What is Personality

Humans have been personality psychologists since the development of consciousness and a sense of self. All of us, in our everyday lives, observe other people, formulate ideas as to their characteristics and reasons for behaving, make predictions about their behaviour, and adjust our own behaviour accordingly. Probably all of us, to one degree or another, note individual differences among people and categorize others into types. Probably all of us have ideas about the fundamental nature of humans, for example, whether they are basically good or bad, altruistic or selfish, generous or greedy, as well as ideas about how easily they can be changed to do good or evil.

Historically, philosophers have been concerned with the fundamental nature of humans and the reasons for human actions, and many psychology departments in universities evolved out of philosophy departments. It was not until the 1930's that personality began to be recognized as a distinct part of psychology. The concept of personality has been defined in several ways in the history of psychology.

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However, a definition that captures much of what psychologist mean by personality was provided by Child (1968 p.83),who described it as "more or less stable, internal factors that make one person's behaviour consistent from one time to another, and different from the behaviour other people will manifest in comparable situations". The definition is rather broad, because it includes intelligence as an aspect of personality. Many theorists argue that the term "personality" should be restricted to emotional and motivational factors, but others would extend it to include intelligence.

Personality theorists of the past used to identify personality types rather than traits. In essence, type theorists assume that all individuals can be allocated to one of relatively some types of categories. The issue of personality types is as old as psychology. Infact it is a good deal older. The ancient Greeks for example have given it considerable thought. Hippocrates (around 400BC) & later Galen (around 150 AD) came up with two dimensions of personality leading to four "types", based on what kind of fluids (called humours) people had too much or too little of. They four humours are Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholy and Phlegmatic.

The sanguine type is cheerful and optimistic, pleasant to be with, comfortable with his or her work. According to the Greeks, the sanguine type has a particularly abundant supply of blood (hence the name sanguine, from sanguis, Latin for blood) and so also is characterized by a healthful look, including rosy cheeks. The choleric type is characterized by a quick, hot temper, often an aggressive nature. The name refers to yellow bile (a chemical that is excreted by the gall bladder to aid in digestion), a choleric person was thought to have too much of it. Physical features of the choleric person include a yellowish complexion and tense muscles. Next, we have the phlegmatic type. These people are characterized by their slowness, laziness, and dullness. The name obviously comes from the word phlegm, which is the mucus we bring up from our lungs when we have a cold or lung infection. Physically, these people are thought to be kind of cold, and shaking hands with one is like shaking hands with a fish.