question_answer

Explain the concept of personality. Describe the cultural approach to study personality.

Or

Discuss the observational methods used in personality assessment. What problems are faced in using these methods?

Answer:

Personality refers to our characteristic ways of responding to individuals and situations. It refers to unqiue and relatively stable qualities that characterise an individual's behaviour across different situations over a period of time.

Personality is characterised by the following features:

1. It has both physical and psychological components.

2. Ifs expression in terms of behaviour is fairly unique in a given individual.

3. Its main features do not easily change with time.

4. It is dynamic in the sense that some of its features may change due to internal or external situational demands. Thus, personality is adaptive to situations.

Cultural approach attempts to understand personality in relation to the features of ecological and cultural environment. It proposes that a group's economic maintenance system plays a vital role in the origin of cultural and behavioural viarations. The climatic conditions, the nature of terrain of the habitat and the availability of food (flora and fauna) in it determines not only people's economic activities, but also their settlement patterns, social structures, diversion of labour and other features such as child rearing practices. People's skills, abilities, behavioural styles and value priorities are viewed as strongly linked to these features. Rituals, ceremonies, religious practices, arts, recreatioal activities, games and plays are the means through which people's personality gets projected in a culture. Thus, the cultural approach considers personality as an adaptation of individuals or groups to the demands of their ecology and culture.

For example, The Birhor (a tribal group) of Jharkhand represent such a population. In the Birhor society, children from an early age are allowed enormous freedom to move into forests and learn hunting and gathering skills. Their child socialisation practices are also aimed at making children independent, autonomous and achievement oriented from an early age of life.

In agricultural societies, children are socialised to be obedient to elders, nurturant to youngsters and responsible to their duties.

Or

The main observational methods used in personality assessment are:

1. Interview: It is commonly used method for assessing personality. This involves talking to the person being assessed and asking specific questions. Diagnostic interviewing which seeks to go beyond the replies given by the person. Interviews may be structured or unstructured depending on the purpose or goals of assessment.

2. Observation: Behavioural observation is another method which is commonly used. It requires careful training of the observer and a fairly detailed guideline about analysis of behaviours in order to assess the personality of a given person.

Inspite of frequent and widespread use, observation and interview methods are characterised by the following limitations:

(i) Professional training requires collection of useful data through these methods and are quite demanding and time-consuming.

(ii) Maturity of the psychologist is a precondition for obtaining valid data through these techniques.

(iii) Mere presence of the observer may contaminate the results. As a stranger, the behaviour of the person being observed may get influenced by the observer.

3.   Behavioural: They are frequently used for assessment of personality in educational and industrial settings.- Behavioural ratings are generally taken from people who know the assessee intimately and have interacted with him/her over a period of rime. They attempt to put individuals into certain categories in terms of their behavioural qualities.

The method of rating suffers from the following limitations:

(i) Rates often display certain biases that colour their judgements of different traits. For example, most of us are greatly influenced by a single favourable or unfavourable trait. Tills tendency is known as the halo effect.

(ii) Raters have a tendency to place individuals either in the middle (called middle category bias) by avoiding extreme positions, or in the extreme positions (called extreme response bias) by avoiding middle categories on the scale.

4. Nomination: This method is often used in obtaining peer assessment. It can be used with persons who have been in long-term interaction and who know each other very well. Each person is asked to choose one or more persons of the group with whom she/he would work, study, play or participate in activity. Nominations received are analysed to understand the personality and behavioural qualities of the person.

5. Situational Tests: It provides us with information about how a person behaves under stressful situations. The test requires a person to perform a given task with other persons who are instructed to be non-cooperative and interfering. It involves a kind of role playing. A verbal report is also obtained on what she/he was asked to do.