Blog 7 : Personality

Personality can be defined as ' the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors that make a person unique' . It explores ways in which individuals react and interact with others and describes the concept of growth and development within the psychological system.

Personality is subject to much debate, indeed, as is it inherited or developed as a responsed to environmental conditions. This is known as the nature versus nurture debate. Both play at part in an individual's personality and are considered to both be right but it is still unclear how much it is determined. It is clear that physical characteristics such as eye colou are hereditary yet genetically speaking it is not so clear when it comes to an individual's behavior and intellect.

The nature theory states that one's behaviour and attitude are inherited. Indeed, the nature theory also relates more to the human genes which could be inherited from parents and ancestors, which links to the human theory. The nature theory is believed to link to all the human features that we have at birth. However, there is still issues as to whether its nature that could cause certain behaviour such as crime. On the other hand that behiaviour relates more toward the environment and the surroundings. Therefore, the nurture theory states that the human behaviour is caused by the environment because someone could be raised in a particular environment might lead to an another behaviour not being caused only by the inherited genes.

Furthemore, the Nomothetic is known to describe an objective matter. Indeed, people who adopt this approach are mainly concerned with studying what we share  with others. It describe the study of groups of individuals. This approach normally aims to forecast behaviour and tends to look at human behaviour and personality  at a higher level and looks lesser at any issues relating to the environment linking towards human behaviour. Henceforth, Nomothetic approach claims that it's possible to forecast personality types and how they would behave in certain situations.

On a other hand, there is the Idiographic approach describes the study of the individual on himself, indeed, psychologists are interested in this aspect of experience want to discover what makes each of us unique. This approach aims to acknowledge the developing and the uniqueness of self-concept.(Medilexicon,2006). Self-concept describes personality in terms of the individual's own understanding and interpretation of their identity.


After taking the personality test , I was able to witness that I have a high level of consicousness and openess.However, I saw that I had a medium level of agreeableness and extroversion, but a low-level of Neuroticism which might mean that I am to much open-minded and could have a more specific approach on certain reflexion and different subjects.

Overall, nurture has a more dominant influence as this is because most people's changes in behaviour are normally caused by a change in environment.Therefore, they will have to adapt to their new environment. However, this depends as their nature instinct could kick in causing them to behaviour in a more natural way that will not be affected by changes in the environment.










References :

Idiograhic [online]. Available from http://cranepsych.edublogs.org/files/2009/07/idiographic_versus_nomothetic.pdf [Accessed 2/05/12]

Nature vs. nurture [online].Available from: http://www.simplypsychology.org/naturevsnurture.html [Accessed 2/05/12]