Why are we different?

We exist in an unstable and turbulent environment bombarded with a multitude and diversity of
dynamic forces and stimuli acting on us, regulating the way we ought to behave and conduct our
way of life. There is no avenue to escape from these forces. We are caught and trapped in it by our
existence to survive and grow in our life processes. We are compelled to discriminate, choose, cope,
accept, resist and adapt to them for survival and growth. The way we go around coping with these
forces varies from one individual to another shaping the way we think, feel and do, and that makes
us different from each other.
By an act of God, we are thrown into our mothers womb, and in that life process, we inherited some
genes from the family tree of our ancestors; and that makes us different the day we are born.
We grow up in our family within a society with unique, beliefs, traditions, norms and values. They
design life support systems called culture, to regulate and condition our conduct of life. They taught
us how to behave, think, feel and do things. Due to our genetic differences, our approach to be
conditioned and regulated by these systems varies from individual to individual. Some of us accept,
some fight these systems while others adapt. Those who accept are rewarded with the pleasures of
life while those who fight means pain and to some even death. Those who adapt learn the pains and
pleasures of life. Pain is learnt through resistance while pleasure is learnt through conformity. It is
these life experiences that make our gap of differences even bigger and wider.
This gap becomes greater for those who are exposed across a variety of cultural experiences. The
exposure to different ways of life enables our phenomenal field to look at the world from different
perspectives.
How we view the world determines why and how we do, feel and think about things around us. What
to do with them varies from one individual to another, making us so unique from each other in our
species.
Why do we need to understand human differences?
We are social beings living in an organized and dynamic world, interdependent on each other to
support our daily needs and necessities for our survival and comfort. By virtue of being a part of a
massive entity and our role-relationship with others beings, we need to play our roles in supporting,
changing and improving these necessities to improve our quality of life. We organize ourselves into
groups known as organizations to produce the necessities to meet our daily support system. And to

play our roles well, we need to socialize, communicate, interact and connect with others to
accomplish common goals.
Dealing with all kinds of people is a daily affair. Each of us has a unique pattern of behavior that
constitutes our personality that determines the way we think, feel and do things. The root causes of
all human problems arise from our different perspectives looking at things. We need to know
ourselves and know others to enable us to find effective solutions to problems caused by our
differences.
Personality Psychology - The study of human differences and its contributions and
limitations
Personality is the study of human differences. Personality psychologists are interested to know how
and why people behave the way they do, why do we feel the way we feel and why do we think the
way we think. They attempt to unravel the mysteries of the mind and the body to explain who we are,
why are we different and how we how we respond to a variety of situations in our environment.
Over the decades, psychologists vary in their approach to the study of human personality. Some
approaches are idiographic. They study human differences on the traits perspectives. They try to
identify the key traits and characteristics by which each person can be distinguished from other
people. Others are nomothetic and focus on identifying personality types. They focus on
investigating similarities between individuals of large groups of people to find patterns of behavior
that are common and those that are share by some others.
The aims of studying human behavior is to describe, understand, predict and control behavior. The
idiographic approach is useful in describing and understands human behavior while the nomothetic
approach contributes significantly to predict and control behavior. Evidently there is a need to
develop school of personality using both approaches and methods for a complete understanding of
human personality.
Historical Perspectives
The earliest attempt to predict personality begins with the ancient theory that our personality is a
result of some external forces. Our personality is influenced by our name, date of birth (numerology),
physical features, zodiac sign, element, and the influence of the planetary systems. The
classification of personality is based on myth, animism and planetary forces. Over the centuries,

people rely on this ancient theory to predict patterns of behavior. The ancient theory is not scientific.
It is more like fortune telling as it is not based on any empirical data.
Temperamental Theory
The earliest known theory of personality is based on the medical theory. It was the Greek physician
Hippocrates (460-370 BC) who developed the ancient four humors also known as the
temperamental theory. He believed certain human moods, emotions and behaviors were caused by
four body fluids or humors. Galen (AD 131-200) extended this theory and developed the first
typology of personality
into four types. The sanguine, or optimistic, type was associated with blood; the phlegmatic type
(slow and lethargic) with phlegm; the melancholic type (sad, depressed) with black bile; and the
choleric (angry) type with yellow bile. Individual personality was determined by
the amount of each of the four humors.
Over the decades numerous personality theories are emerged. Generally, they can be categories
into six schools of thoughts.
1. Trait theory
2. Psychodynamic theory
3. Behaviorist theory
4. Cognitive theory
5. Humanistic theory
6. Evolutionary and Genetic Perspectives
Trait Theory
The first school of theory is initiated by Gordon Allport, (1897 1967) the father of the trait theorists.
He hypothesized that: Those individual differences that are most salient and socially relevant in
peoples lives will eventually become encoded into their language; the more important such a
difference, the more likely is it to become expressed as a single word.
From the above lexical hypothesis, he located every term that he thought could describe a person in

the dictionary to identify a list of 4500 traits and organized them into three categories to identify an
individual personality.
1. Cardinal Traits traits that dominates the personality across time and situations.
2. Central Traits common traits that are consistent across time and situations. They form the
building blocks of personality.
3. Secondary Traits Traits that are less evident and inconsistent across time and situations.
Raymond Cattell organized the thousands of traits described by Allport and condensed them down
to 16 primary traits using the statistical method of factor analysis into 16 PF (Personality Factors) to
explore the basic dimensions of personality. Hans Eysenck further simplified the traits into three
fundamental factors: psychotics (such antisocial traits as cruelty and rejection of social customs),
introversion-extroversion, and emotionality-stability (also called neuroticism). Eysenck also
formulated a quadrant based on intersecting emotional-stable and introverted-extroverted axes.
Goldberg and Costa & McCrae simplified the trait theories using factor analysis to develop the Big
Five OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism)
Contribution of the trait theories
1. It provides a scientific method of classify traits using factor analysis under their adjective
descriptors.
2. The use of idiographic and nomothetic approach to identify human differences.
Limitations of the traits theories
1. Classifying personality based the composition of traits is too simplistic. The lexicon approach
to a certain degree may enable them to understand and describe behavior that is stable and
persistent and not affected by the environment.
2. The development of trait theories is not based on any psychological construct. Apparently,
they cannot explain how traits are developed.
3. Trait theorists cannot explain adaptive behavior where a person pattern of behavior varies
across situations and over time.

4. Traits theorist can explain what you are but cannot explain why you behave, feel and think
the way you do
5. The trait theorists are interested in the conscious awareness where behavior is overt and
observable
6. The trait theory does not inherently provide an avenue of personality change.
7. The use of adjectival descriptors to cluster traits is not inclusive of all psychological traits
The above pitfalls need to be addressed to provide a complete and accurate picture of a persons
personality.
Psychodynamic Theories
Towards the twentieth-century Sigmund Freud became the pioneer of the second school of
personality theories. He attempts to unravel the mysteries of the psyche by structuring our mind into
three levels, conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious. Conscious deals with the part of our
awareness in touch with the reality of our life. It explains our mental activity in which all thought
processes occur. The pre-conscious is where information on our past experiences is stored away,
but it is easily retrievable. The unconscious is a reservoir of our inner states such as desire, wants,
needs and motives. It is also storage of information of our painful past that is being repressed and
cannot be accessed readily.
Freud investigated the interplay of our conscious awareness and unconsciousness to explain
personality.
He proposed a three-part personality structure consisting of the id (concerned with the gratification of
basic instincts), the ego (which mediates between the demands of the id and the constraints of
society), and the superego (through which parental and social values are internalized). In contrast to
type or trait theories of personality, the dynamic model proposed by Freud involved an ongoing
element of conflict, and it was these conflicts that Freud saw as the primary determinant of
personality. His psychoanalytic method was designed to help patients resolve their conflicts by
exploring unconscious thoughts, motivations, and conflicts through the use of free association and
other techniques. Another distinctive feature of Freudian psychoanalysis is its emphasis on the
importance of childhood experiences in personality formation.
Carl Jung
Carl Jung, a follower of Sigmund Freud went against his teacher by modifying the three structure of

the mind. According to Jung: Ego is conscious mind anything which we are aware of what is
happening around in our environment. He replaced the pre-conscious and unconscious with the
concept of personal conscious. Personal unconscious is anything which is not presently conscious,
but can be. The personal unconscious is like most peoples understanding of the unconscious in that
it includes both memories that are easily brought to mind and those that have been suppressed for
some reason. Jung introduced the concept of collective unconscious the part of the unconscious
from our cultural heritage. It is the reservoir of our experiences as a species, a kind of knowledge we
are all born with. And yet we can never be directly conscious of it.
It influences all of our experiences and behaviors, most especially the emotional ones, but we only
know about it indirectly, by looking at those influences.
Jung replaced the Freudian structure of personality with the processes of the psyche and its
functions to explain human behavior. He developed four pairs of polar traits from the eight mental
functions to interpret personality

Perceiving Vs Judging How people prefer to deal with the outer world?

Sensing Vs Intuition How people prefer to take in information?

Thinking Vs Feeling How people prefer to make decision?

Extroversion Vs Introversion how people prefer to focus their attention and energy

Jung sequences the 4 pairs of mental processes:

How people direct their energy?
Observable Behavior (Extroversion Vs Introversion)
Dominant Function (Sensing Vs and Intuition)
Auxiliary Function (Thinking and Feeling)
Inferior Function (Judging Vs Perceiving)
Contributions of the psychodynamic theorists
It provides a distinct structure of the mind and its mental processes to understand human personality
It helps us to understand the underlying causes of abnormal behavior and how to treat them
Limitations of Carl Jung

1. The psychodynamic theories assume behavior is stable and consistent. It is not sensitive to
the environmental influences that may cause the behavior patterns to vary over time and
across situations.
2. It does not differentiate positive and negative behavior. Hence it is good only to predict
positive behavior. Negative behavior are being left out
3. Psychodynamic theories investigate the mind to predict human behavior. How the mind work
is extremely complex. For example, preference for thinking and feeling depends on the
situations. If an issue is important a person may think a lot before he makes a decision. If the
issue is unimportant he may use his gut feeling. Likewise being an extrovert or an introvert is
on the situation basis. In the midst of very important people, a person may choose to be an
introvert while in the midst of friends he may prefer to be an extrovert.
4. Classifying human characteristics under the four polar traits is debatable and can be mooted.
It does not necessary that a person with a deep well for feeling is compassionate,
empathetic, tender hearted and fair. A person who is emotionally unstable and neurotic may
not possess the characteristics mentioned above.
5. It does not differentiate simple and complex human
6. Human being is not that simple to slot them into preferred 16 types.
Behaviorist Theorist
Behaviorist theorists believe that Human Personality can be best understood by our learning,
cognition and the laws in the natural environment. They focus on objectively observable behaviors
and discount the interplay of the psyche of the psychodynamic theorists. Behavior theorists define
learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior based on environmental conditions.
The environment is perceived as a set of stimuli for an individual to interact (response). The
response between the individual and the stimuli of the environment provides an avenue for us to
learn from our actions. The oldest theory of behaviorism dates back to Descartes, who introduced
the idea of a stimulus. He posits that human personality is rooted in the mind or rational soul. It is
distinct from but related to the body. Its essential attribute is thought and its association with the
body is primarily in the pineal gland of the brain. The mind has a cognitive faculty of understanding
for acquiring knowledge and a free will towards our feelings or emotions. Other behaviorists doing
researches include:

1. Dollard and Millers Stimulus-Response Theory focusing on the law of action (response) and
reactions (stimuli) in the natural environment.
2. Ivan Pahlovs Classical Conditioning in his drooling dog experiments developed a technique
used in behavioral training in which a naturally occurring stimulus is paired with a response.
Next, a previously neutral stimulus is paired with the naturally occurring stimulus. Eventually, the
previously neutral stimulus comes to evoke the response without the presence of the naturally
occurring stimulus.
The two elements are then known as the conditioned stimulus and the conditioned response.
1. Skinners Operant Condition using pigeons and rats in his experiment developed a method
of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant
conditioning, an association is made between a behavior and a consequence for that
behavior.
2. Thornsdikes in his experiment on cats discovered behavior become dominant and habits are
formed when behavior produced the desired effect. He proposed that humans and animals
acquire behaviors through the association of stimuli and responses. He advanced two laws
of learning to explain why behaviors occur the way they do: The Law of Effect specifies that
any time a behavior is followed by a pleasant outcome, that behavior is likely to recur. The
Law of Exercise states that the more a stimulus is connected with a response, the stronger
the link between stimulus and response.
Contributions of the behaviorist theories
1. Behavior can be learned. It provides us a method and choice to develop our positive
behavior and defreeze our negative behavior
2. Behavior can be nurtured. It helps us to develop, motivate and control the behavior of a
significant other
3. It provides a medium for personality changes for better or for worse. Behavior can be
reinforced, strengthened and sustained by rewards and diminished by punishment and
extinction.
Limitations of behaviorism

The approach is nomothetic in that it is investigating animals and people to try to find general
laws of behavior that apply to both people and brutes. It is not idiographic and is unable to
help us to understand and describe the unique patterns of behavior of an individual.

It excludes the functions of the human psyche and its mental processes of explaining human
behavior

It does predict human difference as it does not classify personality in personality traits or
types.

It assumes that the general laws relating to the behavior of animals can be applied to
describe human beings. This assumption is debated by the cognitive theorists that there is a
gap for the intellect (mind) to mediate between stimulus and response.

It is unable to explain complex behavior where an individual response to stimuli varies with
the situations and across time

Social Cognitive Theory

Social cognitive theories focus the importance of socialization and the effect of thought processes to
create ones unique patterning of behavior.
Cognitive psychologists attempt to explain human behavior by understanding the mental learning
processes. They assume that human beings are rational beings capable of making sensible choices
that benefits them.
Cognitive psychologists view behavior as a function of cognition, learning and experiences in the
environment.
They assert that people organize their values, expectations and goals to guide and direct their
behavior.
This set of personal standards is unique in each person and grows out of ones life experiences.
Over the past few decades, social cognitive psychologists have been developing theories in an
attempt to explain the complexities by careful observation of the human behaviors with the
environment and their relations. They posit that each of the mechanisms, for examples, selfregulatory, goals mechanisms, self-reflective capabilities and cognitive constructs possesses a
spectrum of possible inputs. These mechanisms are contextualized by these social-learning

processes, which cause some inputs to become particularly salient to an individual or are grouped
with other inputs into an equivalent class and are domain-specific.
1. Albert Bandura, (1977) Social Cognitive Theory
Bandura, a follower of behaviorism attempts to integrate the behavioral and cognitive perspectives to
explain personality. He found the Stimulus- Response Theory that pleasure begets pleasure and
pain begets pain too simplistic and can be mooted.
He creates a gap between stimulus and response. The gap is to allow the intellect to predict the
motives of a stimulus generate alternatives and anticipate the outcomes of each alternative before
choosing a response that makes the most sense in a situation.
Bandura perceives individual functioning as a continuous interaction among behavioral, cognitive
and environmental factors. The three fundamental principles of the social cognitive approach are

Personality is a complex system

Reciprocal interactionism

Personality variables

Furthermore, social cognitive theorists postulate that the intuitive and perceived sense of coherence
and consistency in personality/self/character can arise from three sources:

How people assign meanings to social stimuli

How people establish causal linkage over their lives through self-reflective and selfknowledge processes; and

How people organize disparate and multiple experiences and life events within a larger
cognitive framework of goals, expectation and aspirations.

1. Mischel
Mischel created a paradigm crisis in personality psychology that changed the agenda of the field for
decades. Mischel showed that researches failed to support the fundamental traditional assumption
of personality theory, that an individuals behavior with regard to a trait is highly consistent across

diverse situations. Instead, Mischels analyses revealed that the individuals behavior, when closely
examined, was highly dependent upon situational cues, rather than expressed consistently across
diverse situations that differed in meaning.
Mischel made the case that the field of personality psychology was searching for consistency in the
wrong places. Mischels work proposed that by including the situation as it is perceived by the
person and by analyzing behavior in its situational context, the consistencies that characterize the
individual would be found. He argued that these individual differences would not be expressed in
consistent cross-situational behavior, but instead, he suggested that consistency would be found in
distinctive but stable patterns of if-then, situation-behavior relations that form contextualized,
psychologically meaningful personality signatures (e.g., she does A when X, but B when Y).
These signatures of personality were in fact revealed in a large observational study of social
behavior across multiple repeated situations over time (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Contradicting the
classic assumptions, the data showed that individuals who were similar in average levels of
behavior, for example in their aggression, nevertheless differed predictably and dramatically in the
types of situations in which they aggressed. As predicted by Mischel, they were characterized by
highly psychologically informative if-then behavioral signatures. Collectively, this work has allowed a
new way to conceptualize and assess both the stability and variability of behavior that is produced
by the underlying personality system, and has opened a window into the dynamic processes within
the system itself.
1. Julian Rotter
Julian Rotter defines personality as a function of the individual experiences and the environment. To
understand behavior, he focused on the interaction of the individual with his or her environment. The
environment provides the stimuli both painful and pleasurable. The individual response to the stimuli
leads to either reinforce (positive outcome) or punishment (negative outcome). The whole process
becomes an experience. The individual learns from experiences. One learns that both pleasurable
and painful experiences can lead to positive and negative outcomes. Julian B. Rotter introduced the
concept of generalized expectancies for control of reinforcement, more commonly known as locus of
control.
Locus of control refers to peoples very general, cross-situational beliefs about what determines
whether or not they get reinforced in life. People lie in the continuum of internal locus of control and
external locus of control.

People with a strong internal locus of control believe that the responsibility for whether or not they
get reinforced ultimately lies with themselves. Internalizers believe that success or failure is due to
their own efforts. They are master of their own destiny. On the contrary, externalizer believe that their
reinforcements are controlled by luck, chance, or powerful others. They are the victims of fate.
Therefore, they see little impact of their own efforts on the amount of reinforcement they receive.
Rotter provides an agent for personality change. Change the mindset of a person, or change the
environment the person is responding to, and behavior will change.
Rotter describes personality as a relatively stable set of potentials for responding to situations in a
particular way.
Rotter categorizes his theory into four main components. These are as follow:
1. Behavior Potential
Behavior potential is the likelihood of engaging in a particular behavior in a specific situation. In other
words, what is the probability that the person will exhibit a particular behavior in a situation? In any
given situation, there are multiple behaviors one can engage in. For each possible behavior, there is
a behavior potential. The individual will exhibit whichever behavior has the highest potential.
1. Expectancy
Expectancy is the subjective probability that a given behavior will lead to a particular outcome, or
reinforcer.
How likely is it that the behavior will lead to the outcome?
Having high or strong expectancies means the individual is confident the behavior will result in
the outcome. Having low expectancies means the individual believes it is unlikely that his or her
behavior will result in reinforcement. If the outcomes are equally desirable, we will engage in the
behavior that has the greatest likelihood of paying off (i.e., has the highest expectancy).
Expectancies are formed based on past experience. The more often a behavior has led to
reinforcement in the past, the stronger the persons expectancy that the behavior will achieve that
outcome now.
1. Reinforcement Value
Reinforcement is another name for the outcomes of our behavior. Reinforcement value refers to the
desirability of these outcomes. Things we want to happen, that we are attracted to, have a high
reinforcement value. Things we dont want to happen, that we wish to avoid, have a low

reinforcement value. If the likelihood of achieving reinforcement is the same, we will exhibit the
behavior with the greatest reinforcement value (i.e., the one directed toward the outcome we prefer
most).
1. Psychological Situation
Rotter believes that different people interpret the same situation differently. Again, it is peoples
subjective interpretation of the environment, rather than an objective array of stimuli, that is
meaningful to them and that determines how they behave.
Contributions
1. The theory has been demonstrated to make powerful predictions and has generated useful
applications in a large number of areas of human behavior.
Probably the most significant contribution of social cognitive theory is its applied value.
1. It enables us to understand complex behavior
Limitations
it cannot predict the specific behavior of an individual whose behavior varies with the situations.
Evolutionary and Genetic Perspectives
The study of genes and its contributions on the understanding of human personality can be traced
back to Darwins theory of evolution that the behavior of all life forms including human is related and
has descended from the family tree of a common ancestor. Darwin posits that complex creatures
evolve from more simplistic ancestors through the process of natural selection over time. As a
theory, the origin of instinct by means of natural selection was one of Darwins most significant
contributions to examine human behavior. These instincts include many reflexes impervious to the
influence of learning and experience. At birth, every individual starts from scratch, with a unique
genotype, some innate instincts and inbuilt capacity to learn certain kinds of behaviors. The
evolutionary perspective views personality as the product of a long history during which it was
beneficial for humans to adopt adaptive behavior for their survival.
Evolutionary personality theory emphasizes on the why of behavior. It provides the link between the
processes that govern all forms of life and the central human goals and the psychological and
behavioral strategic means deployed to obtain these goals.

The extension of the evolution theory leads to the study the hereditary factors of behavior. Humans
vary in the expression of certain behaviors because of variations in their genes. The science of
behavior genetics is an extension of these ideas and seeks to determine the extent of individual
differences due to genetic processes.
With advances in genetic technology, it is possible to observe genetic variation more directly by
locating, identifying, and characterizing genes themselves and the effects of each single gene on
behavior.
Contributions
Behavior is a function of the genes. A significant part of our behavioral traits are inherited from the
family of our ancestors,
Limitations
it is not supported by any empirical scientific evidence.
Conclusion:
In view of the limitation of above theories, there is an urgent need to develop a model of personality
incorporating the concepts of the six personality perspectives to predict human differences.