Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Personality’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Personality’ especially written for school and college students.
Essay on Personality
Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Meaning and Definition of Personality
- Essay on the Theories of Personality
- Essay on the Attributes of Personality
- Essay on the Concepts of Basic and Modal Personality
- Essay on the Orientation of Personality
- Essay on the Types of Personality
- Essay on the Determinants of Personality
- Essay on the Measurements of Personality
- Essay on the Implications of our Knowledge about Personality
Essay # 1. Meaning and Definition of Personality:
Personality is a very complex and multidimensional construct of a human being. No common definition of personality has so far been arrived at. Every individual defines personality in different way which includes trait factors and physical appearance. Personality is a dynamic organization within an individual of those psychological systems that determines his unique adjustment with the environment.
It is a sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others. As far as physical aspect is concerned it relates to individual charm, attitude while dealing with others and smiling face can also be included into personality.
Uma Sekaran states that one can examine personality in terms of a set of relatively stable characteristics and tendencies that determine our thoughts, feelings and behaviour and which have some continuity or consistency over time. Maddi (1980) defines personality thus:
Personality is a stable set of characteristics and tendencies that determine those commonalities and differences in the psychological behaviour (thoughts, feelings, and actions) of people that have continuity in time and that may not be easily understood as the sole result of the social and biological pressures of the moment.
The above definitions indicate the commonality of characteristics and human tendencies amongst people who display consistency in their behaviour over time. Maddis definition suggests that people do change due to biological and social pressures. Thus by understanding certain dimensions of personality one can predict human behaviour to a great extent.
Essay # 2. Theories of Personality:
Personality Traits:
The traditional approach of understanding personality was to identify and describe personality in terms of traits. In other words, it viewed personality as revolving around attempts to identify and label permanent characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior.
Popular characteristics or traits include shyness, aggressiveness, submissiveness, laziness, ambition, loyalty, and timidity. This distinctiveness, when they are exhibited in a large number of situations, is called personality traits. The more consistent the characteristic and the more frequently it occurs in diverse situations, the more important that trait is in describing the individual.
Personality traits are the characteristics of an individual when exhibited in large number of situations. More predominant the traits in an individual are more consistence the individual is and more frequent occurrences in diverse situations. There are thousands of traits that have been identified.
Early Search for Primary Traits:
Efforts to isolate traits have been stuck because there are so many of them. In one study, as many as 17,953 individual traits were identified. It is virtually impossible to predict behavior when such a large number of traits must be taken into account. As a result, attention has been directed toward reducing these thousands to a more manageable number.
One researcher isolated 171 traits but concluded that they were superficial and lacking in descriptive power. What he sought was a reduced set of traits that would identify underlying patterns. The result was the identification of 16 personality factors by Cattell, which he called the source, or primary, traits.
These 16 traits have been found to be generally steady and constant sources of behavior, allowing prediction of an individual’s behavior in specific situations by weighing the characteristics for their situational relevance.
Based on the answers individual gave them have been classified as on the basis of the answers individuals give to the test, they are classified as:
1. Extroverted or Introverted (E or I),
2. Sensing or Intuitive (S or N),
3. Thinking or Feeling (T or F), And
4. Perceiving or Judging (P or J).
Cattell’s Identification of 16 Personality Factors:
Cattell isolated 171 traits but concluded that they were superficial and lacking in descriptive power. What he sought was a reduced set of traits that would identify underlying pattern. The result was the identification of 16 personality factors, which he called the source, or primary traits.
These and their opposites are given below:-
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI):
This is one of the most commonly used Personality test consisting of 100 questions.
On the basis of the answers the individuals are classified into following categories:
(a) Visionary:
A person who has been classified visionary based the MBTI results has an organised mind, has a great drive for new ideas and purpose. An individual is skeptical, critical and stubborn. He displays traits like working independently and has a high determination to achieve the desired goals, which are often challenging.
(b) Organizer:
A person having great organizational ability would be practical, realistic and believes in what he sees. Organizers are generally successful businesspersons, persons involved in basic engineering jobs, and persons who are involved in assembling resources to run the organizations.
(c) Conceptualizers:
Persons who take quick decisions, they are ingenious and good at many things. They are resourceful, problem solver and have a tendency to neglect work, which is of a routine nature.
Essay # 3. Attributes of Personality:
Major personality attributes which affects organizational behaviour is locus of control that is the degree to which people believe that they are masters of their own fate. It is the concept, which determines whether an individual’s control events or the events control the individuals and that they become only the pawns of situation. People have both internal locus of control and external locus of control, only the degree varies.
(a) Internal Locus of Control:
Persons having internal locus of control believe that they can manipulate events to their advantage and therefore they are capable of deciding their fate For example, a manager having dominant internal locus of control would be able to effectively control resources, decide events, which benefits him.
He manipulates communications, resources, events, programmes in such a way that enhances his position and he creates an aura around him that he is an indispensable person. Individual feels that he is decider of his own future and that no external events (power) can interfere with it.
(b) External Locus of Control:
Person having dominant external locus of control believe that what happen to them is controlled by outside forces such as luck or chance. These types of people lack initiative, decision-making and do not even take calculated risk. They wait and see events take place and things happen.
Essay # 4. Concepts of Basic and Modal Personality:
The extensive influence of culture on the developing personality is so self- evident that psychologists were inclined to come to the conclusion that every culture through its institutions, like the family and the community and also through its mythology, folklore and symbolic agents develops in the members, a basic common core personality. This view was first postulated by Abram Kardiner.
According to Kardiner, the primary institutions in a culture like the family and the community (in simple tribal communities, the community itself is almost an extended family) mould the character and the personality through its socialization practices.
These attitudes, behaviour patterns and predispositions are later projected on to the secondary institutions. Citing the instance of the Alorese tribe where the parents are not perceived as significant helpers in view of the relative neglect of the child by the parents, responses to projective techniques revealed that though the members of the community believed in a deity, there was no strong attitude to idealize the deity.
Similarly among the Marquesans anxiety about food experienced during childhood, resulted in a number of projective responses that were projected on the customs and rituals. Related to the concept of Basic Personality is the concept of Modal Personality postulated by Inkeles, Levinson, Linton and others.
According to this view though there may not be a typical basic personality evident in all the people of society, especially in a complex and heterogeneous modern society, certain personality characteristics seem to occur with greater frequency among the adult members of the society.
Thus very often one hears of the characteristics of the Japanese, the Germans, the Americans, the British and many other groups. The Germans are often described as autocratic, strong willed, high on power motive and proud. The British are described as cold, conservative and prudish, the Americans as ambitious, light-hearted, frivolous, etc., and the Japanese as clever, aggressive, proud and highly collective.
Here one may see a difference between the concept of basic personality and the concept of modal personality; the former is based on psychoanalytic theory and logic, while the later is simply statistical.
Further, the concept of basic personality comes in only where people share a common culture, whereas the concept of modal personality being purely statistical can cut across different categories of people, and subcultures within a society.
Another term which is related to those two is the term National Character. There have been a lot of theoretical arguments for and against the validity of this concept, though a fair amount of empirical evidence has been accumulated. The most outstanding work with regard to the concept of national character is the work of Ruth Benedict entitled “The Sword and the Chrysanthamum”.
The work was stimulated by an observation of the Japanese soldiers during the War. While the Americans claimed that they fought the war for upholding the nationality and sovereignty of their country, the Japanese soldiers believed that they had the duty to accord to every nation its place in the hierarchy of nations, of course, theirs being at the top.
The Japanese soldier was highly concerned about his public image, would commit suicide, rather than surrender, and surprisingly, when the emperor called off the war and decided to surrender, there was not a murmur of protest even though Japan was by no means defeated.
The Japanese proved to be model prisoners and their loyalty to their emperor was unquestioned. Benedict traces these characteristics to the predominance of hierarchy in every walk of Japanese life – in the family, in the society and in politics. The Japanese are a proud people and are reluctant to accept help from outside. The sense of shame is very strong and the Japanese would rather commit suicide than suffer shame.
A similar attempt to study the national character was the study of Fromm on the Nazi character. According to Fromm, one section of the German population, mainly the working class, the liberal and the catholic bowed to Hitler without any resistance.
Another section, the lower middle class, shop-keepers, artisans and blue collared workers believed and accepted Nazism. Fromm, on the basis of historical, social and cultural analysis, observed that the second category which was almost faced with scarcity tended to become authoritarian.
Hitler was a typical representative of this lower middle class. A few other studies by Morccone, Rodnick and Mcgraheon also corroborated Fromm’s analysis. According to Fromm, a high degree of emphasis on moral quality, fear of authority and obedience for authority were common among the Germans.
There have also been a few attempts to study the Indian Character, though mostly these have been amateurish and impressionistic, and in practice lacking in methodological rigour. According to Spratt, who based his analysis on the psychoanalytic theory, the Indian Personality is narcissistic and hence inward directed.
A further feature of the narcissistic personality is that the chasm between the ideal and the real does not produce any dissonance or anxiety. The Indians have a remarkable capacity to tolerate hypocrisy, dishonesty and also preach high morals at the same time and also rationalise such discrepancies. Ample evidence in this regard is available.
People who are in high positions with very serious records of corruption and criminality, and bad characters, are not only tolerated but respected and even receive adulations. Sudhir Kakkar has hypothesized that preoccupation with the ‘Other World’ has detracted from the achievement of economic objectives.
Other traits attributed to the Indian character are dependent and collective rather than individualistic, abnormally high in tolerance of dissonance etc.
This discussion on Basic Personality, Modal Personality and National Character has been introduced here just to enable the reader to appreciate the ramifications of the concept of personality and the very strong influence of historical and cultural factors in shaping the personality and how ‘personality’ can be used as an explanatory concept in understanding the behaviour of whole groups.
However, it must be said that while the evidence to support the various profiles of national character is rather slim, at the same time one cannot simply discard these concepts, and only well planned researches can help us to understand the general traits, characteristics and pre-dispositions of people.
Such findings can be very helpful in planning national developmental programmes. A nation, after all, is nothing other than the people who make it, and as one great writer put it, “a nation exists mainly in the minds of its people and not just in its history or geography or in its political system”.
Essay # 5. Orientation of Personality:
1. Achievement Orientation:
Achievement orientation of an individual also indicates the personality of an individual. Every person possesses need to achieve (nAch) phenomenon in his personality. It could be high degree nAch or low degree. A person who possesses high nAch displays very dominant personality. He is generally very ambitious, hard-working and fixes his goal at a very high level and strives to achieve the same.
He is achievement oriented and undertakes a task which is neither easy, because easy task is generally attained by a common person nor a very challenging or tough task because there would be chances of failure of achieving the same. He therefore prefers to undertake task of intermediate nature so that its achievement would satisfy him to a large extent and he would feel that he is above than the normal individual.
People having high nAch are found to be good organizers, efficient managers. Sports persons are generally high achievers as they strive to achieve that extra point or mark than his competitors. High nAch generally do well as sale persons as it calls for hard work and achieving higher targets of sales every time.
2. Authoritarianism:
Close to the personality trait that a person possesses who is achievement oriented is a person who believes in having a reasonably high authority in the organization Theory of authoritarianism is related with status and power. The theory states that there should be status and power difference between various people in the organization.
While there would be some people who will have more power and authority hence more authoritative yet there would be people with low power and authority hence minimum degree of being authoritative. One would therefore find in an organization, people with low authority and high authority.
Person who possesses high authoritarian is intellectually rigid, they display varied behaviour patterns. They are submissive with those who are superior (senior) to them and behave in an exploitative manner to those who are subordinates or below them. They resist change and display insensitivity while dealing with people. They are task oriented.
3. Theory of Machivellianism:
Niccolo Machivelli introduced theory of Machivellianism. The theory refers to degree to which an individual is pragmatic and maintains emotional distance with coworkers while accomplishing any task. A person who practices this theory believes in “end justifies means.” In any organization people can be classified as having high Machivellianism or low Machivellianism tendencies.
A person having High Machivellianism (H Mach) generally displays variety of personality traits like manipulation, win more, persuade others to do a work while they do not get persuaded by others.
They generally flourish in face-to- face situation where there are minimum rules and have enough space for maneuver. They have high bargaining skills and believe in giving substantial rewards to their subordinates on accomplishment of tasks. They are highly productive. Machivelli believed in one doctrine, that a work must be finished whatever be the means.
4. Self-Esteem:
Self-esteem refers to individuals’ degree of liking or disliking himself. People’s self-esteem has to do with their self- perceived competence and self-image. Most recent studies indicate that self-esteem plays an important moderating role in areas such as emotional and behavioural responses and stress of organizational members.
As was recently noted, “Both research and every day experience confirm that employees with high self-esteem feel unique, competent, secure, empowered and connected to the people around them.”
People having high degree of self-esteem take more risk in job selection and take up unconventional assignments while those possessing low self-esteem display dependency, seek approval from others for the decision they make, respect others and seek confirmation in beliefs. Managers with low self-esteem do not take unpopular stand, which may lead to displeasing others.
5. Self-Monitoring:
Self-monitoring is related to self-efficacy. It is situation specific. A person must always examine efficiency and attribute it to his behaviour with subordinates and improve upon it. This quality displays high degree of adaptability and high sensitivity of an individual. A person possessing self-monitoring trait is likely to behave differently in different situation.
6. Risk Taking:
Risk taking trait is commonly seen in various entrepreneurs. They display rapid decision making ability.
Essay # 6. Types of Personality:
Type A:
People having Type A personality are always moving, walking and eating rapidly. They feel impatient with the speed the events take place. They always strive to do two or three thing at any one time and cannot cope with leisure. They are generally obsessed with work involved with numbers.
Type B:
People possessing Type B personality never suffer from sense of urgency and take thing as it comes coolly. They do not discuss achievement and leave it to the superiors to identify it. People having B type of personality play for fun and relaxation rather than to show off. These people have the tendency to relax without guilt.
Personality Traits of Indian Managers:
Behaviour has an impact on how an individual acts and interacts with superiors and subordinates in the work environment. Various studies have been conducts in this field.
Dwivedi’s Study:
R.S. Dwivedi has carried out study of 52 managers in public and private sector organizations.
Findings indicate that managers give high importance to the following traits:
a. Cooperation.
b. Intelligence.
c. Energy.
d. Sociability.
Low importance was assigned to the following personality traits:
i. Aggressive.
ii. Confronting.
iii. Independent.
Flexibility, preserving and self-monitoring has been accorded moderate importance. The co-relation co-efficient between managers of public sector and private sector accounted for as high as 90. Saiyadain and Monappa carried out studies to identify personality traits of middle level managers from public sector and private sector organisation (N = 172).
The respondents represented major functional areas of respective organizations. Results, first an Authoritarian and Machiavellianism traits indicated an equal distribution. Secondly, above two third of the managers scored higher than average on competence need for achievement (NAch) traits.
Essay # 7. Determinants of Personality:
Personality is determined by heredity, environment (culture) and situation under which an individual works. This is shown in diagrammatic form.
i. Heredity:
Heredity is transmitted through genes, which determine hormone balance, which later determine physique and subsequently the personality. Heredity refers to acquiring from parents certain biological, physical and psychological commonalities, which are further reflected in physical stature, facial attractiveness, sex, temperament, muscle composition and even reflect. They often decide energy level.
These factors have a deciding influence on how a person in an organization would display his reactions in a particular situation. Nature of health and psychological makeup that an individual enjoys can be traced from the traits his parents possessed. Parents prominently pass on shyness, fear and distress to the next generation.
In good organizations and particularly in defence services a detailed screening is carried out of the candidates based on the background of the parents as it relates to physique, psychological makeup, disability and transferable disease as it has far reaching impact on the general health of the organization.
ii. Environment:
Every individual is born and brought up in a particular environment. Environment leaves an imprint on the personality of an individual. It is commonly seen that a doctors son preferring his father’s profession and a child of a soldier entering into Defense Services. More advanced the socioeconomic conditions of the society more would the children be forward thinking.
Environment should be viewed from the point of view of norms, ethics and value that are observed and the attitude displayed by the social group. These factors actually formulate the culture of the society from which the organizations draw their human resource requirements. The cultural background is important to evaluate personality.
In childhood, parents, uncles, aunts and even neighbour’s behaviour is copied by a child. It is therefore necessary to display an ideal behaviour on the part of all the adults who come in direct contact with the children. Family moulds character of children through role models re-enforcements, rewards and punishments. Other influences like first born and later born child will have different personality traits.
First-born child would generally be commanding. Female child would be more responsive and pass on sobering effect on younger brothers/sisters. It is therefore important to study early conditions under which the child has been brought up, norms followed in the family and the existence of cultural value system in the society. All these factors have a marked influence on the personality of an individual.
iii. Situation:
Individual has to interact with number of problems in a given situation, which does not remain constant. It is subject to change and hence fluid in nature. There is therefore a need to recognize the person-situation interaction. It can be social learning activity of personality.
Thus personality is situational, the uniqueness of each situation and any Environment Situation, Heredity, Personality, measure of personality must be examined. Personalities therefore mean how people affect others, how they understand and view themselves, pattern of personality traits and person situation interaction. For example individual modifies his behaviour based on situation.
When an individual goes to temple he would be sober, generally put on plain clothes and bow. When the same individual goes for interview he would be armed with knowledge of the organization while in the club he would be merry making having a drink in his hand and meet friends and generally be in gay mood.
Essay # 8. Measurements of Personality:
Psychologists thus use behavioral indicators in constructing projective tests. These tests are designed to draw conclusions about personality from observed behaviors.
There are various standard tests and scales available to measure personality.
In the following section we will be describing a few of these:
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT):
It is a projective test that offers more validity. The TAT consists of drawings or photographs of real-life situations. People taking the test are instructed to construct stories based on these images, and trained raters then score the recorded story for predefined themes. Psychologists assume that the stories people tell reflect the unconscious.
Myers-Briggs Types Indicator (MBTI) was originally developed by a mother & daughter team which have the following components:
1. INTJs are Visionaries:
They usually have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and purposes. They are characterized as skeptical, critical, independent, determined, and often stubborn.
2. ESTJs are Organizers:
They are realistic, logical, analytical, decisive, and have a natural head for business or mechanics.
3. The Big Five Model:
MBTI may be deficient in valid supporting evidence, but that can’t be said for the five-factor model of personality more typically called the Big Five. In contemporary, an impressive body of research supports that five basic dimensions, motivate all others and encompass most of the significant variation in human personality.
The Big Five factors are:
i. Extraversion:
This dimension captures one’s comfort level with relationships. Extraverts tend to be gregarious, assertive, and sociable. Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
ii. Agreeableness:
This dimension refers to an individual’s tendency to defer to others. Highly agreeable people are cooperative, affectionate, and trusting. People who score low on agreeableness are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
iii. Conscientiousness:
This dimension is a measure of reliability. A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent. Those who score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
iv. Emotional Stability:
This dimension taps a person’s ability to bear up stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-confident, and secure. Those with highly negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, Depressed, and insecure.
v. Openness to Experience:
The final dimension addresses an individual’s range of interests and fascination with novelty. Extremely open people are creative, curious, and artistically sensitive. Those at the other end of the open-ness category are conventional and find comfort in the familiar.
Essay # 9. Implications of our Knowledge about Personality:
Before the emergence of modern psychology as an empirical and quantitative science, philosopher-psychologists used terms like ‘soul’, ‘self, ‘character’, ‘personality’, etc. However, following the emergence of scientific psychology, attention was mainly focused on specific activities like learning, sensation, perception, motivation etc. Psychologists were carrying out active research in these specific areas.
Soon however, they came to realise that while knowledge about each of these activities may be useful in and by itself, studying them individually cannot take us far in understanding and predicting the actions of an individual. These activities are inter-related, interdependent and integrated, in the context of ‘specific human actions’.
It is at this point, the realisation dawns that there is a ‘supra-ordinate’ agency or factor which integrates, organises and influences human behaviour and lends to human behaviour, qualities of individuality, direction, consistency, stability and meaningfulness and further enables us to predict human behaviour. The consequence of this, was the emergence of ‘personality’ as a very important field of research, study, theorisation and measurement.
The emergence of ‘holism’, ‘functionalism’ and ‘individuality’ as guiding principles, in the place of elementalism, structuralism, and crude empiricism, gave a fillip to the emergence of personality, as the focal point of psychological research. In fact, one of the most outstanding psychologists, Murray, even coined the term personology to emphasise the fact that study and understanding of ‘personality’ is the main task of psychology.
Perhaps, one may not be far off the mark, if it is stated that the growth and development of abnormal psychology, clinical psychology and psychotherapy was principally responsible for this movement of ‘personality study’ in psychology. Here it is interesting to note that the process of perception, learning and motivation are instrumental in the functioning of the personality, but the latter in turn regulates and influences the former.
Thus, from the point of view of the growth of psychology as a discipline, the development of the study of personality has been a turning point, transforming psychology from the state of a sterile, inert discipline into a dynamic, unique and pragmatic science.
From the point of view of our understanding human behaviour, our knowledge about personality has helped us to appreciate the following characteristics of human behaviour. Firstly, the human being acts as a totality. Secondly, human behaviour in all normal cases is ordered, dynamic, active and goal-oriented.
Thirdly, human behaviour which follows certain common principles, and shows some general characteristics, differs from person to person, and is ‘idiosyncratic’. This idiosyncratic or unique element in behaviour, is the essence of the personality of any individual society. It is now accepted that individuals are stable, organised entities, whose behaviour in future situations can be predictable.
We are now able to appreciate the fact why an individual is successful and happy in one set of situations and not others and also why some individuals are better suited than others to combat or deal with certain situations. The application of these can be clearly seen in a few practical situations.
Perhaps, the clearest and most important application of our knowledge about personality is in the field of clinical psychology and the treatment of psychological disorders. Starting with the early typical classifications offered by Kretschmer, Jung Sheldon and others, there has been a steadily increasing awareness of the role of personality factors, in the genesis of different kinds of behavioural problems and disorders.
The experimental work of Eysenck and his followers clearly brought out the roles of an individual’s position on the dimensions of extroversion – introversion and neuroticism in susceptibility to cyclothymic or dysthymic disorders. Even certain studies carried out by the US armed forces during the First World War indicated the role of personality factors, in the- susceptibility of the combat personnel to shell and other types of problems.
These studies resulted in the development of what was probably the first systematically developed personality inventory by Woodworth. The studies on authoritarian personality opened up a new vista in our understanding of the role of personality factors in the development of social attitudes including prejudices.
Studies on leadership have arrived at findings which are suggestive of the role of personality factors in leader effectiveness. More recently researches have pointed out the relationship between personality factors and learning style and on many other cognitive and affective processes.
Such findings have led to rapid developments in the field of personality measurement and the development of a variety of tools of personality measurement. Such tools find extensive application in selection of people to various positions in different organisations. Another positive outcome is the development of personality development and change programmes which find extensive use in management practices and training.
At a macro level, since there is a broad agreement that an individual’s personality is formed as a result of socialisation and also subsequent social interaction, today we find it possible to counsel and advise parents, teachers and others involved in the upbringing of children, on healthy and effective methods of dealing with children and in particular those with certain behavioural and emotional problems.
It may thus be seen that findings of research on personality have had wide and far reaching and extensive practical applications. A proper understanding of the nature of human personality, its formation and influence on other behavioural processes can go a long way in enabling us to improve the quality of life of individuals as well as society at large.