What Exactly is Personality?

You think more about personality than you realize on a daily basis. You are constantly thinking about why someone reacts the way they do or why someone is acting a certain way. Personality psychologists spend a lot of time looking at the individual traits and essentially at what makes people tick. Your informal assessments are similar to what psychologists do because you are focusing on the small characteristics that are behind a person's personality. Personality psychologists do this too and then they apply it to the population as a whole.

Research into human personalities has resulted in a number of theories being developed. This further helps to explain how people develop certain personality traits. As you learn more about personalities and what makes people tick, you will start to find trends among families and among people who spend a lot of time together. You will start to notice certain traits that are more dominant among like groups.

Looking at the Definition of Personality

One of the most interesting things about personality is that there is no one definition. A number of experts have defined it in several ways over the years. Briefly, personality consists of a number of thoughts, behaviors, patterns and feelings that make you a unique person. Personality is quite consistent throughout a person's life. The personality that you have comes from within you and while outside influences can play a role in shaping it, the changes that can occur as a result of the outside environment are generally subtle at best.

Exploring the Different Elements of Personality

When you are looking at a personality, there are four primary things that make it up. When you are using the loose definition listed above, you can see that patterns of emotion and thought and certain traits play an integral role in your personality. There are other fundamental characteristics that work to make up someone's personality, including:

Physiological and psychological: A psychological construct is what is responsible for personality. However, personality experts who research personality have also found that there are several biological needs and processes that might also be at play that work to influence your personality.
Multiple expressions: More than just a single behavior is responsible for personality. You can also see a person's personality in the thoughts, close relationships, feelings and other social interactions. Even things like how a person works or studies is influenced by their personality.
Consistency: When a personality is present, it is always consistent. For example, regardless of the situation, a person tends to act in the same way or very close to it no matter what.
It influences your actions and behaviors: How you respond to and move in your environment is dependent on your personality, but this is not the only thing it influences. In fact, your personality will make you act in specific ways.

Theories About Personality

There are many different theories that personality researchers base their research on. Some of the most common of these theories are what you should start to learn:

Type theories: These theories revolve around the early personality perspectives. They actually suggest that biological influences are responsible for a limited amount of personality types.
Behavioral theories: These theories look at how you interact with your environment and how this works to develop your personality. Those studying this theory reject any of the other theories that state that feelings and internal thoughts are responsible for your personality. B.F. Skinner is a popular psychological theorist that stands behind the behavioral theories.
Trait theories: These theories look at genetically-based internal characteristics and how these work to cause the personality that you have. There are a number of other theories that fall under this umbrella.
Psychodynamic theories: These theories are largely the result of Sigmund Freud. They look at how your unconscious works to develop your personality and the roles the various stages of development play in shaping your personality.

As you can see, personality is complex and something you really need to dive into to start understanding it. You will get some of the well-known basics here that allow you to start getting further into what you need to understand. As you get further into learning about personality, you will find that many things you believed to true are not and many things you thought to be false are true. Getting started with the basics gives you a general understanding of how personality is shaped and how it works to impact a person's life.

References:

http://psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychology/

http://peacebenwilliams.com/lets-play-what-is-your-true-personality/