Understanding Personality

In the last blog we looked at the relation between the individual and his environment and how the behavior could be understood as part of this interaction. In this blog we begin our journey towards understanding the concept of "personality"

Personality could be understood as a relatively stable set of characteristics that influence an individual's behavior. It is the individual difference that provides consistency to an individual's behavior. The origin of Personality of an individual has been a much debated issue by a lot of intellects - some have attributed it to hereditary, others talk about an early childhood experience etc. 

Personality has also been understood to include attitudes, modes of thought, feelings, impulses, strivings, actions, responses to opportunity and stress and everyday modes of interacting with others - it is the repetitive nature of these that makes it part of the character of the individual and hence a part of his/her personality.

To understand better about Personality, numerous theories have been proposed by researchers. For the sake of discussion, over the next few blogs we would look at these 4 traits:

• Trait Theory
• Psycho-dynamic Theory
• Humanistic Theory
• Integrative Theory