Theories of Personality: a literature review

Donika Tahirsylaj Alidemi, Feride Fejza

Abstract


Personality can be defined as relatively stable and distinctive styles of thought, behavior, and emotional responses that characterize a person’s adaptations to surrounding circumstances. Thus, the concept of personality has been used to explain what causes people to behave differently in the same situation and to explain an individual’s consistency in responding across situations. Personality results from the interplay of biological and environmental factors. Different personality theorists emphasize different aspects of personality and its development. These approaches include: the psychoanalytic approach (emphasizing the role of early childhood experience and the unconscious in determining adult personality), trait theory (emphasizing characteristics of human behavior that distinguish a person and can be objectively measured), the social cognitive approach (emphasizing how the principles of learning and information processing influence personality), the humanistic approach (emphasizing one’s subjective experiences and the potential for human growth, creativity, and spontaneity), and the evolutionary/biological approach (emphasizing behavior patterns that may result from physiology, genetic inheritance, and adaptive pressures from humans’ evolutionary past).


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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.52155/ijpsat.v25.2.2857

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