What is Personality?

It seems appropriate to begin with in-depth discussion of human personality with a definition of just what the term personality is intended to encompass. Not only will such a definition prove useful in describing the construct itself, but it may prove useful in gaining insight into personality classification systems and personality disorders as well.

                In the first years of life, children engage in a wide variety of behavior responses. Although children will display what appear to be constitutional characteristics at birth, their way of reacting to themselves and their environment tends, at first, to be changeable and unpredictable to observers. It seems that these behavior responses serve an exploratory function. In other words, each child is trying out and testing various behavior responses. Through a process of what Edward Thorndike (1935) called “trial and error” learning, the child learns which behavior responses are effective and which are not. From a learning perspective, the child discovers which behavior responses lead to reinforcement (pleasure) and which responses are ineffective or punishing (unpleasurable).

                As the child develops and matures, a shaping process takes place. The child develops a repertoire of what are now empirically tested behaviors designed to achieve reinforcement that also avoid punishment. In time, those observing child may note that the child fairly consistently practices specific behavior responses in a variety of different situations. At this point, the child may be said to be demonstrating a habit.

                As the child continues to mature, he/she begins to exhibit a repetitive clustering, or grouping, of habits. This collective group of habits may be referred to as a trait.

                Finally, the child’s behavior becomes crystallized into preferred patterns of behaving. Not only do these patterns become resistant to extinction, but the very fact that they have been successful in the past makes them a high-priority response pattern. Thus, given a continuity in basic biological development and a range of experiences for selecting and adopting behavior responses, the child can be seen to develop a distinctive pattern of environmental and intrapersonal interaction that is deeply embedded and not easily eradicated. In short, these characteristics are the essence and sum of the child’s personality.

A Definition of Personality

What then is personality? As we use the term, personality represents a pattern of deeply embedded and broadly exhibited cognitive, affective, and overt behavioral traits that persist over extended periods of time. These traits emerge from a complicated matrix of biological dispositions and experiential learning. Lying at the core of personality are two processes: (1) how the individual interacts with the demands of the environment and (2) how the individual relates to self. We use the term pattern when referring to personality for two reasons: first, to focus on the fact that these behaviors and attitudes arise from a complex interaction of both biological dispositions and learned experience; second, to denote the fact that these personality characteristics are not just a scattered aggregation of random tendencies, but a learned and predictable structure of overt and covert behaviors.

                This conception of personality, now central to the DSM-III, breaks the long-entrenched tradition of viewing syndromes of psychopathology as pathological, alien entities or lesions that insidiously or abruptly overwhelm the individual so as to prohibit normal functioning. We will expand on this theme when we discuss the concept of syndromal continuity.

(Source: Millon, Theodore, & Everly, George S. (1985). Personality and Its Disorders. United States of America : John Wiley & Sons.)

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