How personality influence effective communication
Answers
Psychologists have come up with different definitions as far as personality is concerned. However, most of them tend to agree to the fact that, personality is the individual’s unique pattern of thoughts, patterns of thought, feelings and behavior that tend to persist over time and situation, (Morris & Meistos 1998p 442). Accordingly, Morris and Meistos have found out that personality as described in the above definition has two parts, that is, it is a unique pattern of an individual- those tenets that isolate or tell an individual from another.
Secondly, that personality has a spell, that is, they persist through time and across situations. The last example simply means that personality is stable and enduring. According to James Kalat, in his introduction to psychology, the word personality has been derived from the Latin word persona which means ‘masking’, (Kalat, 1990 p 467). It traces its roots from the theatres of ancient Greek and Rome where actors wore masks to indicate their emotions- whether they were happy, sad or even angry.
The use of the word personality, however, has a totally different meaning from the word mask. According to James Kalat (1990), a mask can be put and be removed again after the play, but personality as we saw in the definition above, indicates something stable and enduring. Personality also consists all consistent ways in which the behavior of one person differs markedly from that of another person. Of the several psychologists who have wrote about personality, Sigmund Freud (1856- 1939) and Karl Jung are the most notables ones