Personality

Annotations:

• personality: an individuals unique and relatively unchanging psychological characteristics and behaviour patterns
• personality refers to the consistency in who you are, have been and will become.
• also refers to the social blend of talents, attitudes, values, hopes, loves, hates and habits that makes each of us unique 
• personality is not character, temperament, self-concept, self-esteem.
• Character: personal characteristics that have been judged or evaluated; a person's desirable or undesirable qualities. 
• temperament: the physical foundation of personality, including emotional and perceptual sensitivity, energy levels and moods 

Annotations:

• personality traits: are stable qualities that a person shows in most situations 
• traits may be used to predict future behaviour. 

Annotations:

• a personality type refers to a group of people who have several traits in common. e.g. the executive type, the athletic type, the motherly type and the strong, silent type 

Annotations:

• some of the earliest attempts to explain personality involved the use of types, or typologies. This meant that people were classified according to a distinguishing feature of some kind 
• earliest theories developed by Hippocrates, the greek physician. Hippocrates classified individuals as melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic or sanguine.  body contains 4 basic fluids or humours and that each was associated with a particular temperament 
• Black Bile (melancholy temperament)- depressed, sad and brooding  Yellow bile (choleric temperament)- irritable, excitable, and short-tempered  phlegm (phlegmatic temperament)- slow and lethargic  blood (sanguine temperament) sanguine, cheerful, hopeful and active 
• William sheldon attempted to investigate the relationship between body build and personality.  3 body types:  endomorphs- relaxed, sociable, peaceful,  mesomorphs- assertive, vigorous, combative, courageous  ectomorphs- restrained, introverted, artistic, intense  

Annotations:

• personality theories: is a system of concepts, assumptions, ideas, and principles proposed to explain personality 
• Freud's psychoanalytic theory  which focuses on the inner workings of personality, especially internal conflicts and struggles 
• The id- the pleasure principle  the id is made up of of innate biological instincts and urges, such as the urge for food, comfort,and sexual gratification. it is self serving irrational, impulsive, and totally unconscious. The id focuses on the pleasure principle- it seeks to freely express pleasure seeking urges of all kinds. 
• the ego- the reality principle  the ego is sometimes described as the executive, because it directs energies supplied by the id. the id is like a blind king or queen whose power is awesome but who must rely on others to carry out orders  the ego sets standards of behaviour; it delays action until it is practical andy appropriate. the ego is the system of thinking, planning, problem solving and deciding it is in contious control of the personality