When psychologists talk about personality, however, they are concerned primarily with individual differences-the characteristics that distinguish one individual from another-Psychologists do not agree on an exact definition of personality.
But for our purposes we will define personality as the characteristics patterns of behavior and modes of thinking that determine a person’s adjustment to the environment.
The term characteristic in the definition implies some consistency in behavior-which people have tendencies to act or think in certain ways regardless of the situation. For example, you can probably think of an acquaintance who seldom gets angry, no matter what the provocation, and another who flies off the handle at the slightest irritation.
Behavior is the result of interaction between personality characteristics and the social and physical conditions of the situation. But, as we shall see later, personality theories differ in the extent to which they believe than behavior is consistent across situations rather than specific to a particular environment context. Is “honesty” a trait displayed in most situations, or does it depend primarily on the specific situation?
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A complete description of individual differences would include many factors: intellectual abilities, motives acquired in the process of growing up, emotional reactivity, attitudes, beliefs, and moral values. What concerns us here is the manner in which they are organized within a particular individual so as to differentiate that individual from other persons.
Parents respond differently to babies with differing characteristics. In this way a reciprocal process starts that may exaggerate some of the personality characteristics present at birth. What happens to the potentialities with which the infant is born depends on this experience while growing up.
Although all experiences are individual, we may distinguish between two classes: the common experience, shared by most individuals growing up in a given culture or cultural subgroup, and the unique experience, not predictable from the roles that the culture assigns us.
Determinants of Individual Differences:
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An infant is born with certain potentialities. The development of these potentialities depends upon maturation and upon experiences encountered in growing up. Although newborn infants in a hospital nursery look pretty much alike, the physical characteristics that will later make them readily distinguishable from each other are already determined by heredity.
Intelligence and certain special abilities, such as musical talent, also have a large hereditary component, and some differences in emotional reactivity may be innate. One study found that reliable individual differences could be observed shortly after birth in such characteristics as activity level, attention span, adaptability to changes in the environment, and general mood.
One infant might be characteristically active, easily distracted and willing to accept new objects and people; another might be predominantly quiet, persistent in concentrating of an activity, and leery of anything new.
These original characteristics of temperament tended to persist in many of the 100 or more children whose development was followed over a 14-year period (Thomas, Chess, and Birch, 1970).