MERRIAM-WEBSTER

Definition of personality
plural personalities
1
a : the quality or state of being a person
b : personal existence
2
a : the condition or fact of relating to a particular person; specifically : the
condition of referring directly to or being aimed disparagingly or hostilely at an
individual
b : an offensively personal remark angrily resorted to personalities
3
a : the complex of characteristics that distinguishes an individual or a nation or
group; especially : the totality of an individual's behavioral and emotional
characteristics
b : a set of distinctive traits and characteristics the energetic personality of
the city
4
a : distinction or excellence of personal and social traits; also : a person
having such quality
b : a person of importance, prominence, renown, or notoriety a TV personality

http://www.sociologyguide.com/personality/meaning-of-personality.php
The Meaning of Personality
The term personality is derived from the Latin word persona meaning a mask.
Personality is a patterned body of habits, traits, attitudes and ideas of an
individual as these are organized externally into roles and statuses and as they
relate internally to motivation, goals and various aspects of selfhood.

According to Robert Park and Earnest Burgess Personality is the sum and
organization of those traits which determine the role of the individual in the
group.

According to Linton, personality embraces the total organized aggregate of

psychological processes and status pertaining to the individual.Parsonality says
Maclver is all that an individual is and has experienced so far as this all can be
comprehended as unity. According to Lundberg the term personality refers to the
habits, attitudes and other social traits that are characteristic of a given
individual's behavior.

By personality Ogburn means the integration of the socio-psychological behavior of

the human being, represented by habits of action and feeling, attitudes and
opinions.

Davis regards personality a psychic phenomenon which is neither organic nor social
but an emergent from a combination of the two. According to Young personality is
the totality of behavior of an individual with a given tendency system interacting
with a sequence of situations.

On the basis of these definitions it may be said there are two main approaches to
the study of personality:

The psychological
The sociological
The psychological approach considers personality as a certain style peculiar to the
individual. This style is determined by the characteristic organization of mental
trends, complexes, emotions and sentiments. The psychological approach enables us
to understand the phenomena of personality disorganization and the role of wishes,
of mental conflict and of repression and sublimation in the growth of personality.
The sociological approach considers personality in terms of the status of the
individual in the group, in terms of his conception of his role in the group of
which he is a member. What others think of us plays a large part in the formation
of our personality.

Thus personality is a sum of the ideas, attitudes and values of a person which
determine his role in society and form an integral part of his character.

Personality is acquired by the individual as a result of his participation in group

life. As a member of the group he learns certain behavior systems and symbolic
skills which determine his ideas, attitudes and social values. These ideas,
attitudes and values which an individual holds comprise his personality.

In brief it can be said:

Personality is not related to bodily structure alone. It includes both structure

and dynamics.
Personality is an indivisible unit.
Personality is neither good nor bad.
Every personality is unique
Personality refers to persistent qualities of the individual. It expresses
consistency and regularity.
Personality is acquired.
Personality is influenced by social interaction. It is defined in terms of
behavior.

http://personalityspirituality.net/articles/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 2s eyes. (See No Two Alike [1].)
Twins

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

persons particular set of enduring dispositions or long-term tendencies to think,
feel and act in particular ways. Were not talking about specific actions being
repeated again and again, like compulsive hand-washing, but about overall patterns,
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 doesnt
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.

Your personality style is your organizing principle. It propels you on your life
path. It represents the orderly arrangement of all your attributes, thoughts,
feelings, attitudes, behaviors, and coping mechanisms. It is the distinctive
pattern of your psychological functioningthe way you think, feel, and behavethat
makes you definitely you. The New Personality Self-Portrait by Oldham and
Morris. [2]
We can also sometimes see changes in an individuals 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, something that causes us to think and feel and act they
way we do? For example, someone who is obviously outgoing, talkative, energetic and
assertive is described as having an extrovert personality. Does that mean that they
are outgoing, talkative, and so on because they are an extrovert? Or is extrovert
personality simply a shorthand way of describing someone with those patterns?

Talking About Personality

Four Types?

In ancient times it was thought that all people could be divided into four basic
types sanguine, choleric, melancholic and 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 Passions and Tempers [3].)

Despite the simple appeal of this approach, trying to fit all the worlds 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, forgetful and 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 doesnt 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 others 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 its 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 very nice
but rather quiet. The words most often used refer to the extremes rather than the
averages.

And these extremes can be organised into pairs of opposites reserved as opposed
to outgoing, impulsive as opposed to cautious, dominant as opposed to 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 and hostile 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 similar meaning, how many clusters
do we get?

There is actually no single answer as it depends on where we draw the line,

statistically, to define similar. We get more clusters of words with highly
similar meanings, and we get fewer clusters of words with only b-r-o-a-d-l-y
similar meanings.

The main question psychologists have been 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 by 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 words describing a tendency to be outgoing, energetic and sociable

OPENNESS words describing a tendency to enjoy variety, novelty, challenge and
intellectual stimulation
NEUROTICISM words describing a tendency to experience unpleasant emotions
AGREEABLENESS words describing a tendency to be friendly, compassionate and
cooperative
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS words describing a tendency to show self-discipline and self-
control
Its as if every word we may use to describe one anothers personality falls under
one of these five headings.

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).

So in contrast to the types approach, many psychologists now understand

personality as how we all vary within these five dimensions or five factors. Its
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, scoring
somewhere between the two extremes of each one. An introvert, for example, is
simply someone who scores relatively 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 view
of personality that is more popularly known as the HEXACO model. (See The H Factor
of Personality [5].)

Multiple Facets

A problem with the five or six factors is that they dont really account 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
Activeness/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 each of the five big factors. These 20 or 30 facets
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? Its 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 people 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 driven by biological

instincts which have been programmed into our genes through natural selection over
several million years. In this case, differences in personality represent natural
variations in genetic programming which are present at birth.
According to behaviouristic psychology, our behaviour is externally programmed
(conditioned) in early life as the result of the rewards and punishments we
experience. Personality is therefore genetic variations plus learned behaviour
patterns.
According to social psychology, our behaviour is driven by social factors such as
parental expectations and peer pressure. In this case, personality stems from the
social influences affecting our learned behaviour patterns.
According to psychodynamic psychology, our behaviour is driven by the competing
demands of biological instincts and social pressures. Differences in personality
stem from how we balance, or fail to balance, these conflicts as we grow into
adults.
According to cogitive psychology, human behaviour is heavily influenced by our
intelligence: the ability to utilize both internal memory and external information
to mentally assess situations and resolve problems. In this case, differences in
personality stem from differences in knowledge, learning and cognitive style.
Each of these schools of thought emphasises the importance of one source of
influenceand they all appear to be valid! But not one of them can provide a
complete answer. The more we focus on just one approach, the more we tend to lose
sight of the bigger picture, the whole person.

Free Will v. Determinism

One thing that all of the classical branches of psychology do tend to agree upon is
that our every thought, feeling and action is determined by pre-existing forces
beyond our control. That is, we are merely the products of our genetic programming
and social programming, our upbringing, our environment, the blind forces of nature
and/or nurture, or whatever. We are nothing but biological machines, genetic
puppets, trained monkeys.

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 predetermined by forces beyond our

control, or do we have at least some free will to make our own decisions?
Are we really doomed to remain hapless products of our past, or can we in fact
change and improve ourselves if we so choose?
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 classical
scientific assumption that all events are pre-determined by prior events. Free
will, many believe, is an unscientific folk-myth.

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

Unfortunately, the classical view of the person as no more than a biological

machine with no free will fits all too neatly with ideologies such as fascism and
communism in which people are treated like mindless drones. As soon as we buy into
the idea that people are nothing but machines, its a simple step to imagine that
civilisation would run much more smoothly if only people could be forced to stop
acting as if they had free will no more selfish capitalists, no more free-
thinking intellectuals, no need for elections, no challenges to authority, etc.
This idea really took off across the world in the 20th century.

So in reaction to the view of the person as a biological machine, there has been a
new wave of psychologists who deliberately emphasise the role of consciousness and
free will:

Humanistic psychologists focus on our use of free will in shaping our 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 doesnt 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 pre-determined and self-made. Or
to put it another way:

Personality = Temperament + Character

where

Temperament refers to those traits that are predetermined.

Character refers to how we develop as conscious individuals, how we choose to deal
with life as we grow through experience.
It has been said that temperament is something we share with other animals, while
character is, perhaps, uniquely human. Character is like 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. According to the Temperament and Character model,
character consists of three elements

Self-directedness: the tendency to determine ones own experiences across different

situations
Cooperativeness: the tendency to co-exist harmoniously with others across different
situations
Self-transcendence: the tendency to meaningfully relate ones 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 also Maslows 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, even though it
appears to be central to our well-being. (See Feeling Good: The Science of Well-
Being [6].)

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 personality is simply due to variations in temperament or
programming, i.e. differences in behaviour caused by nature and nurture (genetic
and social factors). If you believe that people can consciously change and improve
themselves to some extent, then personality includes character: a set of strengths
and virtues (as well as weaknesses and vices) which we can consciously develop
throughout life.