Personality

Personality Blog

Compare and contrast the differences between the nature and nurture approaches to personality? Include the nomothetic and idiographic approaches. Summarise with your views – do you feel nature or nurture is the dominant influence

Personality can be defined as the way in which people interact with eachother. It is an individuals attitude, the way they think and behave. Fox (2006) explains that it is the mixture of a persons psychological traits that is used to classify that person.

Traits are characteristics that help outline a persons behaviour. There are many different traits, each person has there own one. If you have a certain type of trait, you are probable to have other related traits. For example, someone may be extrovert. Meaning they are out going and expressive, therefore they are most likely a sociable. There is a model called the big five, which is meant to describe what personality trait you have. These traits are extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openess. I will discuss this later on in my personality test results.

Personality has becomea big part of peoples lives and a big part of society. Some companies are now using it as a form of assessment in an organisations recruitment process. Fox (2006) also highlights this and says that employees will perform better if there personalities match with the right job. I believe this is true up to a certain point because if there personalities connect in a working environment, I think that the employees will perform to a better standard. However, even if there personality traits are not related to others. They still might perform well because of other various reasons such as motivation.

Nature vs Nurture

There is a argument in how peoples personalities are developed, is it by heredity or is it by the impact of the environment, there are two sides to this debate. Nature and Nurture. Nature is where a personality is inherited from something like genes, whilst nurture argues that inherited genes may make up the person. But they do not hold back a persons potential for higher achievement, on the condition that there is the right atmosphere and environment. I do not believe that there is a dominant influence.

Personally, I think I have developed because of heredity and the environment. I think some of my personality traits will not change because of my genes. However, I do believe that over time, my personality traits may change, or I may just gain more traits because of the different environment I am in. Shaffer (2008) highlights that there is a middle ground, which is where my opinion lies.

Nomothetic and Idiographic approaches

There are also other approaches to personality, nomothetic and idigraphic approaches. Nomothetics approach to personality points out similarities between individuals and proposes that people have the same trait. The only different is the extent of the trait. Mullins (2007) explains that personality characteristics can identified and measured and therefore there can be statistical studys on groups. Using this, people can predict the way someone behaves.

Idiographic focuses on why each persons personality is unique and individual. So therefore people can adapt and can change. Mullins (2007) also tells us about the interaction with the environment by saying that “they regard individuals as responding to the environment and people around them and see theinteractions as playign a crictical part in shaping personalities.”

Personality Test

Source: BBC

Summary of my findings about my own personality

These categories makeup the big 5 model of personality. Nelson et al (2007) explains the big 5 model and about each one. Openness is a person that is creative, open minded, interested. As you can see the openness category was low. In my opinion, I agree with my score up to a certain point. I do not believe I am that creative and in some subjects, I am disinterested. But when it comes to hobbies such as sportor piano. I believe I am creative in the way I do things and I am open minded. Conscientiousness is like being hardworking and organised, I believe medium is a fair result for me. I think I am a hard worker and put in the effort in whatever I do, but can be lazy at times. Extroversion is a person that is has characteristics such as sociable and gregarious. In my opinion, I can be sociable depending on the situation. I am fairly shy when meeting new people and will hold back a lot until I get to know them. Agreeableness is a person that is cooperative and straight forward. I do agree with this score to a certain point, as I believe I am pretty straight forward when it comes to just getting on with a task and explaining something. I can easily agree with people and cooperative with people. However, I do not like to agree with something I feel is not right. Last of the big 5 model is neuroticism, which is being anxious and depressed. I agree with this score, because I am usually a calm person and never really feel depressed.

Conclusion

I found this topic a very interesting topic and learnt a lot about myself. Whilst writing about this topic, I thought about my personality and thought about where I would score myself in the big five model. I also thought about other traits and that I believe I have a personality through both nurture and nature. However, I do not agree with the personality test I did, and I do not believe I will agree with any personality test that I do, if I done another one. This is because I believe it all depends on the situation, and believe that I respond differently in different situations and environments.

References

Fox, W. (2006), Managing organisational behaviour, Cape town, Juta & Co. ltd

Mullins, L. (2007), Management and Organisation Behaviour, 8^th Edition, FT Prentice Hall

Nelson, D. and Quick, J. (2007), Understanding Organizational Behavior, 3^rd Edition, Thomas Higher Education

Schaffer, D. (2008), Social and Personality Development, 6^th Edition, Wadsworth

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/meriw007/psy_1001/Big%20Five.jpg

https://www.bbc.co.uk/labuk/experiments/personality/

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