What is personality?
Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: One is understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability. The other is understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole.
What is Development?
Development is the gradual growth or formation of something
What is Human Development?
Human development refers to the biological and psychological development of the human being throughout the lifespan. It consists of the development from infancy, childhood, and adolescence to adulthood. The scientific study of psychological human development is sometimes known as Developmental psychology.
What is personality development?
Personality development is the relatively enduring pattern of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that distinguish individuals from one another. The dominant view in the field of personality psychology today holds that personality emerges early and continues to change in meaningful ways throughout the lifespan.
Description of personality
Personality is what makes a person a unique person, and it is recognizable soon after birth. A child's personality has several components: , environment, and character. Temperament is the set of genetically determined traits that determine the child's approach to the world and how the child learns about the world. There are no genes that specify personality traits, but some genes do control the development of the nervous system, which in turn controls behavior.
A second component of personality comes from adaptive patterns related to a child's specific environment. Most psychologists agree that these two factors—temperament and environment—influence the development of a person's personality the most. Temperament, with its dependence on genetic factors, is sometimes referred to as "nature," while the environmental factors are called "nurture."
While there is still controversy as to which factor ranks higher in affecting personality development, all experts agree that high-quality parenting plays a critical role in the development of a child's personality. When parents understand how their child responds to certain situations, they can anticipate issues that might be problematic for their child. They can prepare the child for the situation or in some cases they may avoid a potentially difficult situation altogether. Parents who know how to adapt their parenting approach to the particular temperament of their child can best provide guidance and ensure the successful development of their child's personality.
Finally, the third component of personality is character—the set of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral patterns learned from experience that determines how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. A person's character continues to evolve throughout life, although much depends on inborn traits and early experiences. Character is also dependent on a person's .
In 1956, psychiatrist provided an insightful description as to how personality develops based on his extensive experience in with children and adolescents from low, upper, and middle-class backgrounds. According to Erikson, the socialization process of an individual consists of eight phases, each one accompanied by a "psychosocial crisis" that must be solved if the person is to manage the next and subsequent phases satisfactorily. The stages significantly influence personality development, with five of them occurring during infancy, childhood, and adolescence.
During the first two years of life, an infant goes through the first stage: Learning Basic Trust or Mistrust (Hope) . Well-nurtured and loved, the infant develops trust and security and a basic optimism. Badly handled, the infant becomes insecure and learns "basic mistrust."
