Conceptualization of personality in psychology

The active character of the human being It means that it is not a passive receiver of external stimulation, but that it chooses and, to a large extent, generates the scenario in which its behavior will be developed. In that sense, people differ in the way in which categorizing the situations in which they are, interpreting and giving meaning to the different indications present in the same. Next we will develop the idea of ​​personality conceptualization in psychology.

1. Sociocognitive study of personality and behavior.
2. Personality conceptualization
3. Global units vs. Contextual

Sociocognitive study of personality and behavior.

Criticism of Personality study Based on the concept of trait: people's behavior is not as consistent as it is predicted from the concept of trait. Rather, it varies from one situation to another depending on the specific demands that each situation raises. On the other hand, despite the situational variability of our behavior, we continue to recognize ourselves as the same person. Trait theories have been questioned by the use of global units (personality traits), which are elaborate abstractions Based on behavior averages, which do not respond to any specific case, assuming that the trait means the same for each person and is defined by the same type of behavior.

It is argued that the trait allows Predictions averaged (applicable to different situations), but do not allow predicting the behavior of an individual in a specific situation. That is, the features make it possible to make event predictions (applicable to any situation), because the essential determinant of behavior is personality.

The trait allows individuals to be described and has a great qualifying utility (to identify trends Behavioral average), but it seems to find many limitations to predict the behavior of specific individuals in equally specific circumstances. These issues are intended to be answered from sociocognitive approaches, which start from the conviction that: the discriminability of the behavior and complexity of the interactions between the individual and the situation, suggest the convenience of focusing more specifically on the way in which The person elaborates and handles each particular situation, instead of trying to infer the features that he generally has.

Personality conceptualization

Basic elements and units members of the personality: the variables that define the set of personal resources, from which the person faces the situation and puts in macha the dynamic process of any behavior, are the following: Symbolization Capacity: In the course of cognitive development and through the various learning experiences, the individual acquires information about himself, his behavior, the world around him and the relationships between these factors. Thus acquires the ability to generate cognitive and behavioral strategies, according to the new situations in which at all times it is.

People, then, differ, not only in the competition they have on skills and knowledge acquired to generate cognitive strategies and manifest behavior, but also in the concrete strategies that put into play to face the different situations with the resources they possess ( What interests is knowing "what can you do with the resources it possesses", more than "what characteristics they define"). People may differ in the cognitive transformations that introduce on stimulation, whose impact on the individual remains in this way modulated by such cognitive strategies. In short, personal constructs are significant reference frameworks, depending on which the individual categorizes the different phenomena and events that he faces, including himself and his behavior. These filters are stabilized in the individual's cognitive repertoire to the extent that they are adaptive, since, through them, the individual can predict the behavior of others and anticipate the consequences of the behavior itself. The management of symbols grants great freedom before the objective demands of the situation.

Through them, the individual can test possible strategies, take into consideration alternative behaviors, travel the entire sequence of contingencies necessary for the achievement of plans, etc. This ability to symbolize is the one that greatly directs our behavior, and would explain that we can face in an adaptive way to situations with which we have not previously come into contact, or that we can learn without the need for direct experience. We form a mental representation of behavioral-consequences relational schemes. The adaptive value of the processes of construction and categorization of reality would explain the relatively stable and generalized nature of them.

Anticipation capacity: People make a categorization of the situations in which they are and the possibilities of response that they have. They also have expectations (about the foreseeable consequences associated with the different response alternatives) that will guide the definitive choice of behavior to be developed, to the extent that they enable the individual to anticipate future contingencies. This variable allows us to explain individual differences in the same objective situation, and the behavior that a person can present, when the objective contingencies of the situation could predict clearly discordant behaviors with the one presented. The behavior of each person will be conditioned by the peculiar mode as interpreted the characteristics and requirements of the situation, as well as the type of consequences that it expects to obtain or avoid. You can basically distinguish two types of expectations:

1. Those linked to the foreseeable results of behavior: when the individual faces a situation, usually, from the generalized expectations from the consequences of their behavior in previous situations, which keep similarity with the current situation. The most frequent is that such generalized expectations are the main determinant of behavior, although, in each case, they are modulated by the additional information provided by the specific situation. When the situation is highly specific, behavior will be determined to a greater extent by specific expectations closely linked to the situation.
2. Those related to the consequences associated with certain stimuli present in the situation: the individual learns that certain stimuli predict certain events, being their behavior determined by the anticipation of the events that indicate such stimuli, whose predictive value depends, basically, on the particular story learning of the individual and the meaning that he gives to him.

Values, interests, goals and projects (motivational aspects): Another important determinant of the concrete behavior that the individual develops in each case is the value that one grants to the consequences of his behavior, and the events he faces. The positive or negative character that people assign in both case is established by the ability that such events have acquired to induce positive or negative emotional states (that is, the functional value as reinforcement they possess for each person).

Similarly, it is necessary. People will strive to carry out a certain behavior to the extent that they are attractive.

Feelings, emotions and emotional states: The emotional state acts as a filter of the information that is processed over the environment and on itself. Self -regulating mechanisms and processes: In humans, behavior is guided to a greater extent by self -regulation mechanisms than by external stimuli, except on those occasions when the force of external factors reaches great intensity. These processes consist of the elaboration, by the individual, of a set of contingency rules that direct their behavior in the absence of, and sometimes despite, immediate external situational pressures. Such rules specify what type of conduct is more appropriate based on the demands of the specific situation, the levels of execution that must be achieved, and the consequences of achievement or failure.

Global units vs. Contextual

Global category use, As the features can guide us to know the relative position of an individual in relation to his normative group, but he tells us very little about how that individual behaves, with that characteristic, in the face of specific situations. The explanatory possibility of individual behavior in specific contexts would give us the knowledge of:

1. the processes that characterize the psychological world of the individual
2. the interrelationships and organization existing among them
3. the way he faces the peculiar demands that each situation raises.

Being so you are characteristics and requirements From the situation activate some processes, inhibit others and do not affect others, and, at the same time, the result of this interaction potentially alters both the processes and dynamics (the global system) of the individual, as well as the situation itself. The behavior is the result of a set of characteristics of the individual and the situation, so that, both the person and the situation are modified at the same time by the developed behavior. Personality as a behavior disposition.

The value of personality and behavior arrangement remains both in trait theories, as in sociocognitive, although in each case the term disposition is understood differently:

1. In trait theories, personality is a behavior disposition (tendency to behave in a certain way), without granting importance to the specific context in which behavior occurs;
2. In the approaches sociocognitive, The behavior disposition is reflected in the tendency to present patterns discriminative Stable situation-conduct, so that behavior will present variability in line with the changing demands of the situation (there is talk of coherence rather than consistency).

Observation of stable patterns contextualized and discriminative of behavior that characterizes the individual, allows us to identify the dynamic system of interrelations between the various psychological processes that constitute basic structural elements of the personality.

This system is activated in response to the peculiar characteristics of the situation, and manifests itself in the characteristic way with which each person faces the circumstances surrounding him and negotiating the most adaptive possible response (the one that allows him to achieve the greatest balance between the demands of the situation and its competences and behavioral resources). Personality as a system. People differ:

1. In the degree to which they possess the psychological processes (basic personality units) and in the specific content of each of these processes.
2. In the type of situations in which such units are activated, as well as in the ease with which they are activated in the appropriate circumstances.
3. And above all, in the organized system of interrelations between such psychological processes (from which the individual faces the situation), giving rise to idiosyncratic profiles of stable and predictable behavior.

The questions that interest would be: ¿how are they interrelated These units in each individual?, ¿how and before what type of information is activated?, and ¿How this system is energized and evolved throughout the development and maintenance of behavior? In this regard, the global sequence of behavior should not be understood as a chain of watertight compartments, but as a dynamic network in which the processes (which configure the personality analysis units) are continuously interacting with each other, and with the characteristics of the situation, and that is changing as an effect of the same process of interaction and coping, so that the way in which we perceive and value reality and ourselves, is changing depending on the results of our behavior.

• Example 1: Interrelations between personal and situational factors. The global situation considered (judgment and verdict), even being the same, in objective terms, for all subjects, activated a whole set of different beliefs, values ​​and feelings in some subjects and others, which arouse differentiated emotional reactions, and that carry to some subjects to be agreed with the verdict and others in disagreement.
• Example 2: Reciprocal interrelations between person, situation and behavior. The central hypothesis of this research is as follows: the way in which one perceives a situation, activates a series of expectations, emotions and feelings, which can trigger behaviors that, in turn, create considerable situations with initial expectations and beliefs, what which leads to reinforce the way in which the circumstances that surround us are interpreted and the way in which they react to them.

This idea is the same as that of "the prophecy that is self -fulfilled": when one thinks that something is going wrong, it behaves in such a way that, in fact, things end up going wrong. The results From the study they showed that: the couple of subjects who perceived rejection in the situation, increased their level of anger, while those who perceived the situation as more relaxed, improved their mood. In addition, the subjects of the "rejection" condition developed more negative behavior.

Then interrelations were studied Between: Perception of rejection, behavior and consequences. It was found that: the initial perception of rejection has little direct influence on the consequences, but indirectly influences, by directing directly on the development of negative behavior, which in turn leads directly to the consequences.

In summary, from a similar pattern of interrelations between the elements of the behavioral sequence, people may differ quite a lot in the type of results they reach with their behavior, depending on the way they perceive and value the context and the way of reacting to such assessment.

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