Definitions And Components Of Personality

Personality Definitions

When we are considering the people who are living with us, we can observe that some of them are very friendly & social, Some of them are very quite & charm, Some of them are loud & Aggressive. So it is clear that people are varying one person to another. Personality is the main reason of this variation. There are lot of definition for the Personality. Here we mentioned some of them. 1) “the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment. ”(Gordon Allport)2) “Personality is the relatively stable set of psychological attributes that distinguish one person from another”. (Griffin & Moorhead,2013)3) “How People affect others and how they understand and view themselves as well as their inner and outer traits, and person- situation interaction”. (Fred Luthans,2011)4) “Dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a person’s whole psychological system”. (Stephen P. Robbins & Timothy A. Judge,2013)

According to the definition of Fred luthans, we can derive below mentioned equation, Personality = External Appearance + Behaviour +Self Concept+ situational interaction

External appearance: It means that person’s external look, some people are fat, some are thin, some are tall and some are short. Behaviour: It describes the internal traits such as Friendly, Polite, Sympathetic, Aggressive, Passive, etc. Self Concept: It means that how does person identify himself both internal & external interactions.

Self esteem: It means that how we respect ourselves. Self efficacy: self efficacy is that some person believes about him that he can perform a specific duty successfully. According to above definitions, Personality is a psychological system of a person. According to the psychological system, person’s feelings, thoughts, and behaviour depend.

There are some factors which are directly affected to the personality. Those factors are called as Personality Determinants. Personality DeterminantsThere are two main personality determinants factors,

I. Nature Arguments (Heredity)

II. Nurture Arguments (Environment)

Nature Arguments

It means that what we received from our parents. Also called as heredity. We received physical stature, gender, facial attractiveness, temperament, energy from our parents fully or partially from their biological, physiological or psychological traits. Lot of researches are used twins for their research of Nature Arguments. Here is one of research done by using twins. ‘One set of twins separated for 39 years and raised 45 miles apart were found to drive the same model and colour car. They chain-smoked the same brand of cigarette, owned dogs with the same name, and regularly vacationed within three blocks of each other in a beach community 1,500 miles away. Researchers have found that genetics accounts for about 50 percent of the personality similarities between twins and more than 30 percent of the similarities in occupational and leisure interests’. (Stephen P. Robbins & Timothy A. Judge, 2013)According to the above research it is clear that Nature arguments are directly impact to the personality.

Nurture Arguments

Nurture argument is most valid determinants. It means that, by changing the environment, Personality can be changed. Personality is not depending on the heredity 100%. If personality is depending on the heredity, People cannot be changed. Personalities that we are take from the birth will not be changed all over the life. But with the Culture, Family background, Experiences had, People interacted will change the personality of people. Culture Culture & tradition that we are living has a trend to shape our personal values & behaviour. People who are living in different cultures will develop different personalities.

Family Background

Economical strength of the family, No of children or members of the family, Educational level of the family members including parents uncles or Aunties will effect to the personality from considerable amount.

Experiences had

Experiences that, we earn when, we are dealing with people in the environment. Some time we learn some lessons through the experiences & According to these lessons we will change our personality. As an example, Imagine one friend come to me and borrowed Rs. 1000 from me & he promised to return it within 3 days & but he didn’t come to meet me within 3 months, if i had two or three times of that experience, i will not give any loan for any person those who are coming to me. People InteractedIn various stages of our lives we are interacted with different people. When we are child we are interacting with parents & siblings. When we are being students, we are interacting teachers & class mates, then we are interact with friends & colleagues, in every each stages of our lives we are interact with groups & most of time our personalities depend on the group personalities of each stages. So it is clear that, personality is depending on the people who are interacted. Above factors shows that both nature& nurture Arguments are very important determinants of Personality. It is very important that understanding the personalities of the people in an Organization to Handover responsibilities & duties that they should performed. But how we understand the personalities of people?

Personality Traits

We can understand personalities by observing traits. Personality is rotated around the efforts to identify and label them permanent features that describe the behaviour of a person. Characteristics or traits include shame, aggression, subjection, laziness, ambition, loyalty and pain. This feature displays when they are big cases, is called personality characteristics.

Measures of Personality

We cannot measures personality simply such as we are measuring weight of something by using scale. We cannot directly measure a personality. However, if we cannot be measured personality directly, how do we know it exists? As the students who are studying Organization behaviour, we should observe behaviour of the people & using this behavioural observation we can determine the personalities of people. There are many kind of tests & Practices to measure personality. In next session few of them are described.

Big Five Model

Extraversion

Some people are very easily building up relationship with others. They are very social able people. More talkative & forward able people. They have lot of friends, Having lot of parties & functions to participate. More telephone conversations & chats. They are creating relationships very easily. As an example, If they publish a post on Face book, they are getting hundreds of likes & comments in very short time period. But some persons are opposite to above characteristics. They are quite & timid. They don’t have much friends & connections with outer world. They are very lazy to build relationship. Those kinds of people are Introverts. Agreeableness ‘Refers to a person’s ability to get along with others.

Agreeableness causes

Some people to be gentle, cooperative, forgiving, understanding, and good-natured in their. Dealing with others. But lack of it results in others’ being irritable, short-tempered, uncooperative,And generally antagonistic toward other people.

Researchers have not yet fully

Investigated the effects of agreeableness, but it seems likely that highly agreeable peopleare better at developing good working relationships with co-workers, subordinates, andHigher-level managers, whereas less agreeable people are not likely to have particularlygood working relationships. The same pattern might extend to relationships with customers,Suppliers and other key organizational constituents’. (Griffin & Moorhead, 2013)

People, who are with high Agreeableness, are willing to listen others & they are respecting to others thoughts & ideas also. They will able to work as group.

Neuroticism

‘People who are relatively more neurotic tend to experience unpleasant emotions such as anger, anxiety, depression, and feelings of vulnerability more often than do people who are relatively less neurotic. People who are less neurotic are relatively poised, calm, resilient, andsecure; people who are more neurotic are more excitable, insecure, reactive, and subjectto extreme mood swings. People with less neuroticism might be expected to better handlejob stress, pressure, and tension. Their stability might also lead them to be seen asbeing more reliable than their less stable counterparts’. (Griffin & Moorhead, 2013)

Conscientiousness

Refers to the number of goals on which a person focuses. People who focus on relatively few goals at one time are likely to be organized, systematic, careful, thorough, responsible, and self-disciplined. Others, however, tend to pursue a wider array of goals, and, as a result, tend to be more disorganized, careless, and irresponsible, as well as less thorough and self-disciplined. Research has found that more conscientious people tend to be higher performers than less conscientious people in a variety of different jobs. This pattern seems logical, of course, since conscientious people take their jobs seriously and approach their jobs in a highly responsible fashion. (Griffin & Moorhead, 2013)

Openness

Reflects a person’s rigidity of beliefs and range of interests. People with high levels of openness are willing to listen to new ideas and to change their own ideas, beliefs, and attitudes in response to new information. They also tend to have broad interests and to be curious, imaginative, and creative. On the other hand, people with low levels of openness tend to be less receptive to new ideas and less willing to change their minds. Further, they tend to have fewer and narrower interests and to be less curious and creative. People with more openness might be expected to be better performers due to their flexibility and the likelihood that they will be better accepted by others in the organization. Openness may also encompass a person’s willingness to accept change; people with high levels of openness may be more receptive to change, whereas people with little openness may resist change.

Other Personality Traits

On behalf of the Big Five model, There are several another Personality factors that can be affected to the Organizational behaviour.

Those are:

• Locus of Control
• Self Efficacy
• Authoritarianism
• Machiavellianism
• Self-esteem
• Risk propensit

Locus of Control

There are two main categories in locus of control. It means that people who are depend on their own fate. When they are getting some decisions they are searching for the information themselves & try to do their jobs in their own styles by hard working with good knowledge & Education and they always try to control the external environment by giving instructions & Orders as they want.

External locus of control

People who have the external locus of control, they do not believe the power that they have inside of their mind & body. They believe that their destiny will decide by external factors. They are always looking for orders & Instructions to perform a task. They are willing to follow jobs as they instructed. Those people are always depending on the externals, & they believe about the lucky & some invisible miracle things. Those who are with External locus of control, have high absenteeism rates in their jobs. They are lack of ability & motivated. As an example, in the marketing field they are using people’s external locus of control to sell their products. In toothpaste industry they advertise problems regarding the tooth that can be occurred such as tooth cavitations & generate fear inside the people & to overcome those issues they are pushing to buy their products.

Self Efficacy

It is psychological capacity that someone believe about his ability to perform a specific task himself. Sometime Self Efficacy can be overestimated & sometime can be underestimated. In some cases under estimate & over estimate can be affected badly when we perform tasks, but we should not under estimate about ourselves. AuthoritarianismIt is some person believe that it should maintain power & the state according to the designation or Position that they held in the Organization. Person who with Authoritarianism he will accept orders & directives from only from his bosses those who are clearly designated. They are don’t like to listen to persons who are lower designated than him. As an example if someone has a boss with lower authoritarianism when boss give him an order to follow, if he does not agree with that decision, he can asks it from his boss & he will able to discuss further about this matter with the boss, But if he got a Boss with high authoritarianism, he has to follow the order without any clarification.

Machiavellianism

This concept was found by Niccolo Machiavelli in 16th century. It explains that, How gain the power & controlling others behaviour through the power. Machiavellianism is varying person to person. High Machiavellian persons are non emotional & ration, they are not worrying to lie to achieve their goals & objectives. More Machiavellian persons are enjoying by controlling other person’s behaviours. They are not considering the loyalty & friendship. Less Machiavellianism people are more friendly & loyal full. They are not willing to lie for achieving their personal goals or Objectives.

Self-esteem

It means that person believe about his own worth. Those who are with self esteem they are very competent about their abilities. Normally those persons are looking for high status jobs. High competent on the duties that they are achieving. Less Self esteem persons are not competent about themselves. Most of time they are doing lower level jobs in Organizations. They are not competent about their abilities to perform tasks.