2. What is Personality?
• Personality can be defined as those inner psychological characteristics that both
determine and reflect how a person think and act in an environment.
►The inner characteristics of personality are specific qualities, attributes, traits, factors
and mannerism that distinguish one individual from other individuals. Personalities
are likely to influence the individual’s product and store choices. They also affect the
way consumer responds to a firm’s communication efforts.
Personality is a pattern of stable states and characteristics of a person that
influences his or her behaviour toward goal achievement. Each person has unique
ways of protecting these states.
• Personality is the fundamental and foremost determinant of individual behaviour. It
seeks to integrate the physiological and psychological facets of an individual to put
them into action. Personality consists of an individual’s characteristics and distinctive
ways of behaviour
3. Personality Meaning
• The word personality is derived from a Greek word “persona” which
means “to speak through”. Personality is the combination of
characteristics or qualities that forms a person’s unique identity.
• It signifies the role which a person plays in public. Every individual
has a unique, personal and major determinant of his behavior that
defines his/her personality.
The dynamic organisation within the individual of those psychophysical
systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment
-Gordon Allport
5. Determinants of Personality
• Biological Factors
The study of the biological contributions to personality may be studied under
three heads:
• Heredity
Heredity refers to those factors that were determined at conception.
Physical stature, facial attractiveness, sex, temperament, muscle composition
and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms are characteristics that are
considered to be inherent from one’s parents.
The heredity approach argues that the ultimate explanation of an individual’s
personality is the molecular structure of the genes, located in the
chromosomes.
6. Determinants of Personality
Brain
• The second biological approach is to concentrate on the role that the brain plays in
personality. The psychologists are unable to prove empirically the contribution of
the human brain in influencing personality.
Physical Features
• A vital ingredient of the personality, an individual’s external appearance, is
biologically determined. The fact that a person is tall or short, fat or skinny, black or
white will influence the person’s effect on others and this in turn, will affect the self-
concept.
7. Determinants of Personality
• Cultural Factors
• Among the factors that influence personality formation is the culture in which we
are raised, early conditioning, norms prevailing within the family, friends and
social groups and other miscellaneous experiences that impact us.
• The culture largely determines attitudes towards independence, aggression,
competition, cooperation and a host of other human responses.
• Family Factors
• Whereas the culture generally prescribes and limits what a person can be taught,
it is the family, and later the social group, which selects, interprets and dispenses
the culture. Thus, the family probably has the most significant impact on early
personality development.
8. Determinants of Personality
• Social Factors
• There is increasing recognition given to the role of other relevant persons,
groups and especially organisations, which greatly influence an individual’s
personality. This is commonly called the socialization process.
• Socialization involves the process by which a person acquires, from the
enormously wide range of behavioural potentialities that are open to him or her,
those that are ultimately synthesized and absorbed.
• Situational Factors
• Human personality is also influenced by situational factors. The effect of the environment is
quite strong. Knowledge, skill and language are obviously acquired and represent important
modifications of behavior.
10. Personality Characteristics
• Locus of Control
• The degree to which individuals perceive control over a situation being internal or external is
called locus of control.
• Self-Efficacy
• Generalized self-efficacy refers to a belief about one’s own ability to deal with events and
challenges.
High self-efficacy results in greater confidence in one’s job-related abilities to function effectively
on the job. Success in previous situations leads to increased self-efficacy for present and future
challenges.
• Self-Esteem
• An individual’s self-worth is referred to as self-esteem. Individuals with high self-esteem have
positive feelings about themselves.
Low self-esteem individuals are strongly affected by what others think of them, and view
themselves negatively.
11. Personality Characteristics
• Self-Monitoring
• The extent to which people base their behavior on cues from other people and situations
is self-monitoring.
Icertainndividuals high in self-monitoring pay attention to what behavior is appropriate
in situations by watching others and behaving accordingly.
Low self-monitoring individuals prefer that their behavior reflects their attitudes, and
are not as flexible in adapting their behavior to situational cues.
• Positive/Negative Affect
• Individuals exhibit attitudes about situations in a positive or negative fashion.
An individuaal’s tendency to accentuate the positive aspects of situations is referred to
as positive affect, while those accentuating less optimistic views are referred to as
having negative affect.
Employees with positive affect are absent from work less often. Negative affect
individuals report higher levels of job stress.
12. Personality Characteristics
• Risk-Taking
• People differ in their willingness to take chances. High-risk-taking managers
made more rapid decisions and used less information in making their choices than
low risk-taking managers.
• Type A and Type B Personality
• Type A personality individual is aggressively involved in a chronic, struggle to
achieve more and more in less and less time, and if required to do so, against the
opposing efforts of other things or other persons.
Type B personalities are rarely harried by the desire to obtain a wildly increasing
number of things or participate in an endless growing series of events in an ever
decreasing amount of time.
