Many times we hear people comment on others: “he has a lot of personality”, or “he lacks personality”. But do we know what personality really is? First of all, we must differentiate between having a lot of character and what personality really is.

Personality is a hypothetical construct that we infer from people’s behaviour. It comprises a series of characteristic features of the individual, in addition to including his or her way of thinking, being or feeling. Personality psychology is concerned with the study of personality.

Personality: what is it?

Personality encompasses a number of common characteristics included in its different definitions. It is a hypothetical construct inferred from the observation of behaviour. That is, we think that “X” person behaves in “X” way because that is his personality, or because that is what he is.

Such a construct does not imply connotations of value, but rather it gathers a series of relatively stable and consistent elements over time, called traits. In addition, includes other elements such as cognitions, motivations and affective states .

Personality encompasses both the manifest behavior and the private experience of the person (his thoughts, desires, needs, memories…). It is something distinctive and unique to each person, because although there are some “personality types”, the truth is that each person is unique, as is his or her personality.

On the other hand, it reflects the influence on behavior of psychological and biological elements of the experiences. The purpose of personality is the successful adaptation of the individual to the environment .

Definition

There are many definitions of personality, and one of the most complete is that of Bermúdez (1996), who defines it as a “relatively stable organization of structural and functional characteristics, innate and acquired under the special conditions of its development, which make up the peculiar and defining team of behavior with which each individual faces different situations”.

We should not confuse this definition of personality with the set phrases we use every day, such as “Fulanite has a lot of personality” or “Fulanite has no personality”. Although the two ideas can be related, they are not exactly the same.

When we use these phrases we are referring to (or imagining) people with a strong character or with very clear ideas ; that is, we use personality as a synonym for character. Even if we were to nuance it even more, we would see that character is a more biological or innate construct; it would be like the way in which a person usually reacts to a situation.

On the other hand, when we speak of someone “without personality”, we think of people with unclear ideas, with lack of initiative, who can be influenced or even dependent. In other words, we attribute not having a personality to the lack of certain characteristics that a person does not always have to have in order for us to continue to consider them as having one personality or another.

All this is part of the common language or verbal expressions ; we cannot consider it erroneous as such, but it is true that it does not coincide with the concept of personality that we are describing here.

Thus, we see how personality is really much more than “having or not having character”, and that it also encompasses many characteristics of the person: it includes their way of thinking, feeling, communicating, living, being emotional, etc.

Personality Psychology

This discipline is in charge of studying the effect of individual differences in personality on behavior . It is formed by three types of theoretical models:

1. Internalist models

They establish that behaviour is basically determined by personal variables, which constitute a valid predictor of such behaviour .

Situationist models

They consider that the causes of behavior are external to the individual (mechanistic paradigm). They put emphasis on behaviour , which is important in itself and which is a product of learning.

3. Interactionist models

They determine that behaviour is the result of the interaction between situational and personal variables . These models overcome the reductionism of the previous ones; it is a “mixture” of the two.

Features

Personality allows us to build our own identity and adapt to the world and the environment. It characterizes people and makes them unique. It includes both positive and negative traits (or rather, considered socially as such), such as empathy, solidarity, anger, optimism, pessimism, joy, bad temper, sincerity, honesty, resentment, etc.

We can also talk about personality “traits”; the sets of common traits constitute the different personality types. Thus, we can talk about people with depressive tendencies, dependent people, and even a lot more.

In other words, personality is made up of the traits that define a person. This is quite stable over time, as well as transitally (in different situations), although it is true that with nuances, since there are situations more extreme than others, and that can lead the person to behave in ways never thought of or never lived before.

Personality disorders

When the person’s features are extreme, dysfunctional, normatively deviant or maladaptive , the person is considered to have a personality disorder (diagnostic criteria from reference manuals should always be consulted).

These traits should be stable over time, as well as predominant; moreover, they usually generate discomfort in the person,.

A total of 10 Personality Disorders are described and characterized in the DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders).

Bibliographic references:

  • Avia, MD (1995). Personality: cognitive and social aspects. Madrid: Pirámide
  • Bermúdez, J. (2003). Personality psychology. Theory and research (vol. I and II). Madrid: UNED
  • Sánchez Elvira Paniagua, A. (2005). Introduction to the study of individual differences. Madrid: Ed. Sanz y Torres. 2nd Edition