What is personality according to psychology?

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 behavior. It includes a series of characteristic features of the individual, in addition to including their way of thinking, being or feeling. Personality psychology deals with studying it.

• Related article: "The main theories of personality"

Personality: what is it?

Personality encompasses a series of common characteristics included in its different definitions. It is a hypothetical construct inferred from the observation of behavior. That is, we think that "X" person behaves in "X" way because that is their personality, or because that is how they are.

This construct does not imply value connotations, but rather includes a series of relatively stable and consistent elements over time, called traits. What's more,

includes other elements such as cognitions, motivations and affective states.

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

On the other hand, it reflects the influence on behavior of psychological and biological elements of experiences. The purpose of the 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 define it as a “relatively stable organization of structural and functional characteristics, innate and acquired under the special conditions of their development, which make up the peculiar and defining team of behavior with which each individual faces the different situations ”.

We should not confuse this definition of personality with the set phrases that we use every day, such as "Fulanita has a lot of personality" or "Fulanito has no personality." Although both ideas can be related, it is not exactly the same.

When we use these phrases we are referring (or imagining) to 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 qualify 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.

By contrast, when we speak of someone "without personality", we think of people with unclear ideas, lack of initiative, influenceable or even dependent. That is, 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 that they have one personality or another.

All this is part of common language or verbal expressions; we cannot consider it to be wrong properly speaking, 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 actually much more than "having or not having character", and that it also encompasses many characteristics of the person: includes their way of thinking, feeling, communicating, living, getting excited, etc.

Personality psychology

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

1. Internalist models

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

2. Situationist models

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

3. Interactionist models

They determine that the behavior 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.

Traits

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

We can also speak of personality "traits"; the set of common traits constitute the different types of personality. Thus, we can talk about people with depressive tendencies, dependent people, and even countless others.

That is, the personality is formed by the traits that define the person. Is it is quite stable over time, as well as transnationally (in different situations), although it is true that with nuances, since there are more extreme situations than others, and that can lead the person to behave in ways never thought or never before lived.

Personality disorders

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

These traits must be stable over time, as well as predominant; in addition, they tend to cause discomfort in the person.

The DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) describes and characterizes a total of 10 Personality disorders.

Bibliographic references:

• Avia, MD (1995). Personality: cognitive and social aspects. Madrid: Pyramid
• Bermúdez, J. (2003). Psychology of personality. 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