The psychological characteristics of a person presuppose a fairly wide range of criteria, based on which we can talk about the characteristics of a particular person. In the whole world you will not find two people who will be similar in all respects - each of us is unique and different from everyone else.
General personality characteristics
Personality characteristics in psychology cover all variants of significant characteristics that appear regularly. For example, every person can accidentally forget necessary information, but not everyone is prone to forgetfulness in general. Isolated situations do not indicate the presence of a trait. The characteristics of conflicting personalities will contain such traits as hot temper and irritability, but this does not mean that every person who is capable of getting angry at another will be a conflicting personality.
It is worth noting that a person acquires all properties as he accumulates life experience. They can change throughout life and are not constant. Abilities, interests, character - all this can change over the course of life. While a personality exists, it develops and changes. It is believed that none of the personality traits can be innate - they are all acquired during life. At birth, a person is endowed with only physiological characteristics, which include the functioning of the senses, nervous system and brain, and their characteristics represent the makings of character development.
Characteristics of a creative personality: interests and inclinationsEvery person is creative to one degree or another, but for some it is more pronounced, for others it is weaker. Depending on the area in which a person’s interests lie, one can name the general orientation of the individual.
Interest is the desire to pay attention to a certain object regularly, the tendency and craving to become familiar with information regarding it. So, for example, a person who is interested in cinema will tend to visit the cinema more often, know the names of popular actors, and even in conversations not about cinema, such a person will highlight information for himself that falls in his area of interest.
An inclination is a desire to engage in a particular activity. For example, a person who is interested in guitar will listen to great guitarists, watch concerts, etc. And a person who has a penchant for the guitar will learn to play and master the instrument himself. It is important to note that interest can exist separately from inclination, but sometimes they can be combined.
Psychological characteristics of personality: abilities and giftednessIn psychology, abilities are mental properties due to which a person is able to successfully perform a specific type of activity (or several). For example, visual memory is an important ability for an artist, and emotional memory is an important ability for a poet.
If a person has a set of inclinations that are necessary for the development of ability, this is called giftedness.
Psychological characteristics of personality: temperament
It is customary to distinguish 4 main types of temperament: melancholic, sanguine, choleric and phlegmatic:
- Choleric- a fast, hot-tempered, emotional person.
- Sanguine- a person is fast, but his feelings are not so strong and change quickly.
- Melancholic- a person who is very worried about every event, but does not strive to express it.
- Phlegmatic person- a slow, calm, balanced person, he is complex and almost impossible to anger.
Countless combinations of these and other characteristics determine the individuality of every person living on Earth.
For many millennia, people have designated obscure psychic phenomena with the collective concept “soul.” Subjectivity and the intimate and personal specificity of mental manifestations made them mysterious and incomprehensible. There was a belief that a person consists of flesh (body) and a disembodied soul. The death of a person was associated with the fact that the soul leaves his body. But gradually knowledge about the human psyche accumulated - first empirical, and then scientific.
Psychology as a doctrine of the soul arose more than two thousand years ago as an integral part of the philosophical teachings of ancient Greek and ancient Eastern thinkers. (The term “psychology” was introduced only in the 17th century.)
The first systematization of knowledge about the psyche was carried out by the outstanding ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) in the treatise “On the Soul”. According to Aristotle, the soul is not an incorporeal entity, but a way of organizing a living body and its behavior. “The soul moves a living being by decision and thought.” This statement is one of the main achievements of the scientific thought of Ancient Greece. This is how a breakthrough was made in the animalistic interpretation of the soul as a special being living in the human body.
Aristotle was the first to proclaim the functional relationship of the soul (psyche) and body (organism). “The soul manifests itself in various abilities for activity: nourishing, feeling, moving, rational,” argued Aristotle. His doctrine of the plant, animal and rational soul established the principle of development of the psyche from lower to higher forms.
Aristotle's psychological views were based on natural science (in his youth he studied medicine.) Aristotle laid the psychological direction in philosophy. They were given the first classification of mental phenomena. Having integrated the achievements of ancient thought on the psyche, Aristotle, with his works, determined the development of psychology for many centuries. In addition to the treatise "On the Soul", Aristotle's psychological views are contained in many of his other works - "Ethics", "Rhetoric", "Metaphysics", "History of Animals".
The ancient Greeks understood the soul as the driving principle of all things. They own the doctrine of the universal animation of matter - hylozoism (from the Greek hyle - substance and zoe - life): the whole world - the universe, the cosmos - is initially alive, endowed with the ability to sense, remember and act. No boundaries were drawn between living, non-living and mental. Everything was considered as a product of a single primary matter (primordial matter). So, according to the ancient Greek sage Thales, a magnet attracts metal, a woman attracts a man, because a magnet, like a woman, has a soul. Hyloism was the first to “put” the soul (psyche) under the general laws of nature. This teaching affirmed the immutable postulate for modern science about the original involvement of mental phenomena in the circulation of nature. Hylozoism was based on the principle of monism.
The further development of Hyloism is associated with the name of Heraclitus, who considered the universe (cosmos) as an ever-changing (living) fire, and the soul as its spark. (“Our bodies and souls flow like streams”). He was the first to express the idea of a possible change, and, consequently, a natural development of all things, including the soul. The development of the soul, according to Heraclitus, occurs through oneself: “Know yourself”). The philosopher taught: “No matter what roads you follow, you will not find the boundaries of the soul, so deep is its Logos.”
The idea of development in the teachings of Heraclitus “transferred” into the idea of causality of Democritus. According to Democritus, the soul, body and macrocosm consist of atoms of fire; Only those events the cause of which we do not know seem random to us; According to the Logos, there are no causeless phenomena; they are all the inevitable result of the collision of atoms. Subsequently, the principle of causality was called determinism.
The principle of causality allowed Hippocrates, who was friends with Democritus, to build a doctrine of temperaments. Hippocrates correlated poor health with an imbalance of various “juices” present in the body. Hippocrates called the relationship between these proportions temperament. The names of four temperaments have survived to this day: sanguine (blood predominates), choleric (yellow bile predominates), melancholic (black bile predominates), phlegmatic (mucus predominates). Thus was formulated the hypothesis according to which the countless differences between people fit into a few general patterns of behavior. Thus, Hippocrates laid the foundation for scientific typology, without which modern teachings about individual differences between people would not have arisen. Hippocrates looked for the source and cause of differences within the body. Mental qualities were made dependent on physical ones.
The idea of organization (systematicity) of Anaxagoras, the idea of causality of Democritus and the idea of regularity of Heraclitus, discovered two and a half thousand years ago, have become the basis for all times for the knowledge of mental phenomena.
The turn from nature to man was accomplished by a group of philosophers called sophists (“teachers of wisdom”). They were not interested in nature with its laws independent of man, but in man himself, whom they called “the measure of all things.” In the history of psychological knowledge, a new object of relationship between people was discovered using means that prove any position, regardless of its reliability. In this regard, methods of logical reasoning, the structure of speech, and the nature of the relationship between words, thoughts and perceived objects were subjected to detailed discussion. Speech and thinking came to the fore as means of manipulating people. From ideas about the soul, signs of its subordination to strict laws and inevitable causes operating in physical nature disappeared, since language and thought are deprived of such inevitability. They are full of conventions depending on human interests and preferences.
“Socrates was a master of oral communication, a pioneer of analysis, whose goal is to use words to expose what is hidden behind the veil of consciousness. By selecting certain questions, Socrates helped his interlocutor to lift these veils. The creation of the dialogue technique later became known as the Socratic method. His methodology contained ideas that played a key role in psychological studies of thinking many centuries later.”
Firstly, the work of thought was initially in the nature of dialogue. Secondly, it was made dependent on tasks that created an obstacle to its usual flow. It was with such tasks that questions were posed, forcing the interlocutor to turn to the work of his own mind. Both features - dialogism, which assumes that cognition is initially social, and the determining tendency created by the task - became the basis of the experimental psychology of thinking in the 20th century.
The work on constructing the subject of psychology belonged to Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher and natural scientist who lived in the 4th century BC, who opened a new era in the understanding of the soul as a subject of psychological knowledge. It was not physical bodies or incorporeal ideas that became a source of knowledge for him, but an organism, where the physical and spiritual form an inseparable integrity. The soul, according to Aristotle, is not an independent entity, but a form, a way of organizing a living body. “Those think correctly,” said Aristotle, “who imagine that the soul cannot exist without a body and is not a body.” Aristotle's psychological teaching was based on a generalization of medical and biological facts. But this generalization led to the transformation of the main principles of psychology: organization (systematicity), development and causality.
According to Aristotle, the word “organism” itself should be considered in connection with the related word “organization,” which has the meaning of “thoughtful device” that subordinates its parts to solve any problem; the structure of this whole and its work (function) are inseparable; the soul of an organism is its function, activity. Treating the organism as a system, Aristotle distinguished in it various levels of abilities for activity. This made it possible to subdivide the capabilities of the body (the psychological resources embedded in it) and their implementation in practice. At the same time, a hierarchy of abilities - functions of the soul was outlined:
- a) vegetative (available in animals, plants and humans);
- b) sensory-motor (available in animals and humans);
- c) reasonable (inherent only to humans).
The functions of the soul are the levels of its development, where from the lower and on its basis a function of a higher level arises: after the vegetative one, the ability to sense is formed, from which the ability to think develops. In an individual person, during his transformation from a baby into a mature being, the steps that the entire organic world has gone through during its history are repeated. This was later called the biogenetic law.
Explaining the patterns of character development, Aristotle argued that a person becomes what he is by performing certain actions. The idea of character formation in real actions, which in people always presuppose a moral attitude towards them, placed a person’s mental development in a causal, natural dependence on his activity.
Revealing the principle of causality, Aristotle showed that “nature does nothing in vain”; “You need to see what the action is for.” He argued that the final result of the process (goal) influences its course in advance; mental life at a given moment depends not only on the past, but also on the desired future.
Aristotle should rightfully be considered the father of psychology as a science. His work “On the Soul” is the first course in general psychology, where he outlined the history of the issue, the opinions of his predecessors, explained his attitude towards them, and then, using their achievements and miscalculations, proposed his solutions.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS
(English) psychological characterization) - a form of studying the individual characteristics of a child or adult. It contains specific data about the subject being studied (his behavior,activities, features personalities, materials collected through systematic observations carried out in various life situations). Cm. .
H. p. m. b. used as an auxiliary method in various studies: psychological, sociological, pedagogical, medical. etc. In these cases, the chart is drawn up in accordance with the task facing this study. Therefore, these types of characteristics often do not reflect all the psychological characteristics of the person being studied, but only those that are essential for solving the problem posed in the study.
Large psychological dictionary. - M.: Prime-EVROZNAK. Ed. B.G. Meshcheryakova, acad. V.P. Zinchenko. 2003 .
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Etymology. Comes from the Greek. psyche soul + logos doctrine and lat. refractarius stubborn. Category. Characteristics of the nervous process. Specificity. Inhibition of the reaction in response to a stimulus following the previous one with a short time interval.… … Great psychological encyclopedia
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Books
- Psychological characteristics of a normal person, or Know yourself, Vladimir Dmitrievich Shadrikov. Various approaches to the description of a normal (mentally healthy) person by domestic and foreign psychologists are considered. Analyzed ideological, theoretical and methodological... Buy for 339 rubles
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When a new personality is born, it receives a unique character as a gift. Human nature can consist of traits inherited from parents, or it can manifest itself in a completely different, unexpected quality.
Nature not only determines behavioral reactions, it specifically influences the manner of communication, attitude towards others and oneself, and towards work. A person's character traits create a certain worldview in an individual.
A person’s behavioral reactions depend on character
These two definitions create confusion because they both play a role in shaping personality and behavior. In fact, character and temperament are heterogeneous:
- Character is formed from a list of certain acquired qualities of a person’s mental make-up.
- Temperament is a biological quality. Psychologists distinguish four types of it: choleric, melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic.
Having the same temperament, individuals can have completely different characters. But temperament has an important influence on the development of nature - smoothing or exacerbating it. Also, human nature directly affects temperament.
What is character
Psychologists, speaking about character, mean a certain combination of individual traits that are persistent in their expression. These traits have the maximum impact on the behavioral line of the individual in diverse relationships:
- among people;
- in the work team;
- to one's own personality;
- to the surrounding reality;
- to physical and mental labor.
The word "character" is of Greek origin and means "to mint." This definition was introduced into everyday use by the natural scientist of Ancient Greece, the philosopher Theophrastus. Such a word really, very accurately defines the nature of an individual.
Theophrastus was the first to coin the term "character" The character seems to be drawn as a unique drawing; it gives birth to a unique stamp, which is worn by the individual in a single copy.
To put it simply, character is a set, a combination of stable individual mental characteristics.
How to understand nature
To understand what kind of nature an individual has, you need to analyze all his actions. It is behavioral reactions that determine examples of character and characterize personality.
But such a judgment is often subjective. A person does not always react the way his intuition tells him. Actions are influenced by upbringing, life experience, and customs of the environment where the person lives.
But you can understand what kind of character a person has. By observing and analyzing the actions of a certain person for a long time, it is possible to identify individual, especially stable traits. If a person behaves the same way in completely different situations, showing similar reactions, makes the same decision, this indicates the presence of a certain nature.
Knowing which character traits are manifested and predominant in an individual, one can predict how he will manifest himself in a given situation.
Character and its traits
A character trait is an important part of a personality; it is a stable quality that determines the interaction between a person and the surrounding reality. This is the defining method of resolving emerging situations, therefore psychologists consider a personality trait as a predictable personal behavior.
Variety of characters A person acquires characteristics of character throughout his entire life; it is impossible to classify individual traits of nature as innate and characterological. To analyze and assess a personality, a psychologist not only determines the totality of individual characteristics, but also identifies their distinctive features.
It is character traits that are defined as primary in the study and compilation of psychological characteristics of a person.
But, when defining and assessing a person, studying behavioral traits in social terms, the psychologist also uses knowledge of the meaningful orientation of nature. It is defined in:
- strength-weakness;
- breadth-narrowness;
- static-dynamic;
- integrity-contradiction;
- integrity-fragmentation.
Such nuances constitute a general, complete characteristic of a particular person.
List of personality traits
Human nature is a complex combination of unique traits that forms a unique system. This order includes the most striking, stable personal qualities, revealed in gradations of human-society relationships:
| Relationship system | Inherent Traits of an Individual | |
| Pros | Cons | |
| To self | Pickiness | Condescension |
| Self-criticism | Narcissism | |
| Meekness | Boastfulness | |
| Altruism | Egocentrism | |
| To the people around you | Sociability | Closedness |
| Complacency | Callousness | |
| Sincerity | Deceit | |
| Justice | Injustice | |
| Community | Individualism | |
| Sensitivity | Callousness | |
| Courtesy | Shamelessness | |
| To work | Organization | Laxity |
| Mandatory | Cluelessness | |
| Performance | Sloppiness | |
| Enterprise | Inertia | |
| Hard work | Laziness | |
| To items | Economy | Wastefulness |
| Thoroughness | Negligence | |
| Neatness | Negligence | |
In addition to the character traits included by psychologists in the gradation of relationships (as a separate category), manifestations of nature in the moral, temperamental, cognitive and sthenic spheres were highlighted:
- moral: humanity, toughness, sincerity, good nature, patriotism, impartiality, responsiveness;
- temperamental: passion, sensuality, romance, liveliness, receptivity; passion, frivolity;
- intellectual (cognitive): analytical, flexible, inquisitive, resourceful, efficient, critical, thoughtful;
- sthenic (volitional): categoricalness, persistence, obstinacy, stubbornness, determination, timidity, courage, independence.
Many leading psychologists are inclined to believe that some personality traits should be divided into two categories:
- Productive (motivational). Such traits push a person to perform certain actions and actions. These are goal-traits.
- Instrumental. Giving personality during any activity individuality and method (manner) of action. These are methods-traits.
Gradation of character traits according to Allport
Allport's theory
The famous American psychologist Gordon Allport, an expert and developer of gradations of an individual’s personal characteristics, divided personality traits into three classes:
Dominant. Such traits most clearly reveal the behavioral form: actions, activities of a certain person. These include: kindness, selfishness, greed, secrecy, gentleness, modesty, greed.
Ordinary. They manifest themselves equally in all numerous areas of human life. These are: humanity, honesty, generosity, arrogance, altruism, egocentrism, cordiality, openness.
Secondary. These nuances do not have a particular impact on behavioral reactions. These are not dominant behaviors. These include musicality, poetry, diligence, and diligence.
A strong relationship is formed between a person’s existing personality traits. This pattern forms the final character of the individual.
But any existing structure has its own hierarchy. The human warehouse was no exception. This nuance is traced in Allport's proposed gradation structure, where minor traits can be suppressed by dominant ones. But in order to predict an individual’s actions, it is necessary to focus on the entire set of personality traits.
What is typicality and individuality?
The manifestation of the nature of each person always reflects the individual and typical. This is a harmonious combination of personal qualities, because the typical serves as the basis for identifying the individual.
What is a typical character. When a person has a certain set of traits that are the same (common) for a specific group of people, such a warehouse is called typical. It is like a mirror, reflecting the accepted and habitual conditions of existence of a particular group.
Also, typical features depend on the warehouse (a certain type of nature). They are also a condition for the emergence of a behavioral type of character into the category of which a person is “recorded.”
Having understood exactly what characteristics are inherent in a given personality, a person can be drawn up an average (typical) psychological portrait and assigned a certain type of temperament. For example:
| Positive | Negative |
| Choleric | |
| Activity | Incontinence |
| Energy | Hot temper |
| Sociability | Aggressiveness |
| Determination | Irritability |
| Initiative | Rudeness in communication |
| Impulsiveness | Unstable behavior |
| Phlegmatic person | |
| Perseverance | Low activity |
| Performance | Slowness |
| Calm | Inactivity |
| Consistency | Unsociability |
| Reliability | Individualism |
| Integrity | Laziness |
| Sanguine | |
| Sociability | Aversion to monotony |
| Activity | Superficiality |
| Goodwill | Lack of persistence |
| Adaptability | Poor perseverance |
| Cheerfulness | frivolity |
| Courage | Recklessness in actions |
| Resourcefulness | Inability to concentrate |
| Melancholic | |
| Sensitivity | Closedness |
| Impressionability | Low activity |
| Performance | Unsociability |
| Restraint | Vulnerability |
| Cordiality | Shyness |
| Accuracy | Poor performance |
Such typical character traits, corresponding to a certain temperament, are observed in each (to one degree or another) representative of the group.
Individual manifestation. Relationships between individuals always have an evaluative characteristic; they are manifested in a rich variety of behavioral reactions. The manifestation of an individual’s individual traits is greatly influenced by emerging circumstances, the formed worldview and a certain environment.
This characteristic is reflected in the vividness of the individual's various typical features. They vary in intensity and develop individually for each individual.
Some typical traits manifest themselves so powerfully in a person that they become not just individual, but unique.
In this case, typicality develops, by definition, into individuality. This personality classification helps to identify the negative characteristics of an individual that prevent them from expressing themselves and achieving a certain position in society.
By working on himself, analyzing and correcting shortcomings in his own character, each person creates the life he strives for.