We often hear someone say “X guy has a bad temper” or “Y girl is strong-willed. This is not surprising, considering how much we like to classify people according to their way of being and how little it costs us to label people according to their way of behaving.But do we know exactly what “character” means, what it encompasses and what factors constitute it?

The following paragraphs are dedicated to answering the above questions.

Defining in concept of character

First of all, the concepts should be clarified and properly defined. What is character?

According to the Royal Spanish Academy , the sixth meaning in the entry dedicated to the word, defines character as “The set of qualities or circumstances of a thing, a person or a community, which distinguishes them, by their way of being or acting, from others”, and proposes some examples of its use: “The Spanish character. The insufferable character of So-and-So”.

This explanation, however, serves to get an idea of the popular use of the term character (which is fine and falls within the objectives of the RAE), but if we want to understand what it is in a more global way we have to know what the psychologists who do research based on this idea say about character.The fact is that character is one of the most used concepts in the psychology of individual differences to categorize the differences between individuals; in fact, it is closely related to other concepts, such as personality or temperament.

Different ways to approach the concept

Many psychologists and psychiatrists still express disagreements about the specific meaning they give to the concept of “character” . Despite this, among the similarities that we can find in the explanations of those researchers who work to extract knowledge related to the subject, is the idea that a person’s character summarises the way in which this person habitually reacts to a given situation, circumstance or action. In other words, character is not something that is produced by our body, but is based on interaction

Ernest Kretschmer, an important German researcher on character constitution, well known for his biotypological studies, states that character “results from the set of fundamental biological characteristics based on the anatomical-physiological substrates of the individual constitution and from the characteristics that develop under the influence of the environment and special individual experiences”. As far as we know about character today, it develops through the fusion of the constitution of temperament (inherited from our parents) and instinct with the environment around us, or through external factors that permanently act on our individuality, modifying it more or less strongly and importantly but never transforming it.

This means that character is part of a process. Specifically, it is in our way of relating to the environment and to the internal phenomena of our mind (memories), and therefore it is not one thing, something that remains fixed and interacts with other elements. Neither in the brain nor in any part of our nervous system is there a structure that produces the “character” of each one of us.

The factors that constitute character

A number of character scholars have agreed on several key characteristics of character. As always, there are many points on which there is no general agreement, but among all the schools, one of the most widely accepted at present is the Groningen Character School, whose members include Renne Le Senne, Gaston Berger, André le Gall, and Heymans, among others.

Their work together brings a conception of character according to which it has three constitutive factors : emotion, activity and resonance.

1. Emotivity

emotionality is usually defined as the “state of psychosomatic distress suffered by certain individuals under the influence of events that are objectively of equal importance”. This feature serves as the basis for the classification of emotional and non-emotional individuals . If a subject involves his feelings first (or not) when faced with a stimulus and we can recognise this through some behavioural traits such as mobility of humour, demonstrativeness, compassion, fervour, etc.

2. Activity

The activity involves two aspects. On the one hand, the free need to act because of a congenital need (eat, sleep, etc.). On the other hand, the need to remove any obstacle that tries to oppose the subject’s direction . It is evident that our character varies significantly according to the degree to which we are managing to satisfy these needs.

3. Resonance

The resonance refers to the time of impression that an event gives us and the time necessary for the reconstitution of normality before that act. According to this time, the subjects may be primary (characterized by their impulsiveness, mobility, the fact of being quickly consoled or reconciled, etc.) or secondary (those who are for long periods affected by some impression, cannot be consoled, have persistent grudges, etc.)

In addition to these constitutive factors, Le Senne adds other supplementary properties including egocentrism, analytical intelligence, alocentrism, etc., whose joint interaction with the primaries and environment would result in the personality of each individual.

Character types and their relevance to the field of criminology

At this link below, you will find more information about character types and how this trait relates to criminal behavior:

“The 8 character types (and their relationship to criminal behavior)”