Question

describe theories of personality.

Answer 1

Theories of personality

Personality is a  pattern of thoughts, feelings, social adjustments, and behaviors consistently exhibited over time that strongly influences one's expectations, self-perceptions, values, and attitudes. Personality also predicts human reactions to other people, problems, and stress.There are four major theoretical approaches to the study of personality. Psychologists call them the psychoanalytic, trait, humanistic and social cognition approaches.

personality is the unique, relatively enduring internal and external aspects of a person’s character that influence behavior in different situations.Everybody has a personality, and yours will help determine the boundaries of your success and life fulfillment. It is no exaggeration to say that your personality is one of your most important assets. It has already helped shape your experiences up to now, and it will continue to do so for the rest of your life.

How to describe your personality

Of course, it’s glib and overly simple to try to sum up the total constellation of some- one’s personality characteristics by using such fuzzy terms as terrific and terrible. The subject of personality is too complex for such a simplified description, because humans are too complex and changeable in different situations and with different people. We need to be more precise in our language to adequately define and describe personality. For that reason, psychologists have devoted considerable effort to developing tests to assess, or measure, personality.
You may think you don’t need a psychological test to tell you what your personality is like, and, in general, you may be right. After all, you probably know yourself better than anyone else. If you were asked to list the words that best describe your personality, no doubt you could do it without too much thought, assuming you were being honest with yourself.
Write down as many adjectives as you can think of to describe what you are really like—not how you would like to be, or what you want your teachers or parents to think you are like—but the real you.

How Others See Us
Another way of trying to understand personality is to look to its source. The word goes back to about the year 1500, and derives from the Latin word persona, which refers to a mask used by actors in a play. It’s easy to see how persona came to refer to our out- ward appearance, the public face we display to the people around us. Based on its derivation, then, we might conclude that personality refers to our external and visible characteristics, those aspects of us that other people can see. Our personality would then be defined in terms of the impression we make on others—that is, what we appear to be. Viewed from that perspective, personality is the visible aspect of one’s character,as it impresses others. In other words, our personality may be the mask we wear when we face the outside world.
Unique Characteristics
Our definition of personality may also include the idea of human uniqueness. We see similarities among people, yet we sense that each of us possesses special properties that distinguish us from all others. Thus, we may suggest that personality is an enduring and unique cluster of characteristics that may change in response to different situations.
The Levels of Personality
Freud’s original conception divided personality into three levels: the conscious, the pre- conscious, and the unconscious. The conscious, as Freud defined the term, corresponds to its ordinary everyday meaning. It includes all the sensations and experiences of which we are aware at any given moment. As you read these words, for example, you may be conscious of the sight of the page, a message you want to send to a friend, and someone playing loud music next door.
Freud considered the conscious to be a limited aspect of personality because only a small portion of our thoughts, sensations, and memories exists in conscious awareness at any one time. He likened the mind to an iceberg. The conscious is that part above the surface of the water—the tip of the iceberg.

More important, according to Freud, is the unconscious, that larger, invisible portion below the surface. This is the focus of psychoanalytic theory. Its vast, dark depths are the home of the instincts, those wishes and desires that direct our behavior. The unconscious contains the major driving power behind all behaviors and is the repository of forces we cannot see or control.

Between these two levels is the preconscious. This is the storehouse of all our memories, perceptions, and thoughts of which we are not consciously aware at the moment but that we can easily summon into consciousness. For example, in the unlikely event your mind strays from this page and you begin to think about what you did last night, you would be summoning up material from your preconscious into your conscious. We often find our attention shifting back and forth from experiences of the moment to events and memories in the preconscious at any one time. He likened the mind to an iceberg. The conscious is that part above the surface of the water—the tip of the iceberg.
More important, according to Freud, is the unconscious, that larger, invisible portion below the surface. This is the focus of psychoanalytic theory. Its vast, dark depths are the home of the instincts, those wishes and desires that direct our behavior. The unconscious contains the major driving power behind all behaviors and is the repository of forces we cannot see or control.
Between these two levels is the preconscious. This is the storehouse of all our memo- ries, perceptions, and thoughts of which we are not consciously aware at the moment but that we can easily summon into consciousness. For example, in the unlikely event your mind strays from this page and you begin to think about what you did last night, you would be summoning up material from your preconscious into your conscious. We often find our attention shifting back and forth from experiences of the moment to events and memories in the preconscious.

Most aspects of personality remain mysterious and some are still not fully accessible. We have gone through various ways of defining and describing personality, and each theory we have discussed has contributed another part of the answer to that vital question of what is personality.
We have gone through the viewpoints of many. And we have covered many other ideas in between, all of which have added to our understanding. But there are more possibilities to consider, more to be learned, and no doubt new approaches will be presented, new theories as yet unimagined.
The attempt to understand personality will never ends. Although it is true that enormous progress has been made in charting personality and detailing the factors that shape it, the challenges of the field remain active and dynamic. Perhaps the question, “What is personality?” is the most important question of all for psychology, for it reflects the attempt to understand ourselves.