Psychology curiosities

Personality components Temperament and character

Personality components Temperament and character

Throughout history several philosophers and psychologists have tried to identify the personality components, more or less successful. Even today, depending on the theoretical position of the researcher, there is no universal consensus in regard to the definition of personnel. Even less, to determine what their components can be.

However, from this article we will approach the study of the personality components From a biopsychosocial optics.

Content

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  • Personality components
    • The temperament
      • Temperament components
    • The character
      • The characterological types
  • Conclusions about personality components
    • References

Personality components

At first, philosophers started from the identification of common physiological characteristics between individuals with certain forms of behavior. This gave rise to theories that involved knowing people through their way of walking, their appearance, their voice, their easy expressions, etc. However, this identification does not distinguish between the observed and the assumption about the personality.

Currently, contemporary psychologists shed a new light on the personality components. For example:

Lorenzini (1974) distinguishes temperament as the psychophysiological individuality of personality and character as the psychological individuality of man and woman.

The integration of character and temperament as key concepts in personality allow a better understanding of the self.

The temperament

Human beings have a genetic inheritance that determines several physiological features and aspects in the body. Temperament is the expression of a neurological process that determines some characteristics of behavior, cognition and emotions. Therefore, it represents the psychophysiological aspects inherited to the individual.

The 4 types of human temperament

Scientific research suggests that It is possible to start the temperament analysis from pregnancy and 6 important characteristics are highlighted to consider to carry it out, which are:

  1. The level of Infante activity (Movement of joints and limbs)
  2. The adaptability (speed of adaptation of the infant in the absence of their parents or guardians)
  3. Flight or approximation trends (Infant's curiosity about objects or people in particular)
  4. The attention (Infant focus on objects or people in particular)
  5. The rhythmity in which the infant performs their basic needs
  6. The cognitive sensitivity (level of comfort in the face of sensory stimulations)

Temperament components

For Pittaluga (1970) There are components within temperament:

The endocrine system, blood plasma, organic constitution, nervous system structuring and its derived neuropsychic situation.

With respect to temperament correlated with endocrine functioning, The ancient Greeks spoke of 4 types: blood, melancholic, choleric and phlegmatic.

In the same plot line as Pittaluga, Kretschmer exposes his research on psychiatric conditions and proposes three categories Body constitution linked to temperamental distinctive: pyknic, LEPTOSOMIC and athletic. The triad fits with two temperamental types studied by Kretschmer, cyclothymic and schizothmics.

Píconicos fit into cyclothymic, which are characterized by humor changes. While leptosomic and athletic are within schizothmics, which have coldness and sensitivity trends.

Kretschmer emphasizes that these morphological and psychological types will only be presented in essence and there is probable that there are arbitrary combinations Between morphological and psychological types.


The character

The concept of character refers to any characteristic of personality influenced by the environment (education, culture and experiences that the individual has lived and lives). Among these characteristics are social norms, language and distinctive behaviors of the subject.

The French René senne, creator of the characterology, defends the existence of eight types of character that are based on the presence and/or absence of three basic constituent properties of the person:

  1. Emotivity - disposition or aptitude to be moved or impressed by small -importance events. The emotional (Distinguished with the letter "E") are easily moved, presenting anger, sadness, joy, etc. The non -emotional (distinguished with the letter "ne") remain indifferent and without affectation against emotional events.
  2. Activity - disposition of the individual to act. The assets (differentiated with the letter "a") are characterized by being in constant movement and respond immediately to any stimulus. On the contrary, the inactive ones (differentiated with the letter "na") are discouraged before any stimulus aimed at them or not simply do not act.
  3. Repercussion - There are two types: primary or secondary. The primary ("P") respond when the impact of an event is immediate, but does not cause future changes. In the secondary ("s") the impact is not immediate, it brings subsequent changes and the subject tends to think about the event.

The characterological types

Through the combination between emotionality ("E" or "ne"), the activity ("A" or "na") and the repercussion ("P" or "s"); He senne Identify the eight characterological types that a person can present:

  1. Apathetic: (NE, Na, S)
  2. Amorphous: (NE, NA, P)
  3. Phlegmatic: (NE, A, S)
  4. Blood: (NE, A, P)
  5. Passionate: (E, A, S)
  6. Choleric: (E, A, P)
  7. Sentimental: (E, Na, S)
  8. Highly strung: (E, Na, P)

Similar to Kretschmer's conclusion about the forms of temperament, Senne maintains that There are no pure examples for each type of character and that there are rather combinations in all people. Without denying that there may be predominance of one type on another or more.

Conclusions about personality components

In conclusion, Personality is the set of inherited, learned and forged features in interaction with the environment. This field is, currently, one of the most fruitful in psychology, as it generates a lot of interest and research. There is still much to determine about personality components.

Similarly, research on emotional processing or unconscious personality is still in the most initial stages, in terms of scientific knowledge. Therefore, it is another area to develop and implement.

In this article we wanted to make a brief approach to the phenomenon of personality study, being aware that we leave a lot in the inkwell. However, it corresponds to others to collect more information and cross the threshold that we show here.

References

  • Hikal-Carreón, w. S. (2009). Development Criminology: Personality study. Science -uanl, 12(2), 124-130.
  • Moreno, J. B., Garcia, a. M. P., Knight, j. TO. R., Suárez, p. S., & Laffond, B. R. (2013). Personality Psychology. UNED Editorial.
  • Polaino-Lorente, a., Truffino Cabanyes, J., & Pozo Armentia, A. D. (2009). Fundamentals of Personality Psychology. Madrid: Rialp, 2003 Madrid: Rialp, 2003 ..