Personality Formation Exemplification Essay

Introduction

The process of personality development has been of interest to both psychologist and sociologist. Numerous theories have been suggested on the process and the manner in which personality is acquired. The traditional theorists argue that people are born with specific personality traits. As such, personality is inherent. This implies that people are born with certain personality traits, which remain intact until death.

The traditional approach stipulates that there is very little external influence on personality formation. As such, other factors such as the social environment, people as well as religious and spiritual influences have no irrelevant in determining who we are and how we perceive ourselves. However, notable shortcoming within this approach led to development of other theories such as the social construction theory.

Social constructionism opposes the traditional view of personality development and asserts that personality is socially acquired. People develop personalities depending on how well they are able to interact and form social relationships. As such, others become agents of personality change.

Critics of the social construction theory raise a number of pertinent issues. Since personality is not static, the concept of personality clash has been of vital importance. However, social constructionist explain that multiplicity of the self, a phenomena in which a person has different but many true selves, allows for personality clashes.

This is further accelerated by power struggles and personality change dynamism within social groups. Therefore, social construction theory offers practical reasons why people behave differently.

The traditional philosophy on personality formation

The traditional school of thought on the development and acquisition of personality has come under intense criticism. Some of the new philosophies developed out of this criticism include social constructionism. Social constructionists attempt to explain the acquisition of personality as well as other phenomena concerning every day life (Hibberd 2005).

The traditional view of personality stipulates that people have static personalities and that those personalities remain as such through out a person’s life. This implies that personality is seen as inherent to a person. Therefore, each person is born with his or her own unique personality traits (Kukla 2000). This implies that people have unique combinations of personality traits which can not be altered by external factors.

As such, personality remains stable and only changes as a result of major life occurrences such as death of a close relative or psychiatric interference. In this view, the traditional school of thought erroneously defines personality as individual stability and the notable differences between individuals (Burr 1995; Schmidt 2007).

Those who ascribe to the traditional school of thought believe that personality is observable through behavior. This implies behavior influences how people perceive others. In this regard, traditionalists believe that there exist a relationship between personality and behavior. There are several ways through which traditional psychologists express personality.

These include the choice of words to express not only how static personality is, but also the differences between personality types. Words such as friendly, mean, kind, caring, tough, among others exist and are used to describing different personality traits. For a long time, psychologists have relied on this school of thought to describe personality.

As such, they have developed various theories and models based on the concept of the static personality. These include the EPI model, which explains that there are 16 major personality types, which are further divided into two; introvert and extroverts (Burr 2003).

As explained above, the traditional view of personality is largely criticized for its overt shortcomings. There are certain problems with the traditional approach to defining personality. Traditionalists assert that each person has a unique personality (Gergen 2009). However, no sufficient proof exists on the tangibility of a unique personality in each and every person.

Furthermore, this view assumes that behavior is the best way to describe personality (Burr 1995). In this regard, people brand others depending on the behavior exhibited. For instance, a person involved in a fight is most likely to be branded as violent.

This ignores other factors, such as the environment or the reason for engaging in such behavior. Moreover, studies reveal that there are other forces, especially those connected to the spiritual world, which greatly influences personality (Burr 1995).

Social constructionism view of personality and identity development

The traditional view of personality development raises a number of questions. Traditional theorist fails to answer the following questions. Am I the same person I was yesterday? Will I be the same person tomorrow? Can a person identify his or her own personality? Is personality tangible? It is out of these questions that modern psychologist have taken a keen look at the process of personality development.

As a result, new schools of thoughts, such as social constructionism which offer alternative explanation on personality development have emerged. According to Burr (1995) personality does “not exist in people but between people.” This implies that personality is constructed socially. Therefore, personality is concurrent with the prevailing social environment (Searle 1995).

Burr’s (1995) assertion highlights the fact that the presence of people is crucial towards the formation of personality. In her works, Burr explains that a person who is described as shy would not be described using the same adjective if the person lives alone in a desert (1995). The change of social environment leads to drastic changes in personality. Therefore, as opposed to the traditional view, personality is not static (Hibberd 2005).

Social constructionism: major assumptions

Social constructionism makes a number of assumptions. Personality formation is as a result of ongoing social interactions and the prevailing social relations. As such, negotiation is part of personality formation. Since personality depends on how people are able to interact with others, then other people form who we are (Restivo and Croissant 2008).

Regardless of personal qualifications, weaknesses and strengths, others with whom one socializes, play vital roles in formation of personality. This implies that the most crucial thing in personality formation is how to interact with people. The more a person is able to interact with people, the more friends one has. Such a person can therefore be termed as friendly.

However, the social context within which those interactions occur should not be over looked. Good relationships do not occur in a vacuum, but are facilitated by the existence of the right social environment which allows friendly interactions (Burr 2003).

Social constructionism: major strengths

Regardless of the assumption of the constructionist view on personality development, several theoretical strengths can be identified. Social constructionism explains why people behave differently in different contexts. Social constructionists attain this by treating personality and human behavior as two different and separate entities (Burr 1995; Burr 2003).

People use adjectives such as caring, loving and kind to refer to personality. However, if a person is removed from an environment that facilitates description using such words, then those words looses meaning, since the person would not behave in a manner likely to suggest kindness, lovingness or shyness.

Social constructionists allude to the fact that people might have ‘multiplicity of potentials selves” in reference to overt personality differences. This implies that it is the human nature for one to change depending on the prevailing social context. This tends to explain why people in different historical and cultural settings behave differently (Burr 1995).

The assertions by social constructionists suggest of the changeability of personality based on situational context. In doing this, the social construction theory offers practical explanation for people’s differing behavior. This theory also alludes to the fact that because personality is formed through socialization, then differing and sometimes conflicting personalities might arise from the same social situation (Burr 1995).

This is due to the fact that socialization occurs at different levels for each person. As such, people are likely to react differently to others in the same social situation. This results to formation of different attitudes towards others as well as ourselves, thus new personalities are formed.

This further alludes to the power of choice within the socialization process. The types of relationships attained through socialization are determined by the choices people make (Grant 2000). The concept of social choices and their effects on personality formation begins to explain personality clashes. This is explained later in the essay from a social constructionists view

Social constructionism: major limitations

Regardless of the strengths and the major assumptions mentioned above, there are certain notable limitations with the social construction theory. Social constructionists convince people that personality is not part of them and that it exists abstractly, and cannot be influenced by external forces. In this regard, people begin to doubt their own perceptions about themselves.

Suffice to state that people do develop certain concept about the self. However, social constructionists lead people to doubt the self concept, and feel like they live an illusive life. As Burr (1995) explain “the person who you have always assumed to be the real you might not actually exist.” This accelerates the sense of personal doubt.

Personality clash

Critics of the social construction theory have raised a number of issues concerning this theory. One of these issues is how to define personality clash in view of the social construction theory. To answer this question, it is imperative to recapitulate on a few elements of the social construction theory. According to Wesel (2006) personality is formed by the attitude people have of themselves and of others.

This attitude develops gradually as people grow up, and is determined by a number of social factors. These include the manner, in which people are socialized, the social agents such as religions, culture education, among others. These attitudes have significant effects not only in people’s productive abilities but also in the way people form relationships with others (Bannister and Mair 1968).

Relationship formation is a process, according to Neimeyer and Levitt (2000), which is influenced by the different social environments, within which people live. As a result the social environment directs people to perceive others in terms of they are like or unlike them. This assertion should be taken Vis a Vis Burr’s (1995) assertion that since personality is not static, then there is no single, but multiple true selves.

These multiple true selves should not be taken to be multiple personalities but as a reflection of the complex self, which is the reaction of how people interact and relate with each other.

This phenomenon is referred to as the multiplicity of the self, and implies that each of the multiple selves can be manifested depending on people’s attitudes towards others, how they think others perceive them and how they perceive the social environment.

Since people, react differently to similar social environments (that is the manifestation of one of the multiple selves depending on how people perceive the environment and the people within that environment), it is possible then to have different people manifesting different and usually conflicting selves in a social setting. Thus personality clashes occur.

Change management

The concept of personality clashes is accelerated by the theory of change and change management. Burr (1995) argues that personalities are continuously constructed socially “in an ongoing process”. This assertion suggests that personalities keep changing depending on the need for change. As such peoples’ perceptions about themselves, about others and about the environment help to construct reality.

This should be taken in view of the fact that social construction is an on going process, meaning that change is inevitable. It also implies that there are various agents of change which exists within the social construction phenomenon (Hosking 2002).

Since the multiplicity of the self is complex in nature, forming relationships is the most cumbersome thing that people do. Coupled with the phenomena on personality clashes, a concept of power and control emerges. The conventional top down approach to change and social power politics plays vital roles in explaining personality clashes.

According to Easterly (2008), the top down approach assumes that leaders knows the best, and thus imposes their own ideals on the subordinates. This creates a negative social environment which deteriorates personal relationships between leaders and those being led, since the subordinates are likely to resist change (Burr 1995; Mischel 1971).

As a result, the leader and the subordinate manifest opposite and conflicting self identities. The conflict is further accelerated by the fact that people make major assumptions about others based on how they perceive them (Burr 2003).

Because managers and subordinate come from different social backgrounds, they are most likely to make wrong assumptions about each other. This leads to strained social relation which further complicates individual perception. As such personality change is negatively affected by the top down approach to the management of personality change.

Conclusion

It is evident, that amidst the differing opinion regarding social constructionism, the theory provides practical explanation on the complexity of human personality. The theory suggests that the society is actively involved in the formation of personality. The formation of the self is determined by social relationships that people form. This implies that personality changes depending on the situation.

As such, the concept of the multiple selves emerges. This concept begins to explain personality clashes within a given social setting. Personality clashes are further fueled by the desire to dominate and control others. As such, bosses have an inherent desire to change the personalities of their subordinates.

On the other hand, the subordinates resist change, further complicating the social relation. Regardless of these machinations, social constructionism offers practical explanation on the personality formation.

List of References

Bannister, D., and Mair, M., 1968. The evaluation of personal constructs. London, UK: Academic Press.

Burr, V., 1995. An Introduction to Social Constructionism. London: Routledge.

Burr, V., 2003. Social constructionism. London: Routledge.

Easterly, W., 2008. Institutions: Top Down or Bottom Up? [online].

Grant, C., 2000. Functions and Fictions of Communication. Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang.

Hibberd, F., 2005. Unfolding social constructionism. New York: Springer.

Hosking, D., 2002. Constructing changes: A social constructionist approach to change work (and beetles and witches), [online].

John S., 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.

Kenneth G., 2009. An Invitation to Social Construction. Los Angeles: Sage.

Kukla A., 2000. Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science. London: Routledge.

Mischel, W., 1917. The construction of personality: some facts and fantasies about cognition and social behavior, [online].

Neimeyer, R. and Levitt, H., 2000. What’s narrative got to do with it? Construction and coherence in accounts of loss. Philadelphia, PA: Brunner Routledge.

Restivo, S. and Croissant, J., 2008. Social Constructionism in Science and Technology Studies. New York: Guilford.

Schmidt, Siegfried J., 2007. Histories & discourses: rewriting constructivism. Exeter: Imprint-Acadenic.

Wesel, M., 2006. Why we do not always get what we want; the power imbalance in the Social Shaping of Technology. Ph.D. Maastricht, University Maastricht.