ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel

Figuring Out Someone's Personality

Updated on July 22, 2013

People and Their Personality

The study of personality is a very complex subject.
The study of personality is a very complex subject. | Source

People and Their Personality

There is a human natural need to figure out someone’s personality. It is natural for us to observe the actions, interactions, and reactions of people. In doing so, we make certain predictions about that person’s behavior and personality.

We all have a personality, which makes us unique and similar. Through the things we know about ourselves and the world around us, we make assumptions about people. It is advantageous to realize how a person may behave in various circumstances. It is part of our primitive survival mechanism. Knowing how a person may react also protects us from a way they may act that could be harmful to us and frees us up to do other things. Our instinct automatically picks up attributes we see. Sometimes, and often times, our assumptions may be incorrect. Why is that?


What is Personality?

Our guesses come from our own limited knowledge. Our own theories are rooted in our personal experiences, our beliefs, and our own personalities.

Scientists, researchers, psychologists, philosophers, and most everyone tries to gain a greater understanding about human beings through the study of personality. Personality theory is fairly recent to the field of psychology and is a very in depth topic.

Personality in current terms can be defined as the characteristics and traits that play a role in the way a person thinks, behaves, and what motivates them in various situations, uniquely defines who they are and typifies each of us. Our personality is dynamic and changing, yet some aspects are fixed from birth, leading to the idea that these characteristics are a mixture of our biology and our environment.

The word personality comes from the Latin word persona, for mask.

Gordon Allport

Gordon Allport was a famous personality theorist.
Gordon Allport was a famous personality theorist. | Source

Theorists and the Study of Personality

From the ancient times of Hippocrates to modern times, science has tried to understand observable personality.

One of the first notable milestones in personality theory came from Sir Francis Galton.

Sir Francis Galton became known for his Lexical Hypothesis in 1884. He used words to describe characteristics people displayed. Many theories,and models of personality structure, and personality tests are the basis of Galton’s theory.

Gordon Allport, an American psychologist followed up Galton’s theory, nearly a half a century later. He realized traits were the best way to describe a person’s personality. Allport and his associate H.S.Odbert came up with 4,500 words to describe to describe personality in ordinary terms and help define the uniqueness of a person’s personality.

Understanding Personality

Uniqueness of Personality

Allport continued his study of personality and described two main ways to understand the characteristic behaviors of people, known as personality dispositions.

  • the Nomothetic Approach - compares similar traits within a larger group where the combination makes people stand out in a particular way.

  • the Ideographic Approach - specific personality traits within individuals that make a person unique.

Nomothetic traits are general words that can be used to characterize a large group of people in a general way. Words such as ambitious, lazy, kind.

Allport believed the ideographic traits were a better way to define an individual’s personality. He thought that people were best described by about five to ten central traits, not one single characteristic that is displayed by their behavior.

Allport understood that personality traits are not necessarily consistent or predictable and came up with secondary traits that could be applied to certain circumstances. The combination and pattern of a person’s disposition is what gives them their individuality.

Nomothetic traits are one of the biggest parts of most personality research.

Raymond Cattell came up with a statistical method in 1957 of categorizing traits called factor analysis. Factor analysis uses nomothetic traits to describe clusters or groups of traits that describe personality types. He narrowed the 4,500 words from Allport and Odbert down to 171 main characteristics and put them into 35 main groups plus 10 additional he came up with to describe traits. He then narrowed them down to 16 main traits. Cattell is famous for his 16PF personality test. This personality test scores people on a dimension so that their personality can be described in general terms that hold true for certain behavioral principles.

Personality is relatively stable and doesn’t change from week to week. This is what makes personality somewhat predictable and allows us to anticipate how the people we know will behave.

Theodore Millon is a psychologist who heads a well known center called The Institute for Advanced Studies in Personology and Psychopathology (IASPP) International Center in Port Jervis, NY. Here for personality and clinical psychology, where they do scholarly research on mental health issues. Roger. D. Davis and Theodore Millon studied disorders of personality and believe that it is best to start with nomothetic traits to look for personality disorders and then switch to idiographic traits to understand the individuality and uniqueness of a person that sets them apart from other people.


The Many Theories of Personalities

There are many theories of personalities.
There are many theories of personalities. | Source

Finding the Real Personality

Nomothetic traits are a way of generalizing characteristics of people. Ideographic traits take more in depth knowledge of a person to understand better how that person functions, behaves, thinks and feels. Allport did not believe that nomothetic traits could be universally applied to everyone and that it is the individual differences, ideographic traits that more accurately depict personality.

Our feelings have a lot to do with why we behave differently in different situations. A person might be warm and kind to her co-workers, but behaves in a more critical way with her family, or vice-a-versa. This difference in behavior has a lot to do with how people interpret their environment, what their expectations, values and personal experiences are, how they apply self control to self regulate themselves. Some personality traits are situational characteristics as a way of behaving to particular stimuli and in certain circumstances.

A professor might be distant and formal in front of his class,but when the student talks with them one on one, the professor has a more friendly demeanor. An actor may appear friendly and warm on stage, but when you meet them they are actually shy and aloof and display very little animation in their personality. Their real personality does not match their on stage presence.

Does Personality Change Over The Years

Do you believe a person's personality can change over time?

See results

Dominant Personality Traits

We try to understand people and the world around us by tapping into our internal model of what we know to fit the descriptors we see in that person. We observe people’s behavior and attempt to match it to a pattern that conform to the to these definitions we believe we know about.

When the situations change, people may expect that person to act the same way they have always seen them, but if they don’t really know them well, different situations may bring out different personality traits. When we describe a person’s personality, we are looking for consistency.

We watch a person’s behavior in a situation and make conclusions about that person based on what we see. We believe that person will behave in that particular way in every situation. What we are really seeing is a snapshot of a person’s experience and without further information there may be any number of reasons they behaved that way. One reason could be their personality, but there may be situational factors that are influencing their actions.

Personality is part of our complex nature that makes a person behave, think and feel in a certain way. The more we see the same pattern in a person, the more we can rely on the idea that their actions are a truer part of their personality. The idea of whether a trait is the same in a group of people is complicated by our own view of that particular trait. While people may have the same traits, some of these traits are more dominant than others. It really is best to understand that each of us has a unique psychological makeup and it is relatively impossible to compare one person to another.


Quick Personality Test

www. AboutPersonalities.com

For more information about personalities go to www.aboutpersonalities.com

working

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy

Show Details
Necessary
HubPages Device IDThis is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons.
LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service.
Google RecaptchaThis is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy)
AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy)
HubPages Traffic PixelThis is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized.
Amazon Web ServicesThis is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy)
CloudflareThis is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy)
Google Hosted LibrariesJavascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy)
Features
Google Custom SearchThis is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy)
Google MapsSome articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
Google ChartsThis is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)
Google AdSense Host APIThis service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Google YouTubeSome articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
VimeoSome articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy)
PaypalThis is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook LoginYou can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)
MavenThis supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)
Marketing
Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Google DoubleClickGoogle provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Unified Ad MarketplaceThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
AppNexusThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
OpenxThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Rubicon ProjectThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
TripleLiftThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy)
Say MediaWe partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy)
Remarketing PixelsWe may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.
Conversion Tracking PixelsWe may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.
Statistics
Author Google AnalyticsThis is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)
ComscoreComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)
Amazon Tracking PixelSome articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)
ClickscoThis is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy)