Key personality traits: list, characteristics, examples

Personality is multifaceted, deep and unique. For centuries, being the subject of comprehensive research for various scientific fields, it still remains to be fully understood. Thanks to the accumulated and systematized knowledge, the main personality traits are highlighted. Acquaintance with them helps a person to better understand himself, which, in turn, allows you to make adjustments to beliefs, the system of self-motivation, change the usual methods of action to improve the quality of your life and increase the level of happiness.

Personality structure

There are many different theories of personality traits. In Russian psychology, the personality structures of such authors as Platonov K.K., Leontyev A.N., Kovalev A.G.

In the table below, the personality structure according to A. G. Kovalev

In the works of the famous domestic psychologist A. Kovalev, personality is defined as an integrative formation of mental processes, conditions, and formed personality traits of a person.

Psychological processes

Psychological processes determine the foundation of a person’s mental life, as they provide him with interaction with the environment and are responsible for the formation of his life experience. There are a lot of such processes both in the mind and in the subconscious. They are the most dynamic and short-lived. Among them stand out emotional, volitional and cognitive mental processes. The last group includes perception, sensation, representation, thinking, memory, attention, imagination.

Psychological states

Psychological conditions are already more stable formations that are formed from psychological processes. They represent relatively constant in time internal holistic characteristics of the individual psyche. Each such condition can be characterized by one or more parameters that distinguish it from many others. Depending on what activity or what behavioral act this condition provides, the dominance of certain cognitive, emotional or volitional mental processes is manifested.

Psychological properties

Mental properties or personality traits of a person are individual psychological characteristics that underlie the permanent ways of his interaction with the world. They characterize a person as a system of certain subjective relations to himself, to people around him, to various groups and to the world as a whole, which manifests itself in communication and interaction with them.

While the formation of common stable personality traits is just beginning, the child is characterized as a whole by his prevailing psychological states. For example, they speak of him as calm, balanced, shy, capricious, affective, excitable, depressive. When changing mental states , the appearance of the personality of the child changes. Under certain conditions, one of these conditions may be fixed in the future and manifest itself in some features of its nature.

The formation of personality traits is carried out from mental processes that occur against the background of mental states. They are the most stable and stable, little susceptible to change and at the same time slowly accumulated mental formations. As such, A. G. Kovalev identified four main categories. The list of personality traits is as follows:

• temperament;
• focus;
• character;
• abilities.

At the same time, he drew attention to a certain measure of conditionality of the allocation of these structures, since the same properties can characterize both orientation and character, and influence the manifestation of abilities. However, considering these structures as relatively autonomous is very important. Indeed, in the presence of the same properties, for example, temperament, people can greatly differ from each other in direction, nature and abilities.

Temperament

Human temperament refers to biologically determined personality traits and is the foundation on which its formation takes place. It reflects differences between people according to criteria such as emotional sensitivity, intensity and stability of emotions, pace and energy of actions, and other dynamic characteristics. The personality traits due to them are of the most stable and long-term nature.

According to the definition of B. M. Teplov, one can speak of temperament as a combination of mental characteristics characteristic of a given particular person, which are associated with the speed of the emergence of feelings and their intensity.

Thus, to determine the type of temperament, two main dynamic characteristics are studied - activity and emotionality. The indicator of behavior activity characterizes the degree of speed, swiftness, energy or inertness and slowness. The indicator of emotionality characterizes emotional processes, reflecting their sign, positive or negative, and modality - fear, anger, joy, and others. The most common today is the classification proposed by Hippocrates in the V century BC. E. distinguishing four types of temperament:

• sanguine;
• phlegmatic;
• melancholic;
• choleric.

Representatives of the sanguine type are characterized by rapidly arising, but weak feelings, phlegmatic ones - slowly arising and weak feelings, melancholic - slowly arising, but strong feelings, choleric - rapidly arising and strong feelings. It can also be noted that representatives of the sanguine and choleric types of temperament are characterized by rapid movements, general mobility and a predisposition to a bright external expression of feelings through facial expressions, movements and speech. Representatives of phlegmatic and melancholic, on the contrary, are characterized by slow movements and a tendency to weak expression of feelings. In practice, it is very rare to meet people with a pronounced pure type of temperament, mixed types are more common when the features of two types of temperament are combined.

Temperament in no way affects the presence of abilities and giftedness of a person. Outstanding talents in various fields of activity can occur with the same frequency for any type of temperament. For example, such well-known Russian writers as Goncharov I.A. and Krylov I.A. showed traits of the phlegmatic type of temperament, in Gogol I.V. and Zhukovsky V.A. - melancholic, in Herzen A.I. - sanguine , at Pushkin A. S. traits of choleric were pronounced. And in the two great Russian commanders, the types of temperaments were opposite: in A. Suvorov - choleric, in M. Kutuzov - phlegmatic.

The question of which type of temperament is better is incorrect. Each of them has both its positive and negative sides. Valuable personality characteristics of a sanguine person are liveliness, mobility, responsiveness, phlegmatic - calm, lack of fussiness and haste, melancholy - depth and stability of feelings, choleric - energy, passion, activity.

There is a tendency to develop undesirable personality traits:

• sanguine, such as frivolity and infantility, a tendency to disperse, superficial feelings;
• phlegmatic - inertia, lethargy, indifference;
• in a melancholic - excessive isolation, excessive shyness, a tendency to immerse oneself in one's own experiences;
• choleric - sharpness, restraint, a tendency to emotional "explosions".

Personality orientation

The orientation of the personality acts as the leading characteristic of man. It is understood as a set of stable motives that orient the activity of an individual and have relative independence from the actual situation. In other words, this is the main motivational core of a person. The orientation of the personality is always socially determined and is formed in the process of education. Orientation - these are attitudes that have become personality traits and have found their manifestation in certain forms, each of which is based on motives of human activity. These forms include:

• attraction;
• a wish;
• interest;
• addiction;
• ideal;
• worldview;
• conviction.

Characterization of directional patterns

In this context, attraction refers to a mental state that expresses an indistinguishable, unconscious or insufficiently realized need. As a rule, attraction is a temporary phenomenon, since the need of a person manifested in it either fades away, or is realized and thus transforms into desire.

Desire is a person's already realized need and attraction to something specific. Desire, with sufficient awareness, has a motivating power. It contributes to the vision of the goal of future actions and the construction of a detailed plan. This form of manifestation of orientation is characterized by awareness, firstly, of one’s needs and, secondly, of potential ways to satisfy them.

Aspiration is usually seen as a perceived motivation for activity. It appears when desire is combined with a volitional component.

The most striking and voluminous characteristic of the personality's orientation is its interests, being the most important incentive to cognition of the surrounding reality. On a subjective level, interest finds itself in a special emotional background, accompanying the process of cognition or attention to certain objects. An amazing feature of interest is that, when satisfied, instead of fading, it, on the contrary, causes a number of new ones corresponding to higher levels of cognitive activity.

Addiction reflects a person’s focus on a certain type of activity. At its core, it is a sustained interest in the dynamics of its development that grows into a deep and steady need of a person to perform one or another activity. This happens when the volitional component is connected to interest.

An ideal is a certain concrete image or representation of an objective goal, on which a person is oriented, towards which he aspires through the realization of his inclinations.

A world view is understood as a system of a person’s subjective views on the world around him, on his place in it, on his attitude to himself and to other people. Here, ideals, value orientations, principles and beliefs of the individual are reflected.

Belief is considered the highest form of orientation and is considered as a system of motives of a person’s personality, prompting him to act according to his views, principles, worldview. The concepts of motive and motivation are different from each other. The latter is broader and more capacious. Motive is a stable personal property that internally encourages a person to certain actions. In the formation of personality orientation, the main role belongs to conscious motives, since they provide activation and orientation of behavior. Their formation originates from human needs.

Character

In psychology, by nature it is customary to understand the totality of individual mental properties that manifest themselves in typical forms of behavior and modes of action typical for a given individual. The process of formation of common stable personality traits is carried out in the course of life.

Character traits do not include all of its features, but only the most significant and stable. For example, even very cheerful and optimistic people may experience feelings such as sadness or sadness, but that does not make them pessimists or whiners.

Classifications of the main psychological personality traits are many. Most often in the domestic psychological literature there are two approaches. According to the first, all character traits are tied to mental processes and therefore are divided into three groups. The list of personality traits in this case is as follows:

• Strong-willed - independence, organization, activity, perseverance, determination and others.
• Emotional - impressionability, impetuosity, ardor, responsiveness, indifference, inertia and others.
• Intellectual - curiosity, thoughtfulness, resourcefulness, quick wit and others.

According to the second approach, personality traits are described based on the personality orientation. In the formed character, the leading component is a system of beliefs that sets the long-term strategic direction of actions and human behavior, provides confidence in the importance and fairness of the work performed by it, and determines persistence in achieving one's goals.

Character traits that determine the attitude to activities are expressed in the sustainable interests of man. A characterless person has no goals at all or is very scattered. The superficiality and instability of their interests are often associated with a large share of imitation, with a lack of independence and integrity of the person. And, on the contrary, the richness and depth of a person’s interests testify to his focus and perseverance.

The specific character of the personality is manifested in situations of choice of methods of action or types of behavior. In this context, we can talk about such a character trait as the degree of severity of motivation to achieve success. The choice of a person will depend on it either in favor of actions leading to success - initiative, competitive activity, willingness to take risks, or in favor of the desire to simply avoid failure - avoiding risks, avoiding responsibility, inactivity, lack of initiative.

All personality traits of a person can conditionally be attributed to two types - motivational and instrumental. The former, respectively, encourage and direct activity, while the latter give it a certain style. For example, when choosing the goal of an action, a motivational personality trait appears. However, after the goal is determined, the instrumental character traits that determine the choice of various ways to achieve this goal are more apparent.

Character is formed gradually and can undergo transformations throughout a person’s life. And this process can be made conscious. As the famous English writer William Makepeace Thackeray said, sow an act - reap a habit, sow a habit - reap a character, sow a character - and you reap a destiny.

Human abilities

According to the approach of the domestic scientist B. M. Teplov, abilities are understood as individual psychological characteristics that, on the one hand, distinguish one person from another, on the other, are related to the success of any one activity or numerous activities, with the third - do not come down to the person’s existing knowledge, skills and abilities.

A person's abilities determine the degree of ease and speed of acquisition and assimilation of knowledge, skills. In turn, the acquired knowledge and skills significantly contribute to the further development of abilities, and their absence, on the contrary, serves as a brake on the development of abilities. In psychology, levels of development of abilities are most often classified as follows:

• ability;
• giftedness;
• talent;
• genius.

The successful implementation of any activity depends not on just one, but on a combination of several abilities at once. Moreover, a combination leading to the same result can be provided in various ways. In the absence of the necessary inclinations for the successful development of some abilities, their deficit can be compensated for by deeper development and development of others. According to B. Teplov, abilities cannot exist in the absence of a constant development process. An ability that is not practiced is lost over time. Only thanks to diligence, constant exercises, systematic studies of such complex activities as mathematics, music, art or technical creativity, sports, it is possible to maintain and develop relevant abilities in oneself.

How a great artist was not accepted into the academy

, . , . . , "".

. . . - . . . - . . - , . . . , . , .

Teachers made a mistake because they could not distinguish between the lack of skills and abilities. Despite the fact that the outstanding abilities of the young artist showed up quite early, at that time he still had insufficient drawing skills.

Within three months V. Surikov mastered the necessary skills and abilities and as a result was enrolled in the Academy of Arts. During his studies, he received four silver medals for his work and was awarded several cash prizes.

His example shows that you need to believe in yourself, in your dream and persistently achieve your goal.