What is Personality?
The study of personality deals with the human being as a whole, i.e. it examines human characteristics at an individual level, the personal history of each individual, as well as the interpersonal relationships between individuals.
Each person is characterized by his personal constitutive equipment, but he lives, moves and acts in a specific social environment, belongs to various social groups, plays various social roles, belongs to a family, a class, a national, cultural and racial group. These all receives the effects of all these elements, as well as the effects of organized society in the form of institutionalized norms. Thus man, nature, the organism and the mental phenomenon, the individual and society coexist, mutually influence and shape each other. The study of personality can be studied under psychology.
Approaching the human personality requires treating the individual as a whole. Of the definitions that psychologists have given in recent decades, the relatively most complete is that which defines personality as “the unity and the integrity of the individual, the totality of his distinguishing characteristics and the idiosyncrasy of his behavior.
Another definition states that personality is the totality of a person’s particular mental and spiritual characteristics and ways of behaving. This whole contributes to the uniqueness of an individual. Personality includes the set of intellectual and educational characteristics, emotional disposition, behavioral tendencies, character and temperament of a person, and is shaped by the interaction between inherited characteristics and the environment, especially that of early childhood.
After much work on the subject, researchers have isolated and standardized the factors considered responsible for the development, formation and modification of human personality. These factors are essentially two: genetic and environmental.
THE FAMOUS GENETIC-ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINATION CONFLICT
From the finding that the factors that determine the development and modification of personality are genetic and environmental, scholars proceeded to attempt to evaluate the two factors in order to prove which is stronger. The conflict between proponents of genetics and proponents of the environmental interpretation is an old one, but it has been taking on major proportions since the 1920s.
Countless pages have been written to date and many results of research observations have been enlisted to support one view or the other.
Research has already proven that human personality and therefore behavior are under genetic control. In other words, they have proven that the genetic factor is the one that endows human existence with certain possibilities and not abilities. They have also proven that these possibilities, in order to germinate, develop and evolve, or to be limited, shrink, disappear, need to accept the influence and cooperation of the equally important environmental factor.
Psychologists have always disagreed about the relative importance of genes and environment. At the same time, all psychologists would probably agree that this is a meaningless argument, since genes and the environment are always in constant interaction with each other or mutual process, and genes can never be understood without the environment, nor the environment without the genes. So we need to study both genes and environment in verify to understand personality. Most of time Environment mold our action accordingly for example: we are in someone’s marriage and we are not feeling bad but in front of others we pretend all is doing good.
