WEEK 1: UNDERSTANDING THE SELF Introduction to Self-Understanding

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.

 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 personality. The culture largely determinants what a person is and what a
person will learn. The 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
“FiveFactor 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.
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 broadranging 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.
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.