Chapter 2 Self And Personality

Self And Personality

The concepts of self and personality are fundamental to understanding human existence and behavior. They describe how we perceive ourselves and how our experiences shape our actions, leading to relatively stable patterns of behavior that define our individuality.

The self refers to our conscious experiences, thoughts, and feelings about who we are, encompassing both our personal identity and our social or cultural affiliations. Personality, on the other hand, refers to the characteristic and relatively stable patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion that distinguish an individual across different situations and over time.

Both concepts are deeply intertwined, with the self often considered the core of personality. Studying them helps us understand our uniqueness, our similarities with others, and the underlying reasons for our diverse behaviors in various settings. This chapter will explore the basic aspects of self and personality, introduce major theoretical approaches to their study, and discuss methods used for personality assessment.

Concept Of Self

The concept of self refers to the totality of an individual's conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts, and feelings regarding themselves. This sense of self develops from early childhood through social interactions and experiences, shaped by parents, peers, and significant others. It influences how we differentiate ourselves from others and how we perceive our place in the world.

Self As Subject And Self As Object

The self can be understood in a dual capacity: as a subject and as an object. When we act as a 'knower' or an 'actor' (e.g., "I know who I am," "I am a dancer"), the self is functioning as a subject, actively engaging in processes of self-awareness and action. Conversely, when we are 'known' or 'acted upon' (e.g., "I am one who easily gets hurt"), the self is functioning as an object, being observed and experienced by oneself or others.

Kinds Of Self

Several aspects of the self emerge from our interactions with the environment:

• Biological Self: This is the most basic form of self-awareness, stemming from bodily needs and sensations, such as the awareness of hunger.
• Personal Self: This aspect emphasizes one's individuality and concerns oneself primarily with personal goals, freedom, responsibility, and achievements.
• Social Self: This emerges from relationships with others and highlights aspects like cooperation, unity, affiliation, and social responsibilities. It is also referred to as the familial or relational self.
• Personal Identity: Refers to those attributes that make an individual distinct from others, such as one's name, qualities, capabilities, or beliefs.
• Social Identity: Refers to aspects of the self that link an individual to a social or cultural group, such as religious affiliation, ethnic background, or regional identity.

Activity 2.1: Understanding the Self involves completing sentences starting with "I am" to explore personal and social identities and reflect on the nature of self-description.

Cognitive And Behavioural Aspects Of Self

The way we perceive ourselves and the ideas we hold about our competencies and attributes are collectively known as our self-concept. This self-concept can be generally positive or negative, and at a more specific level, individuals may have different self-perceptions regarding various domains like academic talent, athletic ability, or social skills.

Self-esteem

Self-esteem is an individual's overall evaluation of their own worth or value. It reflects a person's judgment about themselves. Individuals with high self-esteem generally feel good about themselves, while those with low self-esteem may experience anxiety, depression, and antisocial behavior. Children typically form self-esteem in areas like academic competence, social competence, physical/athletic competence, and physical appearance by the age of 6-7.

High self-esteem is often linked to positive outcomes, such as better academic performance and greater social acceptance. Conversely, low self-esteem can be associated with negative psychological outcomes. Supportive and accepting parenting practices tend to foster higher self-esteem in children.

Self-efficacy

Self-efficacy refers to an individual's belief in their ability to successfully perform specific tasks or achieve desired outcomes. It is the conviction that one possesses the necessary skills and can exert control over life events. Developed from Bandura's social learning theory, a strong sense of self-efficacy encourages individuals to engage in challenging tasks, persevere through difficulties, and maintain a positive outlook, thereby influencing their choices and behaviors.

Self-regulation

Self-regulation is the ability to organize and monitor one's own behavior. It involves controlling impulses, delaying gratification, and adjusting behavior according to situational demands, often referred to as willpower. Techniques such as self-observation, self-instruction, and self-reinforcement are employed to enhance self-control and achieve long-term goals. Cultural traditions also offer mechanisms, like fasting or non-attachment, that promote self-control.

Activity 2.2: Change My Personality encourages students to reflect on aspects of their personality they would like to change or preserve, fostering self-awareness.

Activity 2.3: Observe and note your behavior characteristics involves observing personal behaviors and those of friends, attributing them to influences from popular icons.

Culture And Self

An individual's sense of self is significantly shaped by their cultural context. Western cultures often emphasize an individualistic self with clear boundaries between the self and others, promoting personal achievement and independence. In contrast, many Asian cultures, including India, tend to foster a collectivistic self where the individual's identity is closely intertwined with their social group, emphasizing harmony, cooperation, and interdependence.

Figure 2.1 visually represents these differences, showing distinct boundaries between the self and the group in Western cultures versus a more fluid and integrated self within the group in Indian culture. This cultural variation influences how people perceive themselves, their relationships, and their goals.

Concept Of Personality

The term "personality" originates from the Latin word "persona," referring to a mask worn by actors. In everyday language, personality is often associated with outward appearance or charm. However, in psychology, personality is defined as the relatively stable and unique patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion that characterize an individual across different situations and over time.

Personality encompasses both physical and psychological components, with its expression being unique to each individual. While personality features are generally enduring, they can also be dynamic and adapt to internal or external demands, allowing individuals to cope with various life circumstances. Understanding personality enables prediction of behavior and facilitates more effective interpersonal interactions.

Box 2.1: Personality-related Terms differentiates related concepts like temperament (biologically based reactions), trait (stable attribute), disposition (tendency to react), character (overall behavior pattern), habit (learned behavior), and values (goals and ideals).

Major Approaches To The Study Of Personality

Various approaches attempt to explain the origins and nature of individual differences in personality, acknowledging that people in the same family can develop distinct personalities due to a complex interplay of factors.

Type Approaches

Type approaches categorize individuals into broad personality types based on shared behavioral characteristics. Historically, these include:

• Hippocrates' Typology: Based on four humors (sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, choleric).
• Indian Typologies: Based on 'tridosha' (vata, pitta, kapha) and 'trigunas' (sattva, rajas, tamas).
• Sheldon's Typology: Based on body build (endomorphic, mesomorphic, ectomorphic).
• Jung's Typology: Categorizes individuals as introverts or extraverts.
• Friedman and Rosenman's Type A and Type B: Differentiates personalities based on behavioral patterns related to stress and health outcomes (Type A being more prone to stress-related illnesses). Morris also suggested a Type C (cancer-prone) and Type D (depression-prone) personality.

While appealing, type approaches are often criticized for oversimplification and the difficulty of fitting individuals neatly into categories.

Trait Approaches

Trait approaches focus on identifying stable, enduring psychological attributes (traits) along which individuals differ. Traits are considered consistent across situations and time. Key contributors include:

• Allport's Trait Theory: Identified cardinal (highly generalized), central (core qualities), and secondary (less pervasive) traits, emphasizing the dynamic nature of traits and the role of language in their identification.
• Cattell's Personality Factors: Used factor analysis to identify 16 primary source traits, forming the basis of the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF).
• Eysenck's Theory: Proposed two major dimensions (neuroticism-emotional stability and extraversion-introversion), later adding psychoticism. These dimensions are believed to have biological and genetic underpinnings.
• Five-Factor Model (Big Five): Identified five core personality factors: Openness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness. This model is widely supported and considered a robust framework for understanding personality across cultures.

Activity 2.2 prompts reflection on personal personality traits.

Psychodynamic Approach

Primarily developed by Sigmund Freud, this approach emphasizes the influence of unconscious motives, childhood experiences, and intrapsychic conflicts on personality. Freud proposed:

• Levels of Consciousness: Conscious, preconscious, and unconscious mind, with the unconscious holding repressed desires and drives.
• Structure of Personality: Comprising the id (pleasure principle), ego (reality principle), and superego (moral principle).
• Ego Defence Mechanisms: Unconscious strategies used to reduce anxiety, such as repression, projection, denial, reaction formation, and rationalization.
• Stages of Personality Development: Psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) where fixation can occur if developmental conflicts are not resolved.

Post-Freudian theorists like Carl Jung, Karen Horney, Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, and Erik Erikson expanded on these ideas, emphasizing ego functions, social influences, and individual aspirations.

Behavioural Approach

This approach focuses on observable and measurable behaviors, emphasizing learning through conditioning and reinforcement. Personality is viewed as a learned response to the environment, with behavior change occurring through principles of classical conditioning, instrumental conditioning, and observational learning.

Cultural Approach

This perspective views personality as an adaptation to the ecological and cultural environment. It suggests that a group's economic maintenance system, climate, and available resources influence child-rearing practices, social structures, and ultimately, personality development. For instance, hunting-gathering societies might foster independence and autonomy, while agricultural societies may emphasize obedience and responsibility.

Humanistic Approach

In contrast to psychodynamic theories, humanistic psychology emphasizes subjective experiences, personal growth, and self-actualization. Key figures are Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow:

• Carl Rogers: Focused on the self-concept and the discrepancy between the real self and the ideal self. He proposed that congruence between these leads to a "fully functioning person."
• Abraham Maslow: Developed a hierarchy of needs, suggesting that self-actualization (reaching one's full potential) is the ultimate human motivation.

Box 2.3: Who is a Healthy Person? outlines characteristics of healthy personality according to humanistic theorists, emphasizing self-awareness, acceptance, and living in the present.

Activity 2.2 also touches upon personal values and aspirations related to personality.

Assessment Of Personality

Personality assessment involves systematic procedures to evaluate and understand an individual's personality. The goal is to predict behavior accurately and is useful for diagnosis, counseling, and placement.

Self-report Measures

These are structured questionnaires where individuals provide information about themselves. They are often theory-based and use rating scales. Examples include:

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): Widely used for psychiatric diagnosis and identifying psychopathology.
• Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ): Assesses personality dimensions like extraversion-introversion and neuroticism-emotional stability.
• Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF): Developed by Cattell, it identifies 16 primary personality traits and is useful for career guidance.

Limitations include social desirability (responding in a socially acceptable way) and acquiescence (tendency to agree with statements regardless of content).

Projective Techniques

These are indirect methods designed to uncover unconscious motives and feelings by presenting individuals with ambiguous stimuli. The assumption is that individuals will "project" their inner states onto the stimuli. Examples include:

• Rorschach Inkblot Test: Uses ten inkblots, interpreted based on what the individual sees in them.
• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Involves telling stories about ambiguous pictures to reveal underlying motives and concerns.
• Rosenzweig's Picture-Frustration Study (P-F Study): Assesses aggression in response to frustrating situations.
• Sentence Completion Test: Individuals complete incomplete sentences, revealing their attitudes and beliefs.
• Draw-a-Person Test: Individuals draw a person, with interpretations based on various aspects of the drawing.

These techniques require skilled interpretation and can be subjective, but they offer insights into unconscious aspects of personality.

Behavioural Analysis

This method involves observing and analyzing an individual's behavior in various situations. It includes:

• Interview: Can be structured (specific questions) or unstructured (open-ended), providing insights through conversation.
• Observation: Systematic recording of behavior, often requiring trained observers and clear guidelines.
• Behavioural Ratings: Assessments made by individuals familiar with the person being evaluated, often using rating scales. Limitations include rater biases like the halo effect and response biases.
• Nomination: Peer assessment where individuals choose others they would like to work or interact with, revealing social preferences and personality.
• Situational Tests: Observing behavior in controlled or simulated real-life situations (e.g., situational stress tests) to assess responses to specific challenges.

The chapter concludes with key terms, a summary of concepts, review questions, project ideas, andWeblinks for further exploration.