what is meant by personality?

Answer 1

personality is the way you treat toward people. sometimes it also includes how you treat yourself. its the attitude that u show to others..whether you're kind, rude, shy, or outgoing.

Answer 2

It's a combination of a persons thoughts, actions (and reactions), feelings and behaviors. In other words:

"An individuals unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits" -psychology 101 course

"the totality of an individual's behavioral and emotional characteristics" - the dictionary

Answer 3

it is your personal being, your personal, ability...personality.

Answer 4

This might be helpful
http://sensitive-psychoworld.blogspot.com/

Answer 5

Personality is the set of core behaviors and emotional approaches that exist in a person regardless of circumstance.

The two biggest competing cognitive theories of personality are the five factor model and type theory.

The five factor model says your personality has five "orthogonal" dimensions of traits that persist throughout your lifetime. There is no known cause for this.

Type theory also says there are five dimensions of personality, but they are not completely "orthogonal."

Orthogonal means "at right angles." In math, things that are at right angles are completely independent and unrelated. Type theory says there are 16 types of people, who further have a measure of stability called the comfort and discomfort scale. Type theory covers five things. How you perceive information when you are not purposefully trying to perceive it in a particular way. It says people either tend to perceive the concrete information first, or the meaning of that concrete information first. There is an indentical scale, but without the data perception element on the five factor model. As there is with all five scales.

The difference between the two results in very substantial behavioral differences. About 2/3rds of the American population will first notice the concrete actual information before considering the meaning of the information. There is also data that people who perceive information concretely read differently than those who tend to perceive information abstractly first. It is rather interesting because eye motion studies show stable methods of reading that are different between the two groups, resulting in faster reading speeds for those who first notice meaning. It turns out that the group that tends to notice meaning tends not to read all the words. They also don't notice they didn't read all the words. It tends to give an advantage to abstract observers in timed tests as well.

The second dimension in type theory is how people tend to make choices first. This covers everything from toothpaste to marriage. People either tend to make objective choices or subjective choices. The first tend to seek clarity and remove themselves from the situation, the second tend to seek to conform the decisions to their values and put themselves into the problem and fully invest themself in the decision.

The next two dimensions have nothing to do with perception and judgement directly, they have to do with how you see people taking in information and making judgments. Basically, what do you look like to others when you are doing those two things. The first is introversion and extraversion. Do you tend to prefer to spend time in your inner world of thoughts, ideas and concepts and does it emotionally exhaust you to spend time interacting OR do you prefer to spend time in your outer world of people, interacting with objects and action and you avoid situations where you cannot interact. Again, brains studies show an interesting difference between the two groups. Introverts brains operate with a high level of arousal regardless of what is occuring in the outer world. Even small levels of additional sensory arousal set off a firestorm of activity. Extraverts conversely almost seem like their brains are "off," when there is no sensory stimulation. It takes interaction to achieve the same level of cognitive activity introverts have without that activity.

The fourth dimension refers to the first two. People tend to show either their perception or judgment more often and this tends to be their "public," self. It is the difference of how do you act with strangers and your "shoes off self." People who show their judgments in public tend to seek order and to bring things under a plan. Judgments by their nature are inherently closed ended. People who show their observations tend to be flexible and adaptive. Observing by its nature is an unbounded activity, you only stop perceiving by dying. You can refrain from judging.

The final dimension is sort of a measure of how comfortable you are in your own skin. It is a clinical measure.

In addition to the cognitive models, there are also models of emotional personality. Reversal theory says there are four categories of emotions. Everyone has the first two and they are shared by animals, the second two categories are learned. Not everyone has them, sociopaths are an example of a group which lack the full range of human emotion. Under reversal theory, you tend to be aware of spending more time in one set of emotions than others, but if you are healthy you will quickly change from emotion to emotion as your setting or internal states changes.

The four categories are telic/para-telic and these are the emotions of serious behavior vs. playful behavior. For example, anxiety is a telic behavior. You cannot be afraid and playing at the same time. If you are in a dangerous situation and anxious, then play is out of the question. However, in play fear does not exist and it is the home of excitement. If you are hanging from a cliff by one hand and excited about it, you are no longer emotionally aware of the danger you are in. You have placed yourself in an emotional frame of safety. If you suddenly become emotionally aware of the danger, anxiety will suddenly kick in and you will be afraid. It is the same stimulous but a different internal explanation for the response. You have framed it differently.

The next dimension might be thought of as conformity versus rebellion. When you stand in line at Disney for hours you are playfully conforming to what Disney wants you to do. If you went to Wal-Mart and they told you check out waiting time was two hours and only one register was open, and it wasn't the day after thanksgiving, you would be in serious rebellion. People, doing the same behavior -standing in line- will openly rebel because their expectations were not met and because of the differences in competition.

The next dimension could be thought of as emotions that work around mastery or transactions and sympathy or relational behaviors.

The fourth set of emotions are based upon where they are centered self or other.

So this post is a mastery other post. I am centering on your learning and trying to give you mastery of your environment. The emotion on my side might be thought of as virtuous behavior and possibly pride.

When you see posts, think of what emotions are driving them. Sympathy or mastery--rebellion or conformity to the question--playful or serious responses -- and self interested or other interested. This message board might get more interesting if you do.