Question

explain personality refers to the sum total of internal and external traits of an individual, which are relatively stable and which make the individual different from others

Answer 1

Personality can be determined through a variety of tests. However, dimensions of personality and scales of personality tests vary and often are poorly defined. Examples of such tests are the: Big Five Inventory (BFI), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory(MMPI-2), Rorschach Inkblot test, Neurotic Personality Questionnaire KON-2006,[3]Enneagram test, or Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R).

Five-factor modelEdit

Personality is often broken into statistically-identified factors called the Big Five, which are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (or emotional stability). These components are generally stable over time, and about half of the variance appears to be attributable to a person's genetics rather than the effects of one's environment.[4][5]
Some research has investigated whether the relationship between happiness and extraversion seen in adults can also be seen in children. The implications of these findings can help identify children that are more likely to experience episodes of depression and develop types of treatment that such children are likely to respond to. In both children and adults, research shows that genetics, as opposed to environmental factors, exert a greater influence on happiness levels. Personality is not stable over the course of a lifetime, but it changes much more quickly during childhood, so personality constructs in children are referred to as temperament. Temperament is regarded as the precursor to personality.[6] Whereas McCrae and Costa's Big Five model assesses personality traits in adults, the EAS (emotionality, activity, and sociability) model is used to assess temperament in children. This model measures levels of emotionality, activity, sociability, and shyness in children. The personality theorists consider temperament EAS model similar to the Big Five model in adults; however, this might be due to a conflation of concepts of personality and temperament as described above. Findings show that high degrees of sociability and low degrees of shyness are equivalent to adult extraversion, and correlate with higher levels of life satisfaction in children.