Personality

What is Personality It is all of your traits, attitudes, feelings, behaviors and habits. It is a description of consistent emotional, thought, and behavior patterns in a person.

How Does our Personality Develop? Heredity: You inherit basic traits from parents eye color hair color basic intellectual abilities

Environment The surroundings in which you have grown up or continue to be exposed to. Family Friends Experiences

People who have been exposed to an unhealthy environment may suffer from poor mental health due to exposure to rejection, abuse or other negative behaviors.

Personal Behavior The way you choose to act within your environment and with your inherited abilities has an important impact on who you are. Anne Frank chose to look at the good and positive in people even as she was in hiding because she was Jewish. She eventually died in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany.

One of the important factors in how you act are your values. They guide the decisions you make and how you live. Values are shaped by family, personal beliefs, religion, school, friends, the media and society.

How are Personalities Defined? There are several theories that define the boundaries of personalities. Several include: Gordon Allport’s dispositional perspective Myers-Briggs Types Psychoanalytic Theories (Freud) Behavioral Theories

Big Five Big Five personality traits are five broad factors or dimensions of personality The Big Five factors and their constituent traits can be summarized as follows.

Openness to Experience - appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, and curiosity.

Conscientiousness - a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behaviour.

Extraversion Extraversion - energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation and the company of others.

Agreeableness - a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.

Neuroticism - a tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability; sometimes called emotional instability.

Emotions Emotion is an intense mental state that arises automatically in the nervous system rather than through conscious effort, and evokes either a positive or negative psychological response

Eight Primary Emotions Anger This is one of the most basic emotions. Think about babies. When they are eating, take away their bottle and what happens? Take a toy away from a toddler. Give a student a ton of homework.

Fear The basis for this is in personal safety. Snakes do bite, it can kill you. So there is a reason to be afraid of some snakes. However, phobias are an irrational fear that becomes destructive. For example, if you are phobic of snakes, you might not go into the yard because there might be snakes.

Sadness Often as younger children, our sadness is more egocentric; we only look at how it makes us feel. As adolescents we become more empathetic; feeling sad because of other’s sadness.

Disgust Different aspects of this, from the way we feel when we eat something that we don’t like to the emotion that floods us when others do something we don’t agree with.

Surprise A brief emotional state that is the result of experiencing an unexpected relevant event.

Curiosity Natural inquisitive behavior such as exploration, investigation, and learning

Acceptance Experiences a situation or condition without attempting to change it, protest, or exit

Joy contentment, satisfaction, pleasure

Why do we express emotions? Makes us feel better and it’s a mode of expression Emotions are not conscious yet there is a process emotions go through Perception of stimuli Appraise events or objects Emotions as a result of your appraisal Body changes Action. What you do to deal with your emotions Emotions are outgrowths of our values

Development of emotions Genetic Factors: We all have some emotions in common, however we have different temperaments. Personal Behavior: You choose how to act with in your environment and with your inherited abilities. Environmental Factors: All things you are exposed to since you were born

Environmental Factors Modeling and Imitation: We shape our emotional behaviors by doing what others do. Example: Child sees someone throw a tantrum and get their way. Operant Conditioning: Rewarding for correct behaviors and emotions; punishment for wrong. Example: Boy is crying and father scolds him. Learning updates: As we grow, our values change which in turn changes some emotions.