign an individual a score based on intelligence, emotional stability, aggressiveness, creativity, or any of several other factors.

It’s important to understand that traits are reactions, not something a person has. One does not have shyness; he feels and acts bashful in certain situations. The trait theory is a multiple model of type theory in many ways.

Trait Theory: An Overview

The search for personality, social, physical, or intellectual characteristics distinguishing leaders from non-leaders began in the 1930s. Efforts to research leadership traits have resulted in several dead ends. According to a survey of various studies, leadership traits were found in five out of twenty cases. The study attempted to identify traits that distinguish leaders from followers, but it failed. The research findings imply that while some traits boost the likelihood of becoming leaders, none guarantee success.

Psychologists studying in the field of trait theory are concerned with the following issues:

a. identifying the essential personality traits that provide a meaningful description of personality.
b. finding a means to quantify them. There are two ways to evaluate personality traits:
i.By responding to questions about his attitudes, feelings, and behaviours, the person characterises himself.
ii. Someone else assesses the person’s traits based on his knowledge of the individual.

The first method often employs a personality inventory, whereas the second employs a rating scale. A personality inventory is a questionnaire in which the individual reports his or her reactions or feelings in various situations.

A rating scale is a mechanism for recording judgements on traits. Someone else fills out a rating scale based on what he knows about the individual or by observing his behaviour in specific situations.

Evaluation of the Trait Theory

Trait theory is superior to type theories. Type theories make unrealistic attempts to categorise personalities into discrete, discontinuous groups. Trait theory, on the other hand, acknowledges the continuity of personas. The theory has also influenced personality assessments and factor analysis approaches in behaviour.

The trait approach, on the other hand, has significant flaws. Terms are challenging to define, there are discrepancies, and the scientific veracity of the results is seriously questioned. One important criticism of trait theories is that they are more descriptive than analytical and far from comprehensive theories of personality. Furthermore, some trait theories emphasise individual traits without addressing how these traits are structured within the personality. Finally, traits are abstracted from behaviour. However, we cannot explain behaviour using the same characteristics.

Examples of trait theory

For example, theories that consider personal characteristics and qualities that distinguish leaders from non-leaders. Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister

Her leadership was always well-known. She has been described as self-assured, iron-willed, determined, and decisive. These terms are traits, and the people who use them are trait-willed, determined, and decisive. These terms are traits, and those who use them support trait theory. The media is a big proponent of leadership trait theories, which emphasise human qualities and characteristics. Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher are two examples of people who are recognised. Rudolph Gintiani, the mayor of New York, and Richard Branson, the Virgin Group CEO, are charismatic and energetic. Both leaders and non-leaders share traits such as ambitions and enthusiasm, a desire to live, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, and job-related expertise. Recent studies show that strong self-monitors are more likely to immerse themselves as leaders since they are highly adaptable to various situations. When leaders such as Apple Computers’ Steve Jobs were labelled as charismatic or enthusiastic, these words mirrored the trait theory of leadership, which aims to pinpoint unique personal attributes and characteristics of leaders to explain their success. Influential leaders act distinctly. For example, Titan International CEO Marry Tailor and Siebel System CEO Tom Siebel have successfully led their firms through challenging moments. Their leadership style is aggressive, forceful, and authoritarian.

The underlying assumptions are where trait and behaviour theories vary regarding applications. Trait theories are correct. Leaders are born, not made, by the distinctive behaviour defined as the leader. Leadership can be taught and structured to instil behavioural patterns in individuals who desire to be leaders.

The disadvantages of trait theory

There are certain drawbacks to the trait theory.

-To begin with, no universal traits will provide leadership in all situations, whereas traits predict leadership in specific situations.

-Second, trait predicts behaviour more accurately in weak situations than in strong ones. Intense situations exist when strong incentives exist for a particular behaviour and clear expectations about which behaviour is rewarded and which is not. Intense situations provide an opportunity for leaders to express themselves. Organisations with solid cultures fulfil the description of an intense situation; however, the ability of the trait to predict leadership is limited in this case.

-The third disadvantage is the inability to distinguish between cause and effect. For instance, does self-confidence lead to leadership, or does success as a leader lead to self-confidence?

-Finally, trait predicts the appearance of leadership rather than distinguishing between influential and poor leaders.

The primary shift from traits began in the 1940s—1960 and emphasised research in the Behaviour and Behaviour Theories.

This theory is distinct from trait theory. This theory is based on an in-depth study of individual personalities.

Psychoanalytic theory is credited to Sigmund Freud. Freud, regarded as one of the intellectual giants in the history of contemporary thought, developed.

i.The first all-encompassing personality theory.
ii. A method of treating neurotic disorders.
iii. Based on his therapy experience and self-analysis, a sizable body of clinical observations.
Freud defined personality as consisting of three structures:

i.The ID: Only refers to the innate component of personality. The id is the mental agency that contains everything inherited, present at birth, and imprinted in the individual’s constitution, particularly impulses. It is unrecognised, raw, animalistic, knows no laws, obeys no rules, and stays fundamental to the individual throughout life. According to Freud, the id uses reflex actions to alleviate the personality of tension. The primary process refers to an individual’s attempts to build a mental image of the thing that will relieve stress.

ii. The ego: Mental representations do not satisfy demands, according to the ego. A hungry man cannot satisfy his appetite by consuming images. Reality must be taken into account. This is the ego’s role. The ego emerges from the id because of the need to engage with the real world.

iii. The superego: To perform constructively in society, a person must develop a set of values, norms, ethics, and attitudes relatively consistent with that society. The superego represents the internalised representation of society’s values and morality as taught to the kid by parents and others. According to society’s standards, the superego determines if an activity is right or bad. The id seeks pleasure, the ego evaluates reality, and the superego aspires to perfection.

The ego delays the gratification that the id craves immediately, and the superego conflicts with both the ego and the id because behaviour frequently falls short of the moral code it represents. The three work together as a team, resulting in integrated behaviour, more frequently in the typical person.

3. Evaluation of Psychoanalytic Theory

This theory has significantly impacted people’s psychological and philosophical conceptions.

Some of cognitive psychologists’ most recent research findings corroborate Freud’s emphasis on the conscience. This process has revealed that mental processes about which people are unaware have an essential impact on thoughts and actions.

The fact that this theory has developed a significant and long-lasting method of treating psychological problems emphasises its importance.

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory has received both praise and criticism. One criticism is that the approach is not based on experimentally verified facts. The psychoanalytic elements are speculative constructs that are not measurable, observable entities that can be analysed and verified scientifically.

Some detractors argue that Freud’s personality theory is virtually wholly based on his observations of emotionally disturbed individuals. It may not be an accurate description of a typical, healthy personality. Freud claimed that all human events (actions, thoughts, feelings, and aspirations) are legitimate and determined by strong instinctive forces, such as aggression. Thus, human beings are viewed as inherently mechanical, subject to the same natural principles that govern other organisms’ behaviour. Free will, choice, personal responsibility, spontaneity, and self-determination have no place in his approach.

4. Social Learning Theory

Learning can acquire or adjust much of human behaviour. Knowledge, language attitudes, values, anxieties, personality traits, and self-awareness are all acquired through learning. As a result, studying the learning process sheds more excellent light on human actions.

Social learning personality theorists consider The situation an essential factor in behaviour. Concerning the specific conditions that elicit, maintain, or modify them, the social learning theory focuses on behaviour patterns and cognitive activities. The emphasis is on what an individual does in a particular situation. Some of the personal factors that determine what an individual will do in a given situation are:

i. Competencies: Intellectual ability, social skills, and other attributes are examples of competencies.
ii. Cognitive Strategies: Habitual ways of selecting, attending to, and organising information into meaningful components.
iii. Outcome expectations: Expectations concerning the outcomes of certain behaviours and the meaning of specific inputs are called outcome expectations.
iv. Self-regulatory systems and plans: Individual differences in self-imposed objectives, rules directing behaviour, self-imposed rewards for success or punishment for failure, and ability to plan and execute steps leading to a goal will lead to disparities in behaviour. All of the elements listed above interact with the conditions of the specific situation to determine how an individual will behave.

Theorists of social learning also believe in patterns of reciprocal behaviour. Situations can elicit, maintain, or modify individual behaviour patterns. An individual, in turn, can shape the conditions of a problem. Our behaviour reflects and is impacted by the “situations” of life; the link is reciprocal. We can prevent certain conditions from being imposed on us by selectively attending to what is happening. And by our actions, we can partially create the conditions that impose changes in behaviour towards others, which are usually followed by reciprocal changes in behaviour towards others.

Evaluation of Social Learning Theory

Social learning theory has made significant contributions to clinical psychological and personality theory. It has led us to examine situations that can be exploited to change behaviour more closely. Careful use of learning principles has proven to be highly successful in modifying maladaptive behaviour.

Social learning theorists have been criticized for overemphasising the importance of context influences in behaviour and ignoring individual differences. They show little enthusiasm.
An individual is regarded as malleable, pliable, and passive.
—the inevitable doom of man in nature. Human nature is deemed inferior to environmental conditions.

5. The Humanistic Approach

The humanistic approach to the study of personality encompasses several theories that, while differing in some ways, share a similar emphasis on man’s capacity for self-direction and freedom of choice. They are concerned with the self and the subjective experiences of individuals. The theories emphasise man’s positive nature—his drive for advancement and self-actualization. They emphasise the “here and now” rather than early childhood events that may have moulded the individual’s personality.

The humanistic theory of personality is credited to Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.
The following describes their views on personality.

1. Rogers Self Theory

Rogers’ approach to personality is phenomenological. Phenomenology studies an individual’s subjective experience, feelings, inner conceptions, and views of the world and self. According to Rogers, behaviour entirely relies on how one perceives the world—that is, behaviour results from instantaneous events as they are genuinely viewed and processed by the individual. This approach to personality places emphasis on the self and its characteristics.

Rogers’ thoughts about human nature arose from his experiences working with emotionally troubled people. He has decided that the essence of human nature is primarily purposeful, forward-thinking, constructive, realistic, and entirely trustworthy. He sees the person as an active force of energy-oriented towards future goals and self-directed purpose instead of a creature being pushed and dragged by factors beyond his control.

Rogers acknowledges that people occasionally engage in bitter and antisocial actions but contends they are not acting by their inner natures. When people are free to experience and satisfy their inner nature, they show themselves as positive and reasonable creatures who can be trusted to live in harmony with themselves and others. This is how people function as fully human beings. Roger has a tremendous sense of reverence for human nature that is almost holy. He—that human organism—has a natural inclination to move toward differentiation, self-responsibility, cooperation, and maturity. According to Rogers, self-actualization is the fundamental motivational force that represents the organism’s innate drive to develop all of its potential in ways that serve to maintain or enhance the person.

2. Maslow’s Self-actualization Theory

In American psychology, Abraham Maslow is regarded as the spiritual father of humanism. Maslow’s humanistic psychology differs significantly from psychoanalysis, learning, or humanistic behaviour theories. On the other hand, it holds that man is actualized. Maslow intended the development of entire individuality, with all aspects of personality in harmony, through self-accusation.

Maslow’s humanistic psychology is based on existential philosophy and psychology developed by thinkers and writers such as Kierkegaard, Camus, Binswanger, and Boss in Europe.

Existential philosophy concerns man as an individual, and each person is solely responsible for his or her survival. He is never still, contrary to popular assumptions. He is continually in the process of evolving into something new. He strives to lead a truly authentic and fruitful life by utilising his abilities to become a valuable member of society. This intrinsic drive in a man is called self-actualization. As they relate to one’s existence in the world of other people, existential philosophy also emphasises human consciousness, subjective feelings and moods, and personal experiences. A “here-and-now” perspective might be the driving force behind this outlook. In the study of human nature, existentialists and humanists both place a strong emphasis on subjective experience. The experience itself and its meaning to the experiencing person take precedence over theoretical explanations and overbehavior.

Thus, the following are fundamental to the humanistic approach:

i. An individual is a complete entity.
ii. Human behaviour has no bearing on animal science.
iii. Human nature is inherently good.
iv. Man can be creative.
v. The psychological wellness of man is more important.

3.2 The Shaping of Personality

An intriguing and valuable study is how personality develops from newborn to adulthood. Psychologists have identified various stages in this development, the most important of which are covered in this section.

The Freudian Stages:

Sigmund Freud was a trailblazer in the field of stage theory. Although research on developmental stages dates back to the ancient Greeks, Freud developed a coherent stage theory. He was the first psychologist to believe childhood events may influence adult behaviour and consciousness. According to Freud, four universal stages of psychological development are critical for the creation of personality: oral, anal, phallic, and genital.

Freud includes a latency time, typically between the ages of 6 and 7 and the onset of puberty in the overall development scheme. Still, it is not strictly speaking a stage—the first three stages of development, known as pregenital phases, last from birth to five years. Because the genital zones of the body do not play a prominent role in personality formation, the fourth stage corresponds to the onset of puberty. The titles of these stages are based on the parts of the body whose stimulation allows for the discharge of sexual energy.

i. The Oral Stage: This stage lasts for the first year of life. Infants depend entirely on others for survival; reliance is their only source of instinctive gratification. The mouth is the body zone where biological urges are attempted to be suppressed. According to Freud, the mouth is still a critical erogenous zone.

ii. The Anal Stage: The attention switches from the mouth to the anal region throughout the second and third years of life.

iii. The Phallic Stage: 4 years old. This is a stage in a person’s psychosexual development. Adult males who obsess on the phallic stage are typically boisterous, egotistical, boastful, and ambitious, while females exhibit flirting traits.

i. The Latency Period: The latency period (the primary school age) spans between the ages of 6 or 7 and the commencement of adolescence and is particularly important for the social development of the kid and for obtaining the knowledge and abilities needed to get along in the workday world.

iv. The Genital Stage: This stage lasts from youth to adulthood. Freud argued that for people to achieve the ideal genital character, they needed to abandon the passivity of their early childhood days when love, security, physical comfort, and all other gratifications were freely provided, and nothing was demanded in return. They must work, delay gratification, become responsible, and, most importantly, take a more active role in coping with life’s issues.

3.3 Assessment of Freud’s Stages

Freud deserves credit for being the pioneering stage theorist. He presents some insightful observations that inspired subsequent studies on personality development. There is barely an area of modern life that has not been touched in some way by Freudian philosophy: sociology, social welfare, politics, law, the family, education, delinquency and mental illness treatment, medical, propaganda, advertising, entertainment, and even religion.

Freud made our understanding of human personality richer and more comprehensive than we imagined. Although the human mind is intangible and invisible, Freud showed that its study may be done with scientific precision. Human behaviour appears random, influenced by unknown motives. Yet, Freud demonstrated that it is possible to discover a law that regulates people’s words, ideas, and feelings and that they do not behave irrationally as it appears but in tune with their inner dynamics.

His works are considered a revolution in our understanding of human personality for two reasons: first, he developed a new scientific method of studying the human mind, and second, applying that method produced results that compelled us to revise our ideas about human personality.

However, Freud’s heavy dependence on sex to explain personality development stages has been criticised. The main point of contention is Freud’s choice of terminology.

1. The Neo-Freudian Stages

Erik Erikson, a neo-Freudian, added a new dimension to personality development, which he argued was nothing more than a systematic extension of Freud’s psychosexual development. Erikson believed that individuals’ social adaptations should receive more attention than their sexual adaptations. He postulated that social problems experienced during development were increasingly important stages in which the child encounters a broader range of human relationships as he grows up.

Erikson claimed that a psychosocial crisis happens in each stage and should be resolved optimally for a person to have a normal, satisfying personality. According to Erikson, a crisis is not a disaster but a turning point in an individual’s development.

Erikson’s eight stages of psychological development are as follows:

i. Infancy: From birth until one year.

ii. Early Childhood: From one to three years.

iii. Play age: 4 to 5 years

iv. School age: 6 to 11 years.

v. Puberty and adolescence: twelve to twenty years.

vi. Young adulthood: ages twenty-four to twenty-four years.

vii. Middle adulthood: 25 to 65 years old.

viii. Late adulthood: old age.

Assessment of psychosocial stages Erikson postulated eight stages of man, which provide fresh insights into personality traits.

-First, Erikson developed a theory that emphasises the roles of society and individuals in developing and organising personality.

Second, Erikson was sensitive to adolescence, a period usually disregarded as the time when a person develops their psychological and social well-being.

-Finally, Erikson has instilled a sense of optimum by illustrating that each stage of psychosocial development has the capacity for both strength and weakness, implying that failure at one stage does not inevitably portend failure at a subsequent stage.

Even though Erikson’s theory has acquired popularity in clinical and academic settings, research efforts to test it are limited. Erikson even concedes that his personality theories may not be immediately amenable to experimental verification.

2. Cognitive Stages

Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, is credited with establishing the ‘cognitive’ or ‘aware’ stages of personality development. Piaget considers ‘conscious’ instincts to be essential factors in personality development. Piaget, who adored children, spent most of his life monitoring them to understand when and how they developed their thinking abilities. He distinguished four stages of personality development, which are as follows:

i. Sensorimotor: Age 0–2 years: Piaget defines sensorimotor as the infant’s straightforward response to stimuli with less complicated information processing.

ii. Pre-operational Stage: During the pre-operational stage, the infant learns to separate himself from his surroundings and to classify objects using symbols and words.

iii. Concrete Operational Stage: The concrete operational stage is defined by an intellectual understanding of the concept of mass discourse, regardless of its shape.

iv. Formal Operation Stage: In this final stage, reasoning can occur on abstract and concrete levels.

Piaget’s views on personality are accurate since the cognitive stages impact organisational behaviour, notably the formal operational stage, in which most people are active members. Because employees can reason, visualise, and assess objects, concrete objects do not need to be influenced to cause behaviour at this stage. The problem with cognitive theory is that it does not explain all aspects of personality development.

3.4 Immaturity to Maturity

Harvard Professor Chris Argyris has identified specific characteristics of human personality development. He suggests that humans evolve along a continuum from infancy to maturity as adults rather than passing through different stages. However, people can have their degree of development mapped according to the seven dimensions illustrated below at any stage of development:

The Immaturity to Maturity continuum

Immaturity Characteristics	Maturity Characteristics
Passivity	Activity
Dependence	Independence
Few Ways of Behaving	Diverse Behavior
Shallow Interests	Deep Interests
Short-Time Perspective	Long-Time Perspective
Subordinate Position	Superordinate Position
Lack of Self-Awareness	Self-Awareness Control

In contrast to Freud and Erikson’s stage theories, Argyris’ immaturity-maturity model of personality is specifically designed to study and analyse organisational behaviour. Argyris assumes that the mature end of the continuum best describes the personalities of managerial personnel. The formal organisation should allow for activity rather than passivity, independence rather than dependence, long-term rather than short-term perspective, occupation of a position higher than that of peers, and expression of deep, essential abilities to obtain full expression of employees’ personalities. Argyris contends that this is much too often the case.

The mature organizational participant feels frustrated and worried, and he or she is at odds with the modern formal organization. According to Argyris, there is a fundamental inconsistency between the mature personality’s needs and the formal organisation’s nature.

3.5 Determinants of Personality

What are the determinants of personality development? This question may be the most challenging of all the intricacies and unresolved questions in studying human behaviour. Five main categories can be used to study the determinants of personality:

i. Heredity

The role of heredity in personality development is an old debate in personality theory. Heredity refers to the factors determined during conception. Physical size, facial beauty, energy level, muscle composition and reflexes, and biological rhythms are all believed to be characteristics that are either totally or substantially inherited from one’s parents. According to the trait approach, the chemical structure of the genes, located in the chromosomes and containing thousands of genes that appear to be trait transmitters, is the ultimate explanation of an individual’s personality. The role of heredity in personality development is still poorly understood. The issue is that geneticists confront significant challenges in acquiring scientific knowledge about humans. However, the role of heredity in personality development cannot be overstated. Physical characteristics, for example, can be substantially linked to heredity. All humans are believed to inherit the following traits:

a. Physical structure (how tall or short someone is, whether they have a long or short nose, if they have huge or little feet—in a nutshell, how they are put together)

b. Reflexes (direct responses to stimuli, such as removing a pinprick or blinking when something approaches the eye)

c. Innate drives (impulses to act based on physiological tensions; nevertheless, these must be coupled with activities that lessen tensions through learning)

d. intelligence (the ability to learn and adapt replies)

e. temperament (patterned and recurring responses connected with core emotional makeup, such as phlegm, excitability, or sluggishness)

ii. Environment

If all personality characteristics were determined by heredity, they would be fixed at birth and could not be changed by experience. Both the environment and heredity impact personality development. Factors like culture are included in the broad term “environment.” Culture establishes standards, attitudes, and values passed down from generation to generation, resulting in consistency. Anthropologists, to whom culture belongs as a subject, have established culture’s vital role in developing the human personality.

While developing, the child learns to behave in ways expected by the family’s culture into which the baby was born. Most societies expect males to exhibit different behaviour than females. Every culture has subcultures, each with views on moral values, hygiene standards, fashion, and what constitutes success.

The cultural sub-group influences personality. All boys (as compared to girls) are expected to show specific personality characteristics; however, a poor boy living in an urban slum is expected to behave differently than a well-to-do boy reared in a middle-class suburb in a particular area. Although culture has a significant influence on personality development, a linear relationship between personality and the given culture cannot be established for two reasons:

a. Because certain people—parents and others—who do not all share the same values and practices transmit cultural impacts on a person, they are not uniform.

b. Each individual has unique experiences and responds differently to social forces, and biological factors cause variances in behaviour.

iii. Contribution from the family

The family significantly influences personality development, especially in the early stages. Parents have an important role in the identification process, which is critical for an individual’s early development. There are three ways to look at the process:

a. Identification can be viewed as the similarity of behaviour (including feelings and attitudes between behaviour and model);

b. Identification can also be viewed as the child’s motivations or aspirations to be like the model.

c. Identification can be viewed as the process by which the child adopts the characteristics of the model.

In addition to their direct influence, parents’ general home environment is crucial to personality development. Siblings (brothers and sisters) also have an impact on personality. It has been argued that sibling status is an important psychological trait because it represents a microcosm of the significant social experiences of adolescence and adulthood. It is argued that people born first are more likely to be schizophrenic, more vulnerable to social pressures, and more dependent than those born later. Compared to later-born infants, the first child is more likely to experience the world as orderly, predictable, and sensible.

iv. Socialization process

There is a growing recognition that other relevant individuals, groups, and organisations play an essential role in personality development. This is generally referred to as the socialisation process. Because the process is not linear, it is particularly relevant to organisational behaviour. It is confined to childhood but instead occurs throughout one’s life.

Evidence is accumulating that socialisation, in particular, may be one of the best explanations for why employees behave the way they do in today’s organisations. Socialisation is the process by which a person acquires, from the enormously wide range of behavioural potentialities available to him or her beginning at birth, those behaviour patterns that are customary and acceptable to the family’s standards, then the social group, and finally, the employing organisation.

Thus, socialisation begins with the first contact between a mother and her new baby. Other members of the immediate family (father, brothers, sisters, and close relatives or friends), followed by the social group (peers, schoolmates, and working group members), play crucial roles beyond infancy.

v. Situational considerations

The determinants listed above are undoubtedly important to personality, yet it must be recognised that the immediate situation may ultimately rule. While it appears natural to assume that situations will influence an individual’s personality, a clean classification scheme informing us of the impact of different situations has thus far evaded us.

However, certain situations are more relevant than others in determining personality. According to Lee Sechrest, what is taxonomically significant is that situations appear to differ significantly in the limitations they put on behaviour, with certain conditions, such as a church, restricting numerous behaviours and others, such as a picnic in a public park, constraining very few.

According to the preceding discussion, personality is a complicated notion that reflects various factors within and outside the individual. Personality evolves through distinct stages and never truly stops evolving. However, one can investigate personality at any moment in its developmental process to compare and contrast individual personalities.

3.6 Personality Traits

A trait is a propensity to respond to numerous kinds of stimuli equivalently. In effect, traits are psychological constructs that make multiple stimuli and responses equivalent. Regarding traits, many stimuli may elicit the same response, or various responses (perceptions, interpretations, feelings, and actions) may have the same functional meaning. There have been several attempts to isolate traits, but the efforts have been unsuccessful due to their sheer number. When such a significant number of traits must be evaluated, it is nearly impossible to anticipate behaviour. As a result, efforts have been focused on reducing these thousands to a manageable number to determine the source of primary traits.

One study found 171 surface traits but concluded they were superficial and lacked descriptive power. He was looking for a small group of traits that might help him detect underlying patterns. The result identified sixteen personality factors, which he referred to as underlying or surface traits, which are fundamental personality reasons for surface traits.

These sixteen traits have been proven to be generally steady and constant sources of behaviour, subject to the influence of specific situations.

3.7 The Myers – Briggs Framework

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a widely used psychological tool that assesses and categorizes personality based on a set of preferences. During World War II, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers created it, and it is based on Carl Jung’s theories. The MBTI is designed to help individuals understand themselves and others, improve communication, and identify suitable career paths.

Components of the MBTI Framework:

1. Four Dichotomies:

The MBTI classifies personality along four dichotomies, each representing a preference for one of two opposing ways of interacting with the world:

• Extraversion (E) vs. Introversion (I):
  • Extraversion: Energized by interaction with others, outgoing, and expressive.
  • Introversion: Energized by time alone, reserved, and reflective.
• Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N):
  • Sensing: Prefers concrete facts and details, practical and realistic.
  • Intuition: Focuses on possibilities and future implications, imaginative and innovative.
• Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F):
  • Thinking: Makes decisions based on logic, objective analysis, and consistency.
  • Feeling: Makes decisions based on personal values, empathy, and harmony.

• Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P):
  • Judging: Prefers structure, organization, and planning.
  • Perceiving: Prefers flexibility, spontaneity, and adapting to new information.

2. 16 Personality Types:

By combining the preferences from each dichotomy, the MBTI creates 16 potential personality types, each with a four-letter code (such as ISTJ or ENFP). These types describe an individual’s unique way of approaching the world, making decisions, and interacting with others.

3. Cognitive Functions:

Jung’s theory of cognitive functions underlies the MBTI. Each personality type has a dominant function (primary way of processing information) and an auxiliary function (secondary way of processing information). The four cognitive functions are Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, and Intuition.

Application and Criticisms:

Applications:

• Self-Understanding: The MBTI is often used for self-reflection and personal development, helping individuals understand their natural preferences and potential areas for growth.
• Team Building: In organizational settings, the MBTI is used for team-building activities to improve communication and collaboration among team members with different personality types.
• Career Counseling: It can provide insights into suitable career paths based on an individual’s personality preferences.

Criticisms:

• Binary Nature: Critics argue that the MBTI’s forced-choice nature, where individuals are categorized into one of two options for each dichotomy, oversimplifies the complexity of personality.
• Reliability and Validity: Some studies question the reliability and validity of the MBTI, suggesting that individuals may receive different results when retaking the test.
• Lack of Scientific Basis: The MBTI has been criticized for lacking a strong empirical basis and not aligning with modern personality psychology.

While the MBTI has gained popularity and is widely used, it’s essential to approach it with a critical mindset, recognize its limitations, and understand that personality is a multifaceted and dynamic aspect of human behaviour.