Critically Assess the Value of the Construct 'Personality' with Reference to One Specified Theory of 'Personality' in Psychology

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Critically assess the value of the construct 'personality' with reference to one specified theory of 'personality' in psychology A person’s character and identity is built up through their thoughts, feelings and behaviour and also by the situations that are experienced by the individual which cause us to act or react in certain ways. Not only that; but emotions, relationships and interactions with others have a huge effect on a person’s identity. Personality can be defined in a number of ways, Hall and Lindzey (1978) concluded after a review of personality theories that ‘… no substantive definition of personality can be applied with any generality…the way in which given individuals define personality will depend completely on their theoretical preference’. Child’s (1963) definition of personality is, however, one which is considered most acceptable by many psychologists: ‘…more or less stable, internal factors that make one person’s behaviour consistent from one time to another, and different from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations’ (cited in Birch and Hayward, 1994, p. 42.). Humans have an intrinsic desire to predict things; and to effectively interact with our world we must expect certain things to happen based upon the physical and social interactions we encounter. The construct of personality is the observed regularities in cognitive, affective and behavioural responses in various settings. Variation in a construct such as personality causes individual differences in response to real life experiences. In this essay, we look at whether the construct of personality is a realistic idea and whether personality traits truly exist as it is difficult to measure a theoretical concept accurately. Since at least as early as the Greek civilisations it has been recognised that people are different, not only physically but also

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