Personality

Personality

Have you ever wondered, how is it so, that when something is discussed, people tend to have different opinions and their responds differ? This may happen thanks to number of elements, but the one, the most important, the centre of your understanding is your personality.

From the very beginning, it is important to understand what personality is. It is a combination of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral response patterns of an individual. All of these are expressed daily, mostly in contact with other people. Different personality theories may be presented in slightly different way according to their theoretical positions.

Our personality develops with us, throughout our lives. As children, we are heavily influenced by our parents, the way they brought us up and of course our siblings. We are influenced by their opinions on the world around us, their personality as it is, and their social and moral ladder. It is believed that personality is broken into 5 components, simply called the Big Five. These are: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The Big Five is generally stable, and equal in comparison with the other components, but, sometimes it is not unusual when bigger differences between these elements occur. This is when our genes play their role; they support the elements that are more natural for them.

Great example for this is a long-lasting question, why extroverts tend to be happier than introverts? Two theories carry out this question. The instrumental theory says that extraverts end up making choices that place them in more positive situations and they react more strongly to positive situations than introverts. The temperamental theory suggests that extroverts have a disposition that generally leads them to experience a higher degree of positive affect.

It would not be nature, if there weren’t any setbacks, and so, from time to time people suffering from personality disorders can be found in society. Personality disorders are a class of mental disorders characterized by damaged patterns of behavior, cognition and inner experience. These patterns develop early, are inflexible and are associated with distress or disability. The definitions may vary according to other sources.

There has been recent debate over the subject of studying personality in a different culture. Some people think that personality comes entirely from culture and therefore, there can be no meaningful study in cross-culture study. On the other hand, others believe that some elements are shared by all cultures. I believe that culture can and should influence man’s personality, but only in positive and progressive way.

Personality, is something that follows as just as much, as our own shadow does. We cannot get rid of it whenever we wish. And so I claim, that it is our task, to build our personality in a way, so that, it will help us to reach our goals.