This document discusses personality, including definitions, factors that shape personality, and how psychologists understand and assess personality. It provides definitions of personality as enduring characteristics that produce consistency and individuality, as well as the sum of characteristics that differentiate people. It discusses trait, psychodynamic, behavioral, and humanistic theories of personality. It also outlines methods that psychologists use to assess personality, including interviews, observation, and psychological tests such as self-report measures and projective tests.

1. Personality
What is Personality?
Definition:
Personality is a complex hypothetical construct that has been defined in a variety of ways. Following are
some of its more prominent definitions:
1. Personality is the pattern of enduring characteristics that produce consistency and individuality
in a given person.
2. The sum total of characteristics on the basis of which people can be differentiated from each
other.
3. Relatively stable pattern of behaviours and consistent internal states that explain a person's
behavioural tendencies.
Main points:
From above definitions we extract the following common points:
 Characteristics / traits / behaviors: Personality is an aggregate of consistent behaviors or traits
on the basis of which we can differentiate one person from the other.
 Consistency: The stability in a person’s behavior over time and across situations.
 Distinctiveness: The behavioral differences among people reacting to the same situation.
 Personality refers to a relatively stable set of feelings and behaviors that have been significantly
formed by genetic and environmental factors.
What are the factors that shape our personality?
Factors influencing personality: Following are some major forces that influence our personality:

2. How psychologists understand and explain personality?
Personality has always been an interesting topic for psychologists. We can say this convincingly when we
observe their efforts in this area of psychology. Despite its wide spread importance, studying and
knowing about personality has further increased in the organization settings. All types of organizations
require human capital with particular abilities to perform particular tasks, both effectively and
efficiently. This has led the organizations to know more about personality and its constituents. Theories
of personality can help managers in this regard. Theories of personality, in simple words, are the
explanations given by psychologists concerning what personality is, how and what differentiate one
individual from the other.
Theories of Personality: We can classify theories explaining personality into the following categories.
1. Trait approaches / theories
2. Psychodynamic approaches
3. Behavioral perspectives
4. Humanistic perspective
Explanation: Now we explain each perspective separately.
1. Trait approach to personality: This model of personality seeks to identify the basic traits that
are necessary to describe personality. This approach states that all human beings possess
certain traits that determine their personality. Traits are personality characteristics and
behaviors that individuals display in different situations. There are various theories categorized
under this approach, however, following theories are very common:
a. AllPort ‘s trait theory: Gordon Allport reviewed dictionary and identified words that
describe some traits of a person. He then categorized these traits into different
determine a person i.e. cardinal, central, and categories. According to him, there are
three fundamental categories of traits that secondary.
b. Cattel and eysneck theory: Cattel and esyneck analyzed traits identified earlier. Through
factor analysis they came up with different pairs of traits that represent various
dimensions of personality. According to Eysneck, Personality could best be described in
terms of just three major dimensions: extraversion (sociable), neuroticism (emotionality),
and psychoticism. On the basis of these three diemensions, we can predict a person’s
personality.
c. The big five personality trait model:
 There’re five set of traits that lie at the core of personality. These traits
are especially more relevant to organizations. A person, who is high on all of
these five traits, is considered to be an asset for that organization.
 The traits include OCEAN (Openness to experience, conscientiousness,
extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism).

3.  All of these five sets of traits are positively related to organizations; high
would be leaders / successful in organizations and could take the orgazniation
forward. Organizations / managers should look for these traits while recruiting
and selecting new incumbents into their existing lot. Means, if there ‘re two
candidates who share the same experience, education etc, however, one
between them is high in these five traits, then HR manager should prefer him
over the other.
 These five traits are related to both intrinsic (job satisfaction) and
extrinsic (income, status, reward) career success.
Here is detail of these five traits:
• Extroversion: Refers to the tendency to be sociable, friendly, and expressive.
• Neuroticism (Emotional Stability): Refers to the tendency to experience positive emotional
states.
• Agreeableness: Being courteous, forgiving, tolerant, trusting, and self-hearted.
• Conscientiousness: Is exhibited by those who are described as dependable, organized, and
responsible. They are more cautious while doing any task.
• Openness to Experience: Reflects the extent to which an individual has broad interests and is
willing to be a risk-taker. They like new challenges and experiences.
2. Psychodynamic approach: It is an approach to personality that states personality is the outcome
(result) of psychological forces within a person. The most prominent in this approach is Sigmund
Freud who emphasized on the role of unconsciousness. According to him, personality is what a
person’s unconscious makes him. He thought that there’re three parts of personality i.e. ID,
EGO, and SUPEREGO. Majority of them is made of unseen forces. These unconscious forces
express themselves in dreams, mistakes of everyday’s life, in a person’s mental disorders. In
short, unconscious plays predominant part in a person’s personality and drive him towards what
he is.

4. C.G Jung: Personality is predominantly determined by collective unconscious. The unconscious
that we have inherited from our ancestors / forefathers as a result of their experiences. these
experiences are preserved in the collective unconscious of a person in the form of archetypes.
Archetypes are different patterns that make us behave in a certain way. Personality according to
Jung is determined by collective unconscious (Personal unconscious plus unconscious inherited
in us).
Adler’s theory of Personality: Adler believes that the feelings of inferiority or inferiority
complex plays predominant role in a person’s personality. According to him, inferiority complex
is the motivation / variables that predominantly determine the nature of personality of a
person. Human beings have a tendency to become superior. This tendency to become superior
makes him what he is.
3. Behavioristic theories of personality: This category of personality theories contains theories
from the behavioral school of thought. These theorists stress more on the role of external
reinforcements and system of rewards and punishments. They believe that personality is
determined by environment. This most prominent in this category is J.B Watson, who stress
more on external reinforcements. Personality is predominantly determined by what the
environment reinforces. Any behavior that is rewarded by environment is likely to be repeated.
"He said “give me a child and let me control his environment. Thus, I can make him a thief or a
prince.” If one can control external reinforcements then he can influence personality. In short,
Personality is what environment writes on it.
Albert Bandura, a Canadian psychologist, who puts across the view that it is the contingent
factors (the system of rewards and punishments in the environment) that determines what a
person is going to become. Personality to him is the sum total of contingent rewards and
punishments. Further, he puts forward the view that personality is influenced / determined by
role models e.g. a cricketer likes to become like a legendary player of his interest.
4. Humanistic theories of personality: In this category, we have included theories of Karl Rogers
and Abraham Maslow. The former believes that every person has been born with certain
potential and he is propelled /motivated / pushed from within to fulfill that potential and makes
him what he is. Whereas, the later believes that the need for self actualization motivates a
person to become what he is. If someone has potential in sports, music, mathematics and logic
and he actualizes this then he can become great personality.
How to assess personality?
Assessment of personality: Over the passage of time, psychologists have come up with many ways
through which we can measure personality. Following list contain some of these methods:
1. Interview
2. Observation and behavioral assessment
3. Psychological tests

5. a. Self report measures
b. Projective tests
Hence, the first two are very common and known to everyone; therefore, we skip them in our
discussion. We will explain remaining methods in the following discussion.
3. Psychological tests: These are standardized measures devised to assess behavior objectively, to help
people make decisions about their lives. There are many psychological tests devised for assessing
personality, however, we have included two broad types of tests in our discussion.
a. Self report measures of personality: in this type of test, subject is asked questions. His replies to
questions are recorded and then analyzed. The very common type of this test is MMPI-2
MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multiple Personality inventory) is a widely used self report test that identifies
people with psychological difficulties. It is used to predict every day behavior. The questions contained
in this test are of true and false type questions. The test contains questions on 567 items.
b. Projective tests: In this type of test, subject is shown an ambiguous stimulus and is asked to describe
it in his own words e.g. tell a story about it. The most common type of project tests includes:
 Rorschach test
 Thematic apperception test (TAT)
Conclusion: Personality test must have the following three characteristics:
 Validity: Test should measure accurately for what is it devised.
 Reliability: The test should be consistently measure it.
 Norms: The test should allow us to compare results of one person with another.