Paper Topic:

Personality Theories

Introduction

The earth is a great big melting pot with people of different personalities , cultures , races , languages , timeline , and beliefs . These characteristics have been a way to differentiate each and every unique individual up to the minute detail found in their DNA . Creating a person 's distinctive identity , and finding meaning and reason for such an identity has been a purpose for many , if not all , people living in this world . This need to have a role to be performed does not only encompass our clueless teenagers , as many claim that the

teens are hormonal and are on a warpath to finding their own individual identities , but all age brackets as well . We have heard the term midlife crisis , the you-don 't-know-what-you-want-until-you 're-forty , among others that describe ambiguity in a person 's lifetime that cannot be resolved just easily . Psychologists and social scientists have long been studying the reasons for our behavior , the motivation behind these and the personalities that govern us . Maybe , if there is an explanation as to why we are who we are , and why we do what we do , we may just find the right direction and path towards gaining satisfaction in our lives

Discussion

Personality , as defined by Atkinson , is a distinctive and characteristic pattern of thought , emotion , and behavior that define an individual 's personal style of interacting with the physical and social environment A personality basically describes individual differences

One personality theory is behaviorism . Major behaviorists include Ivan Pavlov and B . F . Skinner . It explains and predicts behavior in terms of the environmental stimuli acting upon an organism and the organism 's subsequent responses . For example , a couple decides to eat at a restaurant and s a specific meal . Upon receiving their , they realized that it was not what they asked for so they call for the waiter who took their . They asked the waiter to change their but the waiter declines saying that it was what he heard and that if the be changed , he will be billed for the unclaimed . The couple decides not to change the , but they never went to that place again . In the example that I gave , I see behaviorism taking place when the couple decides not to go back to the restaurant because of the learned experience with the waiter giving them the wrong ed food

There are two primary forms of behaviorism , classical conditioning and operant conditioning . In classical conditioning , one stimulus comes to bring forth the response usually brought forth by a second stimulus as a result of being paired repeatedly with the second stimulus . In laboratory rats , for example , if they touch a certain wire , and then it electrocutes them , they will learn not to touch it . In contrast Operant conditioning is a form of learning in which there is an increase in the frequency of behavior by means of reinforcement or it is decreased , by means of punishment . For example , if you tell your child that...

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