Interestingly, this lecture had very few video clips. This could be because the topic of personality is complex, and more time was necessary for explanation by the lecturer. Personality is explained as a theoretical construct—an abstraction necessary to explain the relationship between facts. All this really means is that there is no physical thing inside of us all that can be pointed at and labeled our personality. The concept is meant to integrate and explain how and why people behave differently from one another, while still maintaining continuity in their respective lives. The lecturer explains that personality is an individual’s way of feeling, thinking, and acting.
A personality of relative strength integrates the way a person perceives himself, and his reality. The lecturer states that when we lose this integrity—our sense of identity—we no longer are “normal”. From my perspective, this is both the product and the producer of a weak personality. In other words, a weak personality means that a person has allowed himself to be conditioned to fly in the direction of even the most modest breezes. Once conditioned, however, a measure of control is lost.
By far the most interesting thing the lecturer shares with his class is the following:
- Watch your thoughts; they become words
- Watch your words; they become actions,
- Watch your actions; they become habits,
- Watch your habits; they become character,
- Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
This sequence explains how personality emerges. It resonated with me deeply because in the past I have convinced myself to think, say, and do things by allowing myself to believe that my thoughts, my words, and my actions did not define who I was. It seems ridiculous as I write this now, but it is amazing how self-deceptive and delusional we can be when it comes time to face painful truths about our realities. I was grateful to read that sequence during the lecture, because it clarifies so well the reality of how we become who we are, and why it is so important to be mindful of our thoughts, words, and actions.
The lecturer, from here, uses a slide to explain personality in perhaps the most complicated way possible. We have mental and perceptual sets, meaning we tend to see things and resolve conflicts in consistently the same ways. This has to do with cognition. Our emotions affect our cognition, and vice versa. Our values are both products and producers of our cognition and our emotions. All of this creates our personality, which is formed by both nature and nurture, while acting on and being acted upon by the real world. There has got to be an easier way to explain this. It makes sense, but ultimately attempting to break personality down in such a way seems futile—we are infinitely more than these qualities all acting on one another chaotically.
The lecturer covers personality types, and finally gets to a clip! The clip focuses on self-concept and shows how a woman who defines herself through her relationship with her husband begins to suffer a great deal in her own self-image. The second video clip comes closely after this, showing how we utilize status transactions when we communicate interpersonally. This was interesting. The clip shown included an acting professional who explained how eye-contact, body language, and sentences spoken clearly and completely all communicate high status. The lecturer goes on to explain that if high status is communicated falsely, its success will have very “short legs” because no one can portray a status they are not truly of for any great length of time.
Finally, the lecture moves onto defense mechanisms. I was truly humbled by the mechanism of self-handicapping, and am constantly amazed at how things that I have done are explained in a psychology course and revealed to me as textbook human behaviors. I have definitely been guilty of self-handicapping, I suppose out of fear of not being able to live up to expectations of myself held by both me and members of my family.
Personality, obviously, is a complex subject, but the thought I was left with at the end of this lecture is, “That’s all?” It seems to me that present psychology claims to know it all, when it is clear that there is much mystery left when it comes to the wonders of each of our personalities.