The population of the Earth is 6,692,030,277 and every person on this planet is different from the others, everyone is unique. We differentiate from each other not only physically but also mentally. People think, behave, talk, believe, motivate, work, and learn etc in a different way. Individuals differ in: 1. Personality – It encompasses a number of characteristics that arise from within an individual. Personality can be influenced by several factors: genetic, environment, early childhood, culture, socialization and age. It consist the physical, mental, moral, and social qualities of the individual.
There are two fundamental approaches study of personality – the idiographic approach and the nomothetic approach. The believers in the idiographic approach think that every person has an exclusive personality. No two personalities are alike therefore the personality must be studied in terms of its own organization not in comparison with others. The nomothetic approach is the opposite. His believers analyze data about groups, and the main objective of this approach is the isolation of one or more of the variables of personality. An essential means of studying personality is the trait perspective.
Trait is “Individual characteristic in thought, feeling and action, either inherited or acquired, and refers to tendencies to act in a certain way” McKenna (1995). Traits may serve three major functions. They may be used to summarize, to predict, and to explain a person’s conduct. When a person shares a pattern of traits with a large group of people, he or she is said to belong to a personality type. There are six personality types: The four humours. The Greeks believed that the body was made up of four main components or Four Humours.
These Four Humours needed to remain balanced in order for people to remain healthy. The Four Humours were liquids within the body- blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These could be connected to the four seasons of the year: Yellow Bile with summer, black bile with autumn, phlegm with winter and blood with spring. Hippocrates and other Greek practitioners argued that the balance of the Four humours would be most effected in those particular seasons. For example, if someone has a fever they would have been thought to have had too much blood in their body. The logical cure therefore is to ‘bleed’ the patient.
Sheldon’s typology (1954). Sheldon classified personality according to the body type. Endomorphic – with plump, buxom, developed visceral structure, who is generally relaxed in temperament, loves comfort, sociable and affectionate. Mesomorphic – with muscular structure who is assertive, noisy, aggressive, and energetic. Ectomorphic – with lean, delicate, poor muscles structure who is quiet, fragile, restrained, non-assertive, and sensitive. – “Big Five” factor theory – here investigators analyze the words that ordinary people use to describe people’s personalities.
There are five factors: Neuroticism (people who frequently experience emotional distress and wide swings in emotions will score high on measures of Neuroticism), Extraversion (people who are sociable and have many friends tends to be extraverts), Openness (refers to openness to experience, rather than openness in an interpersonal sense. ), Aggreeableness (people tend to be helpful and prefer cooperation over competition), Conscientiousness ( it refers to how controlled and self-disciplined we are).