LEARN · PRACTISE · DISCOVER
Personality: Meaning and Theories
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LEARN · PRACTISE · DISCOVER
Join to unlock this lesson and the full course library, or log in if you are already a member.
LEARN · PRACTISE · DISCOVER
Why is one child talkative and adventurous while another is quiet and careful? The study of personality tries to explain these consistent differences. For teachers, understanding personality helps in guiding children, managing classrooms and supporting wellbeing. This lesson covers the meaning, characteristics and elements of personality, the factors that shape it, and the main theories.
The word personality comes from the Latin persona, the mask worn by actors in ancient theatre. Today it means the unique and relatively consistent pattern of thoughts, feelings and behaviour that makes a person distinct.
Gordon Allport collected many definitions and proposed that personality is the dynamic organisation within an individual of the psychophysical systems that determine their unique adjustment to the environment. In simple words: personality is the organised whole of a person’s characteristics that shapes how they adjust to life.
Physical characteristics, intelligence and cognitive abilities, emotions and temperament, social characteristics, attitudes, interests and values, and character (moral qualities).
| Type | Examples |
|---|---|
| Physical and biological | heredity, physique, health, nervous system, endocrine glands (for example thyroid and adrenal glands affect energy and emotions) |
| Socio-cultural | family, parenting style, school, peers, culture, religion, mass media, socio-economic status |
| Psychological | intelligence, emotions, motivation, self-concept |
Type theories place people into categories.
| Theorist | Types |
|---|---|
| Hippocrates (based on body fluids, “humours”) | sanguine (cheerful), choleric (irritable, quick-tempered), melancholic (sad, gloomy), phlegmatic (calm, slow) |
| Ernst Kretschmer (body build) | pyknic (short, plump, sociable), athletic (muscular, energetic), leptosomic / asthenic (thin, reserved) |
| William Sheldon (body build and temperament) | endomorph (round, relaxed, sociable: viscerotonic), mesomorph (muscular, active: somatotonic), ectomorph (thin, sensitive: cerebrotonic) |
| Carl Jung (attitudes) | introvert (inward-looking, reserved), extrovert (outgoing, sociable); most people are ambiverts |
Type theories are easy to remember, but real people rarely fit neatly into one type.
A trait is a relatively stable characteristic, such as honesty or sociability. Trait theories describe personality as a combination of traits, measured by degree.
| Theorist | Key idea |
|---|---|
| Gordon Allport | cardinal traits (dominate a whole life), central traits (main characteristics) and secondary traits (appear in specific situations) |
| Raymond Cattell | 16 personality factors, measured by the 16 PF questionnaire; distinguished surface and source traits |
| Hans Eysenck | dimensions of extraversion–introversion, neuroticism–stability and later psychoticism |
| Costa and McCrae (Big Five) | Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (OCEAN) |
Sigmund Freud emphasised the unconscious mind and early childhood experiences.
| Part | Principle | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Id | pleasure principle | basic instincts and desires; present from birth |
| Ego | reality principle | balances the id’s desires with reality |
| Superego | morality principle | conscience; internalised rules of parents and society |
Freud proposed psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. Children of primary-school age are mostly in the latency stage, when energy is directed to learning, skills and friendships.
A Class 4 teacher notices that a usually cheerful pupil has become withdrawn and irritable. Remembering Maslow, she first checks basic needs: has the child eaten, is everything safe at home? She speaks with the parents and learns that the family has moved house and the child misses old friends. Supporting the child’s need for belonging, she pairs him with friendly classmates, and his usual personality gradually returns.