Personality Traits And Behaviour

We can define personality as a collection of traits which are unique to an individual. A personality is therefore like a psychological fingerprint, because everyone’s personality is slightly different.

With personalities we can somewhat predict the type of behaviour someone is likely to display.

For example, if a person is outgoing and likes to seek attention, then there is a good chance that they will get on well with other people and have lots of friends.

These individual aspects of a person’s personality are called traits, and are largely what is responsible for the type of personality others perceive you to have.

In addition to this the “ego” (your conscious self, “I”), is also an important aspect of your personality, as is “the self”, which is how you view your own personality from within and how you experience it to be. This is something we shall cover in more detail later on.

Personality & Looks

Personalities are a lot like looks (our physical appearance) when it comes to interacting with other people.

There are some people whose personality we like and get on with, just as there are personalities we dislike and do not get on with.

Generally, whether or not we think we like someone is initially based on our physical perception of them (what they look like to us), simply because this is the first type of information (sensory visual) our brain receives.

It is only after communicating with that person for a certain period of time, that we start to learn about what type of personality they have.

At this point there are two basic things that could happen:

• We like the look of them, and like their personality.

• We don’t like the look of them, but like their personality.

So as you can see, the study of personality is an extremely important aspect of social interaction, because it can either positively enhance an interaction or negative repel it.

In these articles we shall be looking at the different aspects of personality in more detail, and some of the psychological theories that have been used in an attempt to better understand exactly what a personality is and why it may be that way.

Personality Traits

If you think about the people you know in your life, you have probably mentally classified certain types of people as being friendly, happy, boring, angry, brave, cowardly etc…

All of these are traits of a personality (the individual aspects that make up a personality), and the reason certain traits stick out in your mind for a certain person, is because they tend to display that trait most often.

This therefore naturally leads us to generalise a persons whole personality based on a particular trait, even if that generalisation is entirely incorrect.

For example, if someone you know doesn’t speak very much, you may classify them as being somewhat of an anti-social person, and so do not make much effort to get to know them.

However suppose later you see this person with their friends, and they appear very talkative and energetic. Now you see this person in a completely different light, which causes you to change how you view their personality.

This tendency to generalise personalities is an important one to remember, because unless you make a conscious effort to project your true personality, people are likely to label you with a personality that may be entirely incorrect from you who really are.

In some cases this may work in your favour, where people attribute positive personality traits to you.

However in most cases the reverse will happen, and you will be labelled with a negative personality trait. This can then cause people to see you in a negative light, and so they will treat you accordingly.

Type-Trait Theories

In psychology, type-trait theories are used to create descriptions of a personality. These theories are usually based on observation and personality tests, in an attempt to ascertain what sort of personality someone has.

However it is important to point out that just because a psychologist is able to classify certain personality types, it doesn’t necessarily mean they understand why that person may have a certain personality.

For example, is a person’s personality due to genetic factors, is it a result of their early childhood, or is a result of a recent brain injury?

All of these questions cannot necessarily be answered just by determining a person’s personality type.

Summary

• Your personality is all the traits you have that make you unique from other people.

• Personalities are like looks, in the sense that you can either like someone’s personality or dislike it.

• People have a natural tendency to generalise another person’s personality based on dominant traits they display.

• If we do not make a conscious effort to project our true personality, people may label us with a personality that is different to how we actually are.

• Type-trait theories are theories of personality which attempt categorise and explain different personality types.