What is personality?
That is a big question.
How would you define personality?
Is it the way a person acts or behaves? Is it how they present themselves?
While there are many different theories of personality (most of which you will learn about on this website!) the first step is to understand exactly what is meant by the term personality. The word personality itself stems from the Latin word persona, which referred to a theatrical mask work by performers in order to either project different roles or disguise their identities.
A brief definition would be that personality is made up of the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that make a person unique. In addition to this, personality arises from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life.
There is not one specific definition of personality accepted by all psychologists. According to famed psychologist Sigmund Freud, human personality arises from a conflict between impulse and restrain —between our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological urges and our internalized social controls over these urges. He believed personality is the result of our efforts to resolve this basic conflict—-- to express these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction without also bringing guilt or punishment. In general, personality is the combination of many different qualities and characteristics that makes us the people we are.
How would you define personality?
Is it the way a person acts or behaves? Is it how they present themselves?
While there are many different theories of personality (most of which you will learn about on this website!) the first step is to understand exactly what is meant by the term personality. The word personality itself stems from the Latin word persona, which referred to a theatrical mask work by performers in order to either project different roles or disguise their identities.
A brief definition would be that personality is made up of the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that make a person unique. In addition to this, personality arises from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life.
There is not one specific definition of personality accepted by all psychologists. According to famed psychologist Sigmund Freud, human personality arises from a conflict between impulse and restrain —between our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological urges and our internalized social controls over these urges. He believed personality is the result of our efforts to resolve this basic conflict—-- to express these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction without also bringing guilt or punishment. In general, personality is the combination of many different qualities and characteristics that makes us the people we are.
Below are some quoted definitions of personality:
- "Personality refers to individuals' characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms -- hidden or not -- behind those patterns. This definition means that among their colleagues in other subfields of psychology, those psychologists who study personality have a unique mandate: to explain whole persons."
(Funder, D. C., 1997)
- "Although no single definition is acceptable to all personality theorists, we can say that personality is a pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person's behavior."
(Feist and Feist, 2009)