It is not easy to describe the true nature of personality in few words. The adjectives expressing personality characteristics are abstract, which are difficult to express in a concrete sense. Nevertheless, different psychologists have tried to define it in their own way.
1. Morton Prince, 1924
Personality is the total of all the biological innate dispositions, impulses, tendencies, appetites, and instincts of the individual, and the acquired dispositions and tendencies.
2. Watson,1924
Personality is the total of habits and habit systems observed over a long period of time to give reliable information.
3. Guthrie, 1944
Personality consists of those habits and habit-systems of social importance that are stable and resistant to change.
4. Murray,1948
Personality is the entire sequence of organized governmental processes in the brain from birth to death.
5. Guilford
It is in individual differences that we find the logical key to personality. An individual's personality, then, is his unique pattern of traits.
6. Pervin,1971
Personality represents those structural and dynamic properties of individuals as they reflect themselves in characteristic responses to situations.
7. Byrne,1974
An individual's personality will be defined as the combination of all the relatively enduring dimensions of individual differences on which he can be measured.
8. Sarnoff,1962
My personality is meant those relatively enduring traits and dispositions of the individual that have, over time, jelled into a pattern that distinguishes him from other individuals.
9. Krech, Crutchfield and Levison, 1974
Personality is the integration n individual's characteristics into a unique organization that determines and is modified by his attempts to adapt to his continually changing environment.
10. Allport, F.
Personality is the individual's characteristic reaction to social stimuli and the quality of his adaptation to the social features of his environment.
11. Allport, G.
Personality is what a man really is.
In other words, personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of that psycho-physical system that sdetermines his unique adjustment to his environment.
12. Sherman
Personality is the characteristic behavior of an individual.
In other words- Personality is the entire mental organization of his development. It embraces every phase of human character, intellect, temperament, skill—morality, and attitude that has been built up in the course of one's life.
Generally, we discuss good and bad personalities. But in the view of psychologists, personality is personality. It is not good or bad. According to scientists, another important characteristic of personality is its uniqueness or imperfection. Due to the quality of uniqueness, there is no complete similarity in the personality of any two persons; that is, each person's personalityifferent from others.
Thus we see that there is considerable variation in the definition given by different psychologists. This difference is not only in words but also in their attitudes. Therefore, it does not seem easy to decide which definition is the best among the above various definitions. The reality is that the personality itself is a fully organized unit, in which all kinds of systems - biological, physical, and mental - of the individual are included. This organization is of different types in each person, due to which his prosocial behavior with the environment is unique. Keeping this aspect of personality in the middle, Allport gives the definition, G• can be considered a good definition. He has described personality as the dynamic organization of the individual's psycho-physical qualities or systems. This organization depends on the specific or unique association of the individual with the environment.
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