Introduction to Personality<\/h1>\r\nIn this chapter, we will consider the wide variety of personality traits found in human beings. We\u2019ll consider how and when personality influences our behaviour and how well we perceive the personalities of others. We will also consider how psychologists measure personality and the extent to which personality is caused by nature versus nurture. The fundamental goal of personality psychologists is to understand what makes people different from each other by studying individual differences, but also what makes them similar, as is the case with people who share genes, such as Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_398\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"487\"]![\"Three](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/psychologymtdi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/470\/2024\/02\/P2-Masks.jpeg\" "\\"Three")
Figure PE.1. What characteristics describe your personality?<\/strong> Happy, sad, impatient, shy, fearful, curious, helpful. What characteristics describe your personality?[\/caption]\r\n\r\nPersonality<\/strong> is defined as an individual\u2019s consistent patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving (John et al., 2008). The word personality comes from the Latin word persona<\/em>. In the ancient world, a persona was a mask worn by an actor. When we say that Bill is fun, that Marian is shy, or that Frank is helpful, we mean that we believe that these people have stable individual characteristics \u2014 their personalities.\r\n\r\nUnderstanding personality is part of our human nature, and helps us in life. It can help us understand why people do the things they do. Knowing a person\u2019s personality may also enable us to predict how they might act in the future and in different situations.\r\n\r\nThe concept of personality has been studied for at least 2,000 years, beginning with Hippocrates (460\u2013370 BC). Hippocrates theorised that personality traits and human behaviours are based on four separate temperaments associated with four fluids (\u201chumours\u201d) of the body: choleric (yellow bile from the liver), melancholic (black bile from the kidneys), sanguine (red blood from the heart), and phlegmatic (white phlegm from the lungs). Based on Hippocrates\u2019s theory, another ancient Greek physician, surgeon, and philosopher, Galen (c. AD 129\u2013200), suggested that personality differences could be explained by imbalances in the humours and that each person exhibits one of the four temperaments. For example, the choleric person is passionate, ambitious, and bold; the melancholic person is reserved, anxious, and unhappy; the sanguine person is joyful, eager, and optimistic; and the phlegmatic person is calm, reliable, and thoughtful. Galen\u2019s theory was prevalent for over 1,000 years and continued to be popular through the Middle Ages.\r\n\r\nIn 1780, Franz Gall, a German physician, proposed that the distances between bumps on the skull informed us whether a person was friendly, prideful, murderous, kind, good with languages, and so on. Gall\u2019s approach, known as phrenology<\/strong>, was very popular; however, because careful scientific research did not validate the predictions of the theory, phrenology has now been discredited in contemporary psychology.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_398\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"300\"]![\"Two](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/psychologymtdi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/470\/2024\/08\/c844f04a36399795945b0da70ec7d13e.jpg\" "\\"Two")
Figure PE.2. Phrenology.<\/strong> This definition of phrenology with a chart of the skull appeared in Webster\u2019s Academic Dictionary, circa 1895.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAnother approach, known as somatology<\/strong>, championed by the psychologist William H. Sheldon (1898\u20131977), was based on the idea that we could determine personality from people\u2019s body types. Sheldon (1940) argued that people with more body fat and a rounder physique (i.e., endomorphs) were more likely to be assertive and bold, whereas thinner people (i.e., ectomorphs) were more likely to be introverted and intellectual. As with phrenology, scientific research did not validate the predictions of the theory, and somatology has now too been discredited in contemporary psychology.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_398\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"350\"]![\"A](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/psychologymtdi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/470\/2024\/08\/bodytypes-2.jpeg\" "\\"This")
Figure PE.3. Somatology.<\/strong> William Sheldon erroneously believed that people with different body types had different personalities.[\/caption]\r\nImage Attributions<\/h1>\r\nFigure PE.1. Figure <\/span>11.2 as found in\u00a0Psychology 2e by OpenStax<\/a>\u00a0is licensed under a\u00a0CC BY 4.0 License<\/a><\/span>\r\n\r\nFigure PE.2. 1895-Dictionary-Phrenolog<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by unknown author is in the\u00a0public domain<\/a>.\r\n\r\nFigure PE.3. Figure 14.2 as found in Psychology \u2013 1st Canadian Edition<\/a>\u00a0is licensed under a\u00a0CC BY-NC-SA License<\/a>","rendered":"Approximate reading time<\/a>: 10 minutes<\/p>\nTwins Separated at Birth<\/h1>\n
Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein were identical twins who were adopted into separate families immediately after their births in 1968. It was only at the age of 35 that the twins were reunited and discovered how similar they were to each other.<\/p>\n
Paula Bernstein grew up in a happy home in suburban New York. She loved her adopted parents and older brother and even wrote an article titled \u201cWhy I Don\u2019t Want to Find My Birth Mother.\u201d Elyse\u2019s childhood, also a happy one, was followed by university and then film school abroad.<\/p>\n
In 2003, 35 years after she was adopted, Elyse, acting on a whim, inquired about her biological family at the adoption agency. The response came back: \u201cYou were born on October 9, 1968, at 12:51 p.m., the younger of twin girls. You\u2019ve got a twin sister named Paula, and she\u2019s looking for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, my God. I\u2019m a twin! Can you believe this? Is this really happening?\u201d Elyse cried.<\/p>\n
Elyse dialed Paula\u2019s phone number: \u201cIt\u2019s almost like I\u2019m hearing my own voice in a recorder back at me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s funny because I feel like in a way I was talking to an old, close friend I never knew I had. We had an immediate intimacy, and yet, we didn\u2019t know each other at all,\u201d Paula said.<\/p>\n
The two women met for the first time at a caf\u00e9 for lunch and talked until the late evening. \u201cWe had 35 years to catch up on,\u201d said Paula. \u201cHow do you start asking somebody, \u2018What have you been up to since we shared a womb together?\u2019 Where do you start?\u201d With each new detail revealed, the twins learned about their remarkable similarities. They\u2019d both gone to graduate school in film. They both loved to write, and they had both edited their high school yearbooks. They have similar taste in music.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think, you know, when we met it was undeniable that we were twins. Looking at this person, you are able to gaze into your own eyes and see yourself from the outside. This identical individual has the exact same DNA and is essentially your clone. We don\u2019t have to imagine,\u201d Paula said.<\/p>\n
Now they finally feel like sisters. \u201cBut it\u2019s perhaps even closer than sisters,\u201d Elyse said, \u201cbecause we\u2019re also twins.\u201d<\/p>\n
The following YouTube video provides further details about the experiences of Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein.<\/p>\n
Watch this video: Identical Twins Separated at Birth (9 minutes)<\/a><\/p>\n
![1895-Dictionary-Phrenolog<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by unknown author is in the\u00a0public domain<\/a>.\r\n\r\nFigure PE.3. Figure 14.2 as found in Psychology \u2013 1st Canadian Edition<\/a>\u00a0is licensed under a\u00a0CC BY-NC-SA License<\/a>","rendered":"Approximate reading time<\/a>: 10 minutes<\/p>\nTwins Separated at Birth<\/h1>\nPaula Bernstein and Elyse Schein were identical twins who were adopted into separate families immediately after their births in 1968. It was only at the age of 35 that the twins were reunited and discovered how similar they were to each other.<\/p>\nPaula Bernstein grew up in a happy home in suburban New York. She loved her adopted parents and older brother and even wrote an article titled \u201cWhy I Don\u2019t Want to Find My Birth Mother.\u201d Elyse\u2019s childhood, also a happy one, was followed by university and then film school abroad.<\/p>\nIn 2003, 35 years after she was adopted, Elyse, acting on a whim, inquired about her biological family at the adoption agency. The response came back: \u201cYou were born on October 9, 1968, at 12:51 p.m., the younger of twin girls. You\u2019ve got a twin sister named Paula, and she\u2019s looking for you.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cOh, my God. I\u2019m a twin! Can you believe this? Is this really happening?\u201d Elyse cried.<\/p>\nElyse dialed Paula\u2019s phone number: \u201cIt\u2019s almost like I\u2019m hearing my own voice in a recorder back at me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s funny because I feel like in a way I was talking to an old, close friend I never knew I had. We had an immediate intimacy, and yet, we didn\u2019t know each other at all,\u201d Paula said.<\/p>\nThe two women met for the first time at a caf\u00e9 for lunch and talked until the late evening. \u201cWe had 35 years to catch up on,\u201d said Paula. \u201cHow do you start asking somebody, \u2018What have you been up to since we shared a womb together?\u2019 Where do you start?\u201d With each new detail revealed, the twins learned about their remarkable similarities. They\u2019d both gone to graduate school in film. They both loved to write, and they had both edited their high school yearbooks. They have similar taste in music.<\/p>\n\u201cI think, you know, when we met it was undeniable that we were twins. Looking at this person, you are able to gaze into your own eyes and see yourself from the outside. This identical individual has the exact same DNA and is essentially your clone. We don\u2019t have to imagine,\u201d Paula said.<\/p>\nNow they finally feel like sisters. \u201cBut it\u2019s perhaps even closer than sisters,\u201d Elyse said, \u201cbecause we\u2019re also twins.\u201d<\/p>\nThe following YouTube video provides further details about the experiences of Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein.<\/p>\nWatch this video: Identical Twins Separated at Birth (9 minutes)<\/a><\/p>\n](\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:1895-Dictionary-Phrenolog.png\"){kind=link}
Approximate reading time<\/a>: 10 minutes<\/p>\n Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein were identical twins who were adopted into separate families immediately after their births in 1968. It was only at the age of 35 that the twins were reunited and discovered how similar they were to each other.<\/p>\n Paula Bernstein grew up in a happy home in suburban New York. She loved her adopted parents and older brother and even wrote an article titled \u201cWhy I Don\u2019t Want to Find My Birth Mother.\u201d Elyse\u2019s childhood, also a happy one, was followed by university and then film school abroad.<\/p>\n In 2003, 35 years after she was adopted, Elyse, acting on a whim, inquired about her biological family at the adoption agency. The response came back: \u201cYou were born on October 9, 1968, at 12:51 p.m., the younger of twin girls. You\u2019ve got a twin sister named Paula, and she\u2019s looking for you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh, my God. I\u2019m a twin! Can you believe this? Is this really happening?\u201d Elyse cried.<\/p>\n Elyse dialed Paula\u2019s phone number: \u201cIt\u2019s almost like I\u2019m hearing my own voice in a recorder back at me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s funny because I feel like in a way I was talking to an old, close friend I never knew I had. We had an immediate intimacy, and yet, we didn\u2019t know each other at all,\u201d Paula said.<\/p>\n The two women met for the first time at a caf\u00e9 for lunch and talked until the late evening. \u201cWe had 35 years to catch up on,\u201d said Paula. \u201cHow do you start asking somebody, \u2018What have you been up to since we shared a womb together?\u2019 Where do you start?\u201d With each new detail revealed, the twins learned about their remarkable similarities. They\u2019d both gone to graduate school in film. They both loved to write, and they had both edited their high school yearbooks. They have similar taste in music.<\/p>\n \u201cI think, you know, when we met it was undeniable that we were twins. Looking at this person, you are able to gaze into your own eyes and see yourself from the outside. This identical individual has the exact same DNA and is essentially your clone. We don\u2019t have to imagine,\u201d Paula said.<\/p>\n Now they finally feel like sisters. \u201cBut it\u2019s perhaps even closer than sisters,\u201d Elyse said, \u201cbecause we\u2019re also twins.\u201d<\/p>\n The following YouTube video provides further details about the experiences of Paula Bernstein and Elyse Schein.<\/p>\n Watch this video: Identical Twins Separated at Birth (9 minutes)<\/a><\/p>\nTwins Separated at Birth<\/h1>\n