Understanding oneself is essential to understand behaviors and beliefs that

affects ourselves and others specifically in becoming effective and successful

person in life, work, and relationship. Moreover, self-understanding (1) provides

a sense of purpose; (2) leads to healthier relationships; (3) helps harness your

natural strength; and (4) promotes confidence.

This module will introduce you to the basic concepts of self and

personality, and how they are related with each other. Self and personality

characterized the way we define our existence, also these refers on how we organized

our experiences that are reflected to our behavior. On the other hand, people have different ideas about

themselves. These ideas represent the self of the person. Moreover, we behave in different ways in a
given

situation, but people also behave fairly stable in different circumstances. The relatively permanent
pattern

of behavior represents personality of the person. In details,

Personality

 The etymological derivative of personality comes from the word “persona”, the theatrical masks

worn by Romans in Greek and Latin drama. Personality also comes from the two Latin words “per”

and “sonare”, which literally means “to sound through”.

 Personality have no single definition since different personality theories have different views on

how to define it. However, the commonly accepted definition of personality is that it is a relatively

permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a

person’s behavior (Roberts & Mroczek, 2008).

 Personality plays a key role in affecting how people shape their lives. It involves the complex

relationship of people with their environment, how they cope and adjust through life, and how they

respond to demands of physical and social challenges.

 Personality is the overall pattern or integration of a person’s structure, modes of behavior, attitudes,

aptitudes, interests, intellectual abilities, and many other distinguishable personality traits.

Personality is the conglomeration of the following components: physical self, intelligence,

character traits, attitudes, habits, interest, personal discipline, moral values, principles and
philosophies of life.

Determinants of Personality

Personality refers to the total person in his/her overt and covert behavior. The determinants of factors

of personality are as follows:

 Environmental Factors of Personality. The surroundings of an individual compose the

environmental factors of personality. This includes the neighborhood a person lives in, his school,

college, university and workplace. Moreover, it also counts the social circle the individual has.

Friends, parents, colleagues, co-workers and bosses, everybody plays a role as the determinants of

personality.

 Biological Factors of Personality. This further includes:

1) hereditary factors or genetic make-up of the person that inherited from their parents. This

describes the tendency of the person to appear and behave the way their parents are;

2) physical features include the overall physical structure of a person: height, weight, color,

sex, beauty and body language, etc. Most of the physical structures change from time to

time, and so does the personality. With exercises, cosmetics and surgeries, many physical

features are changed, and therefore, the personality of the individual also evolves; and

3) brain. The preliminary results from the electrical stimulation of the brain (ESB) research

gives indication that better understanding of human personality and behavior might come

from the study of the brain.

12

GED 101 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

 Situational Factors of Personality. Although these factors do not literally create and shape up an

individual’s personality, situational factors do alter a person’s behavior and response from time to

time. The situational factors can be commonly observed when a person behaves contrastingly and

exhibits different traits and characteristics.

 Cultural Factors. Culture is traditionally considered as the major determinants of an individual’s

culture within a person is brought up, is very important determinant of behavior of a person. Culture

is complex of these belief, values, and techniques for dealing with the environment which are

shared among contemporaries and transmitted by one generation to the next.

Personality Traits

Personality traits reflect people’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Personality traits imply consistency and stability—someone who scores high on a specific trait like

Extraversion is expected to be sociable in different situations and over time. Thus, trait psychology rests
on

the idea that people differ from one another in terms of where they stand on a set of basic trait
dimensions

that persist over time and across situations.

The most widely used system of traits is called the Five-Factor Model. This system includes five

broad traits that can be remembered with the acronym OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness,

Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Each of the major traits from the Big Five can be divided

into facets to give a more fine-grained analysis of someone's personality. In addition, some trait
theorists

argue that there are other traits that cannot be completely captured by the Five-Factor Model. Critics of
the

trait concept argue that people do not act consistently from one situation to the next and that people
are very

influenced by situational forces. Thus, one major debate in the field concerns the relative power of
people’s

traits versus the situations in which they find themselves as predictors of their behavior.

The Five-Factor Model of Personality

Research that used the lexical approach showed that many of the personality descriptors found in

the dictionary do indeed overlap. In other words, many of the words that we use to describe people are

synonyms. Thus, if we want to know what a person is like, we do not necessarily need to ask how
sociable

they are, how friendly they are, and how gregarious they are. Instead, because sociable people tend to
be
friendly and gregarious, we can summarize this personality dimension with a single term. Someone who
is

sociable, friendly, and gregarious would typically be described as an “Extravert.” Once we know she is an

extravert, we can assume that she is sociable, friendly, and gregarious.

The most widely accepted system to emerge from this approach was “The Big Five” or “Five-

Factor Model” (Goldberg, 1990; McCrae & John, 1992; McCrae & Costa, 1987). The Big Five comprises

five major traits shown in the Figure 2 below. A way to remember these five is with the acronym OCEAN

(O is for Openness; C is for Conscientiousness; E is for Extraversion; A is for Agreeableness; N is for

Neuroticism). The table below provides descriptions of people who would score high and low on each of

these traits.

Table 1. Descriptions of Personality Traits

Big 5 Trait Definition

Openness The tendency to appreciate new art, ideas, values, feelings, and behaviors.

Conscientiousness The tendency to be careful, on-time for appointments, to follow rules, and

to be hard working.

Extraversion The tendency to be talkative, sociable, and to enjoy others; the tendency to

have a dominant style.

Agreeableness The tendency to agree and go along with others rather than to assert one

owns opinions and choices.

worry, and sadness, as well as being itnerpersonally sensitive.

13

GED 101 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

Table 2. Example behaviors for those scoring low and high for the big 5 traits

Big 5 Trait Example Behavior for LOW

Scorers

Example Behavior for HIGH Scorers

Openness Prefers not to be exposed to

alternative moral systems; narrow

interest; inartistic; not analystica;

down-to-earth

Enjoys seeing people with new types

of haircuts and body piercing;

curious; imaginative; untraditional

Conscientiousness Prefers spur-of-the-moment action

to planning; unrealiable;

hedonistic; careless; lax

Never late for a date; organized;

hardworking; neat, persevering;

Extraversion Preferring a quiet evening reading

to a loud party; sober; aloof;

unenthusiastic

Being the life of the party’ active;

optimistic; fun-loving; affectionate

Agreeableness Quickly and confidently asserts

own rights; irritable;

manipulative; uncooperative; rude

Agrees with other about political

opinions; good-natured; forgiving;

gullible; helpful; forgiving

Neurotism Not getting irritated by sall

annoyances; calm, unemotional;

hardy; secure; self-satisfied

Constantly worrying about little

things; insecure; hypochondrical;

feeling inadequate

Scores on the Big Five traits are mostly independent. That means that a person’s standing on one

trait tells very little about their standing on the other traits of the Big Five. For example, a person can be

extremely high in Extraversion and be either high or low on Neuroticism. Similarly, a person can be low
in
Agreeableness and be either high or low in Conscientiousness. Thus, in the Five-Factor Model, you need

five scores to describe most of an individual’s personality. In the exercises part of this module there is a

short scale to assess the Five-Factor Model of personality (Donnellan, Oswald, Baird, & Lucas, 2006). You

can take this test to see where you stand in terms of your Big Five scores.

Traits are important and interesting because they describe stable patterns of behavior that persist

for long periods of time (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005). Importantly, these stable patterns can have
broad-

ranging consequences for many areas of our life (Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007). For

instance, think about the factors that determine success in college. If you were asked to guess what
factors

predict good grades in college, you might guess something like intelligence. This guess would be correct,

but we know much more about who is likely to do well. Specifically, personality researchers have also

found the personality traits like Conscientiousness play an important role in college and beyond,
probably

because highly conscientious individuals study hard, get their work done on time, and are less distracted
by

nonessential activities that take time away from school work. In addition, highly conscientious people
are

often healthier than people low in conscientiousness because they are more likely to maintain healthy
diets,

to exercise, and to follow basic safety procedures like wearing seat belts or bicycle helmets. Over the
long

term, this consistent pattern of behaviors can add up to meaningful differences in health and longevity.

Thus, personality traits are not just a useful way to describe people you know; they actually help

psychologists predict how good a worker someone will be, how long he or she will live, and the types of

jobs and activities the person will enjoy.

Who Am I?

Have you ever ask yourself the question, “Who am I?”? Answering the question 'Who am I?' can
lead to a solid self-concept and self-understanding. For many people, answering this question isn't very

easy. For others, a solid understanding of who they are is a big part of their lives. Understanding of who

you are as a person is called self-concept and understanding what your motives are when you act is

called self-understanding.

In definition, self-concept is generally thought of as our individual perceptions of our behavior,

abilities, and unique characteristics—a mental picture of who you are as a person.For example, beliefs
such

as "I am a good friend" or "I am a kind person" are part of an overall self-concept.

14

GED 101 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

Self-concept tends to be more malleable when people are younger and still going through the

process of self-discovery and identity formation. As people age, self-perceptions become much more

detailed and organized as people form a better idea of who they are and what is important to them.

According to the book Essential Social Psychology by Richard Crisp and Rhiannon Turner:

 The individual self consists of attributes and personality traits that differentiate us from other

individuals. Examples include introversion or extroversion.

 The relational self is defined by our relationships with significant others. Examples include siblings,

friends, and spouses.

 The collective self reflects our membership in social groups. Examples include British, Republican,

African-American, or gay.

At its most basic, self-concept is a collection of beliefs one holds about oneself and the responses

of others. It embodies the answer to the question "Who am I?". The lesson to follow will facilitate
learning

about the self, and self concept.

ACTIVITY # 1: The Mini-IPIP (International Personality Item Pool Representation of the NEO PI-

R) Scale (20 points)

Week 1 through the activity below.

Instructions: Below are phrases describing people’s behaviors. Please use the

rating scale below to describe how accurately each statement describes you.

Describe yourself as you generally are now, not as you wish to be in the

future. Describe yourself as you honestly see yourself, in relation to other

people you know of the same sex as you are, and roughly your same age.

Please read each statement carefully and put a number from 1 to 5 next to it to

describe how accurately the statement describes you. Answer the guide questions at the end of the

activity.

1 = Very inaccurate

2 = Moderately inaccurate

3 = Neither inaccurate nor accurate

4 = Moderately accurate

5 = Very accurate

1. _____ Am the life of the party (E)

2. _______ Sympathize with others’ feelings (A)

3. _______ Get chores done right away (C)

4. _______ Have frequent mood swings (N)

5. _______ Have a vivid imagination (O)

6. _______Don’t talk a lot (E)

7. _______ Am not interested in other people’s problems (A)

8. _______ Often forget to put things back in their proper place (C)

15

GED 101 UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

10. ______ Am not interested in abstract ideas (O)

11. ______ Talk to a lot of different people at parties (E)

12. ______ Feel others’ emotions (A)

13. ______ Like order (C)

14. ______ Get upset easily (N)

15. ______ Have difficulty understanding abstract ideas (O)

16. ______ Keep in the background (E)

17. ______ Am not really interested in others (A)

18. ______ Make a mess of things (C)

19. ______ Seldom feel blue (N)

20. ______ Do not have a good imagination (O)

Scoring: The first thing you must do is to reverse the items that are worded in the opposite direction. In

order to do this, subtract the number you put for that item from 6. So if you put a 4, for instance, it will

become a 2. Cross out the score you put when you took the scale, and put the new number in
representing

your score subtracted from the number 6.

Items to be reversed in this way: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

Next, you need to add up the scores for each of the five OCEAN scales (including the reversed numbers

where relevant). Each OCEAN score will be the sum of four items. Place the sum next to each scale

below.

__________ Openness: Add items 5, 10, 15, 20

__________ Conscientiousness: Add items 3, 8, 13, 18

__________ Extraversion: Add items 1, 6, 11, 16

__________ Agreeableness: Add items 2, 7, 12, 17

__________ Neuroticism: Add items 4, 9,14, 19

means you are the opposite of the trait label. For example, low on Extraversion is Introversion, low on

Openness is Conventional, and low on Agreeableness is Assertive.

19–20 Extremely High,

17–18 Very High,

14–16 High,

11–13 Neither high nor low; in the middle,

8–10 Low,

6–7 Very low,

4–5 Extremely low

Guide Questions: Answer the following questions in an essay form with a maximum of 300 words. Write

your answers in a clean sheet of paper. Take a photo and turn it in using GED 101 group chat via FB (10

points each).

1. How do you describe your scores on Mini IPIP Scale? Do you think the results are accurate? Why?

2. Do you think personality changes through time? How?

3. Discuss how we develop our personality.

4. Differentiate personality from self.

5. How will you answer the question, “Who am I?”?