What,Why,Where We Need Personality?

What is Personality?

In some ways we are all the same. We all have the same human nature. We share a common humanity. We all have human bodies and human minds, we all have human thoughts and human feelings.

Yet in other ways we are all completely different and unique. No two people are truly alike. No two people can ever have the same experience of life, the same perspective, the same mind.

Even identical twins are unique in this respect: twin number 1 will always be twin number 1 and will never know what it is actually like to be twin number 2, to experience life and see the world through number 2’s eyes. (See [1] No Two Alike by Judith Rich Harris.)

Somewhere between these two — our common humanity and our unique individuality — lies personality.

Personality is about our different ways of being human. How we are all variations on the same themes. How the human nature we all share manifests in different styles of thinking, feeling and acting.

Defining Personality

Personality can be defined in different ways, depending on whether we focus on the individual or on people in general.

If we focus on people in general, then we can define personality in terms of individual differences — that is, the range of different styles of thinking, feeling and acting.

Just as human beings can differ a great deal in terms of their physical traits (height, weight, hair, and so on), they also differ in terms of mental and behavioural traits. For example, some people are noticeably talkative and outgoing while others are noticeably quiet and reserved. Such differences and variations are seen everywhere throughout the human population.

If we focus on the personality of a specific individual, we can define it as that person’s particular set of enduring dispositionsor long-term tendencies to think, feel and act in particular ways.

We’re not talking about specific actions being repeated again and again, like compulsive hand-washing, but about overallpatterns, tendencies, inclinations. Someone who has tended to be quiet and reserved up to now will probably still tend to be quiet and reserved tomorrow. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they are compelled to be quiet and reserved at all times, in every possible situation. Rather, they are disposed to be be quiet and reserved more often than not.

We can also sometimes see changes in an individual’s personality over time. There may be subtle developmental changes during adolescence, for example, or there can be quite dramatic alterations following a massive brain injury.

Before we move on, here is a little puzzle to think about:

Is personality simply an umbrella term for all our dispositions (how we think and feel and act), or is it a ‘thing’ in its own right, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts? Some psychologists see it one way and some see it the other way.

Talking About Personality

Four Types?

In ancient times it was thought that all people could be divided into four basic types —sanguine, choleric, melancholicand phlegmatic. This was supposedly something to do with the dominant fluids in their bodies (blood, yellow bile, black bile or phlegm).

This idea was briefly revived in Renaissance Europe and there are some modern versions of it around today. (See [3] Passions and Tempers by Noga Arikha.)

Despite the simple appeal of this approach, trying to fit all the world’s people with their amazing range of differences into so few boxes is not easy.

For example, ‘sanguine’ people are supposedly extroverted, creative, sensitive, compassionate, thoughtful, tardy, forgetfuland sarcastic. But in fact there is no evidence that these characteristics go together at all. You can certainly be creative without being extroverted. You can certainly be compassionate without being sarcastic. So what does being ‘the sanguine type’ really mean, if anything?

Dividing people up into a few types may be a nice and simple way of looking at the world, but in reality it doesn’t get us very far.

A Thousand Words?

An alternative approach used by modern psychologists is to simply focus on the words we use to describe each other’s personalities. The idea that such words can tell us about personality, or at least how we conceive personality, is known as the lexical hypothesis.

When we try to describe someone in words — whether it’s their physical appearance or their personality — we focus on describing their most distinctive features. This is because we tend to notice and remember outstanding characteristics.

For instance, we might describe some people as tall and some as short, though there is no word in the dictionary to describe people of average height. Likewise, the words we use to describe personality focus on how individuals stand out as above or below average in their mental and behavioural characteristics.

So, just as we might describe someone as quite tall and completely bald based on their most obvious physical attributes, we will also describe personality using phrases like quite nice but extremely quiet. The words most often used refer to theextremes rather than the averages.

And these extremes can be organised into pairs of opposites —shy v. outgoing, impulsive v. cautious, dominant v. submissive, and so on.

Now, if we take all the personality-describing words in a dictionary (thousands of them!) and then analyse how much people think they differ or overlap in terms of meaning, we find that they can be organised into a certain number of sets or ‘clusters’. For example:

• Words like domineering, autocratic, and pushy all have a similar (though not identical) meaning.
• Words like domineering and submissive or friendly andhostile have opposite meanings, just like tall and short.
• Words like domineering, patient, and playful have no particular relationship, just like tall and bald.

So if we cluster together all words that have a b-r-o-a-d-l-y similar meaning, how many clusters do we get?

There is actually no single answer as it depends on how where you draw the line, statistically. You can have more clusters of words with highly similar meanings, or you can have fewer clusters of words with more vaguely similar meanings.

The main question psychologists were interested in is: How FEW clusters can we reduce all these words to? (Scientists are always looking for ways to reduce complex things to the most simple account possible.) And doing exactly this kind of analysis, what psychologists have found again and again is that personality words can be reduced to just five clusters.

In other words, there are five big sets of words (including their opposites) which contain pretty much all of the words we might use to describe personality. This is one of the most robust findings to come out of decades of research into human personality.

The Big Five

These five sets are commonly known as the Big Five. We could simply call them Factor 1, Factor 2 and so on, but they have been labelled as follows:

• EXTROVERSION — the tendency to be outgoing, energetic and sociable
• OPENNESS — the tendency to enjoy variety, novelty, challenge and intellectual stimulation
• NEUROTICISM — the tendency to experience unpleasant emotions
• AGREEABLENESS — the tendency to be friendly, compassionate and cooperative
• CONSCIENTIOUSNESS — the tendency to show self-discipline and self-control

Each of these five factors is actually a sort of mega pair of opposites: Extroversion v. Introversion, Openness v. Closedness, Neuroticism v. Emotional stability, Agreeableness v. Hostility, Conscientiousness v. Spontaneity. For example, we find that there is one whole set of words which describe either aspects of Extroversion (outgoing, energetic) or its opposite, Introversion (quiet, withdrawn).

It’s as if every word we may use to describe one another’s personality falls under one of these five headings.

So in contrast to the ‘types’ approach, many psychologists now understand personality as how we all vary on these five dimensions or five factors. It’s not that the world is divided into (say) sanguines and cholerics and so on. Rather, we are all variations on the same themes, and these variations define our personality traits. We each have our own scores on the same five scales. An introvert, for example, is simply someone who scores low on the extroversion scale.

The H Factor

The five factors are not etched in stone. Many studies suggest that we can (and should) include a sixth factor, called Honesty/Humility (or the H factor). This is essentially a dimension of character maturity, ranging from high selfishness to high integrity.

Adding this H factor to the other five gives us a six-factor model that is more popularly known as the HEXACO model. (See [5]The H Factor of Personality)

Multiple Facets

A problem with the five or six factors is that they don’t reallyaccount for personality. They just organise the words that people use to talk about personality into the fewest number of sets, and treat those sets as ‘dimensions of personality’.

In addition, the number of clusters or factors we ‘find’ depends entirely on how strict or how loose we are with our statistics. To get down to five factors we have to accept fairly loose connections between words. This means that, for example, we get lots of surprisingly different traits lumped together under ‘extroversion’ (such as dominant, outgoing and passionate), which is kind of reminiscent of having lots of different things attributed to the ‘sanguine’ type.

We could, however, be much stricter with our factor analysis and look for smaller clusters of words which are strongly connected.

When researchers do this, they can identify around 20-30 factors. In fact, many now see each of the Big Five factors as a sort of general “super-trait”, each one covering a number of specific sub-traits or facets that are narrower in scope:

• Neuroticism:
  • Irritability
  • Insecurity
  • Emotionality
• Extraversion:
  • Sociability
  • Unrestraint
  • Assertiveness
  • Activity-Adventurousness
• Openness:
  • Intellect
  • Imagination-Creativity
  • Perceptiveness
• Agreeableness:
  • Warmth-Affection
  • Gentleness
  • Generosity
  • Modesty-Humility
• Conscientiousness:
  • Orderliness
  • Decisiveness-Consistency
  • Reliability
  • Industriousness

Different researchers have identified different facets, but generally they describe 3 to 5 facets associated with big factor. This seems to give a much richer description.

So if the question is …How many personality traits are there?

The answer is … How many do you want?

It’s all about whatever is convenient for any given discussion. If you want to divide people into two types (say, extravert versus introvert), then you can. If you want to describe how people vary in broad brush-strokes, then you can use the Big 5 (or 6) factors. If you want a high resolution picture of individual differences, then you can use 20-30 facets or more.

Just remember: these factor/trait models are all about the words we use to talk about personality… which begs the question: How much do they tell us about personality itself?

For example, what if there are some aspects of personality that do not manifest as dimensions with polar opposites (as in dominant-v.-submissive) but instead, like eye colour or hair type, do actually manifest in discrete categories? (Could the psychopathic type be one of them?)

Personality Disorder!

Funnily enough, despite widespread confirmation of the Big Five (or six), there is still no agreed psychological understanding of personality. This is because psychologists have yet to agree on their understanding of human nature. Different psychologists hold fundamental beliefs that are diametrically opposed.

(As an aside, many students who study psychology are disappointed to find that this is the case. They begin hoping to learn “what makes people tick” based on good science. Instead, they just learn about competing theories and schools of thought.)

The many ‘classical’ branches of psychology include psychodynamics (or Freudian psychology), behaviourism, neuropsychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, and social psychology. Each takes a different approach to explaining human nature, human behaviour and human personality. For example:

• According to evolutionary psychology our behaviour is biologically-driven by our genes, which were shaped by natural selection over several million years.
• According to behaviouristic psychology, our behaviour is biologically-driven plus the result of prior conditioning as we encounter rewards and punishments.
• According to psychodynamic psychology, our behaviour is biologically-driven plus the result of unconscious conflicts and repressed memories from childhood.
• According to cogitive psychology, our behaviour is biologically-driven plus the result of how we learn to process information.
• According to social psychology, our behaviour is biologically-driven plus the result of how what we learn is shaped by our surrounding society, culture, and the groups we belong to.

Each of these schools of thought emphasises the importance of one source of influence. And they all appear to be right! But at the same time, perhaps, each also loses sight of the bigger picture. Psychology has become rather more fragmented than integrated.

Free Will v. Determinism

One thing all of the classical branches of psychology agree upon is that our every thought, feeling and action is determined by pre-existing forces beyond our control — the forces of nature and/or nurture.

In other words, we are entirely the products of our genetics, our upbringing, our environment, or whatever. It’s all out of our control. We are nothing but biological machines, genetic puppets.

This has been the core assumption of most theorists.

But since the middle of the 20th Century, some psychologists have questioned this assumption:

• Is everything we think, feel and do really determined by forces beyond our control, or do we have at least some free will to make our own decisions?
• Can we change and improve our future selves by choice, or are we doomed to remain hapless products of our past?

Free will is a profound issue. Some psychologists believe in it but many — perhaps the majority — do not. Why? Because it does not sit easily with the scientific assumption that all events are automatically determined by prior events.

This difference of opinion has a dramatic effect on how different psychologists study human behaviour and personality, how they interpret research findings, and what they believe it is possible for human beings to achieve.

The New Psychologies

In contrast to the ‘classical’ psychologists who view the person as no more than a biological machine, there has been a new wave of psychologists who emphasise the role of consciousness and free will:

• Humanistic psychologists focus on the individual’s use of free will in shaping their own personal development.
• Positive psychologists focus on enhancing the experience of life, rather than just just repairing psychological damage.
• Transpersonal psychologists focus on exceptional human experiences which suggest the role of spiritual factors in human life.

Humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow have emphasised that personality development is at least partly the result of our conscious choices in life. If people want to change their own personalities, their intention to do so is important. (It is this perspective that has given birth to the hugely popular self-help and personal growth movements.)

Temperament & Character

Suggesting that we have free will doesn’t mean denying that we are constrained by the forces of nature and nurture. Both can be true. For this reason, some psychologists have come to see personality as both externally determined and internally driven.

Or to put it another way:

Personality = Temperament + Character

where…

• Temperament refers to those traits that are determined by our nature and nurture. Even at birth, we can see differences in temperament. Some infants, for example, are naturally timid while others are naturally bold.
• Character refers to how we develop as individuals, how we choose to deal with life as we grow through experience.

Character is also the sum of our choices, for better or worse — our virtues and vices. A person of good character, for example, has high integrity; a person of bad character does not. It helps to be a good judge of character.

It has been said that temperament is something we share with other animals, while character is, perhaps, uniquely human.

According to the Temperament and Character model,temperament consists of four dimensions —

• Harm avoidance: the tendency to avoid potentially threatening situations
• Reward dependence: the tendency to pursue social rewards and positive feedback
• Novelty seeking: the tendency to explore opportunities for new kinds of reward
• Perseverance: the tendency to continue seeking a goal despite frustration or fatigue

while character consists of three —

• Self-directedness: the tendency to determine one’s own experiences across different situations
• Cooperativeness: the tendency to co-exist harmoniously with others across different situations
• Self-transcendence: the tendency to meaningfully relate one’s personal experience to life or the universe as a whole

The Self-Transcendence aspect of character refers to the drive some people have to search for something beyond their individual existence — the spiritual dimension. (See alsoMaslow’s Hierarchy of Human Motivation, where Self-Transcendence is viewed as the highest drive the top of the pyramid.) The temperament and character model is the only major model of personality to include this aspect, though it appears to be central to our well-being. (See [6] Feeling Good: The Science of Well-Being)

A Transpersonal Perspective

I have been interested in personality for as long as I can remember. What makes people tick? In what ways am I different from other people? Are we all the same under the skin? These questions have always intrigued me. This is one of the reasons why I became a psychologist.

But in addition to the psychological viewpoint, I embrace a more spiritual view of human nature — a trans-personal view of the personal self. From this perspective, personality is a vehicle through which our essential self, our innermost being, operates in the world, particularly in social interactions.

I’ve learned that to really understand ourselves we need a kind of bi-focal vision to view ourselves at two levels. I generally refer to these as essence and personality.

• Personality is who we are, or at least who we seem to be, as individuals in everyday life. It’s how we express ourselves to others and how we perceive ourselves as a result. Some of us are more extravert than others. Some of us are more neurotic than others. It’s all relative.
• Essence is what we are at the level of ultimate reality, beyond all the relative stuff of ordinary life.* Essence is our true nature, our innermost being, our deepest truth. Essenceis synonymous with spirit or soul. It is pure potential emerging and evolving through consciousness. All essence is one, but there is a specific instance of essence that is you and another instance that is me.

Psychologists generally view the self in terms of brain, mind and personality, but generally overlook spirituality and so neglect the essence of who we are. Mystics view the self in terms of divine essence, the spirit or soul, but generally overlook the psychology of personality in ordinary life. But combining these two levels — personality and spirituality, the personal and the transpersonal, the psychological and the mystical — gives a fuller and richer picture of who we are.

*We can directly experience our essential self. It happens in moments of self-realisation, also known as satori, gnosis, enlightenment.

So … What is Personality?

Bottom line: It depends upon your perspective on human nature.

If you believe that people are biological machines driven by their genes, their brains, and their environments, then the personality is simply those differences in behaviour that are caused by nature and/or nurture —  genetic, biological, and environmental factors.

If you believe that people can consciously change and improve themselves to some extent, then personality is a whole that is greater than just the sum of its parts (traits). Personality is something we can consciously develop, like our physical health and fitness. This includes the possibility of developing character: a set of strengths and virtues (as well as weaknesses and vices) that individuals can adopt and develops throughout life.

If you believe that people are, at the very core of their being, part of a self-evolving cosmic consciousness, exploring and expressing itself through the myriad forms of humanity and other creatures, then personality is an individually-tailored vehicle for such exploration.

Why We Need Personality 

It’s interesting to hear how people talk about personality. Often we see it as either something that is totally static (I had one person describe themselves as “unchanging as the tide”),  or we believe it’s something that morphs until we become an entirely different personality. When profiling people, I can’t count the number of times people have told me their personality has changed over the years. “I used to be an Extravert, but now I’m an Introvert,” etc.

Part of this is being unclear about terms. What exactly are we talking about when we use the word ‘personality’? For most people, it’s their identity and how they see, describe, relate to themselves. When they say their personality changed from extraversion to introversion, they’re really saying they used to relate to themselves in a more extraverted way, and now they self-identify as an Introvert.

How we relate to ourselves definitely morphs and changes over time. Different situations bring out different responses, and we see ourselves in a whole new light.

In the field of personality types, however, personality is more than just how one sees themselves. It’s less about our values and interests (which definitely change over time), and more about how our minds are hardwired to interact with reality. There are components that change and alter, but the foundation of who you are – how you learn new information and how you make decisions – isn’t going anywhere. You’re stuck with it, and that’s a good thing. The overwhelming majority of people fall in love with their personality description and have trouble understanding why anyone would have different preferences. And that may be why it doesn’t change. You’re programmed to love your programming, so there’s little incentive to monkey with it.

That said, while the core of your personality doesn’t change, it does grow.

This can be confusing because growth can make the same thing look almost unrecognizable. The same seed of bossiness in a six year old which makes them so obnoxious you can’t stand being around them can bloom into true leadership, the kind you find magnetizing and draws you in. The quality didn’t change, it grew.

Our personalities do the same thing, which is why we relate to ourselves slightly (and sometimes completely) different over time.

I want to create an important distinction here. “Grow” doesn’t necessarily connote positive development. A garden grows whether you’re tending it or not, and the results are obvious. In an untended garden there will be no weeding, no directed care given to sensitive or preferred flowers, no boundaries created, etc… It just grows as it wills. The mess can be overwhelming if undesirable and aggressive plants grow deep roots and graft themselves to the landscaping.

It’s the same in our personalities. If we let our personalities ‘grow’ without thoughtfulness and indulge our preferences, truly undesirable traits can become deeply rooted, and graft themselves to parts we really like. When it comes to removing these components (i.e. characteristics that encourage us to make the same bad decisions over and over again, or simply make us unhappy), it can feel like we’re ripping ourselves in half. We run away from positive growth because we fear we might lose ourselves in the process.

One of the best things about personality psychology is the host of tools to which it gives us access. If we can create a distinction between how our minds are wired, what’s programming from our past, what’s an interest or value, and what’s a virtue or vice, we can go about the task of ‘landscaping’ with a lot more faith that the end result won’t divorce us from ourselves. Instead, we become the kind of person that inspires lifelong romance.

why we NEED FOR PERSONALITY:
Who can instigate men of ability to invest their intelligence for emancipating their ambitions from their poor negligence?  Intelligence enveloped by negligence becomes useless and unless the urgency and emergency play their role for human value realization, the workers may be compelled to survive in ignorance.  Therefore, workers are advised to enlighten their sense of understanding to work more and to earn more.  Employees with their forecasting power to discover novelties to receive public value.  Such novelties of technologies, discovered by employees, produce many boons and bonus to employers.  But employers cannot be noble norliberal to increase the remuneration of such promising workers.  They need not attempt to balance their efforts and fruits.  Such busy workers concentrate their attention to find out latest technologies which can reduce costs, time, power-consumption, human energy and brokerages.
VOLUNTARY INVOLVEMENT:
Contentment is the root of happiness and any payment paid by the employers must be gladly accepted by the employees.  There lies their real freedom, in their working centres.  If all such workers tie and lie with their urgent responsibilities, their personality development would kiss a sky.  Workers who remain busy with their allocations become scientists, innovators, research scholars, etc.  They knit the fit for the benefit of all.  They provoke with the oracle that truth is their religion and universe is their country.  Voluntary involvement in the allocation will definitely bestow lengthy, healthy and wealthy life.   Children are the flowers of the family and real workers are the flowers of their working centers.  Voluntary participation makes them as the talents and gallants of their working place.
HUMAN RESOURCES:
Human resource continues to play a dominating role in the effective use of physical, psychological and financial resources in all business organizations.  Human resource determines the consolidation of many factors of production as men of functions are unpredictable and dynamic to increase the ability of individuals.  Many leaders and advocates of workers argue that the employers should increase the remunerations of employees and frequent promotions, incentives, etc. must also be treated as the rights of workers.  But such provisions are considered as temporary inducements.  Bogus workers focus on such artificial attractions while real workers work for the fulfillment of their obligations, aspirations, inspirations and responsibilities, the increment of income invites an increment in prices and again increased income becomes insufficient to meet the needs.
The real and genuine participants never bargain for their personal gains but try to produce gains to their employers again and again on their personal pains.  The excellence must be awarded with rewards but real devoted workers never wait for any merit and they know that if they wait, they will lose their weight of image, prestige and heritage of their sound behaviour.  Skilled workers are less while unskilled are more.  The exploration of a single miracle can please multiples of men and organizations.    Workers really attempt to open the gate of fortune to their employers who are supposed as the designers of their careers, provision of employment is not to earn any income but it is an opportunity to construct the structure of individuality.  Men eat for living but not live for eating.  In the same way, workers work to build up their career but not for any other purpose.  Morality is the weapon of all workers to save and pave their individuality.  No investor, no director, no supervisor, no inspector would be able to improve the caliber of workers, but the work itself is guide, guard and guardian to the workers.
CONCLUSION:
Many so-called learned people assert that modern technology can enhance the personality of participants.  But participants only invented technology and they are known as technicians.  Efficiency is dependent upon the will of the workers and mere provision of technology may not guarantee the improvement in the personality development.  Responsibility wedded with morality determines personality.  Employees realize and civilize their pattern of service which can guard the regard of them.  High aspirations are beyond the boundary of the fulfillment.  Hence, work is worship.