Personality Traits And Psychology

By Anthony Sanchez

The branch of science that analyzes and breaks down the human mind and why people act the way they do is called psychology. Ancient civilizations are believed to have started this scientific process of questioning of how the human mind functions. And now, in the 20th century, the study of the human mind has become more complex, and a more accepted social science, having a clear methodology.

People who research or practice the science of psychology are dubbed as psychologists. Observation of human behavior, understanding their emotions, motivations and personality are among the things that psychologists do. Overall, psychologists are really interested in understanding the ways of the human mind and human interaction.

Personality psychology is one branch of psychology that even non-psychologists have taken notice of. This type of psychology is very much available even to ordinary people in the form of personality tests that can be found in magazines, books and the internet. In essence, this area of psychology is interested in trying to understand the overall personality of individuals.

Forming a rational idea of a person's personality is the starting point of personality psychology. Following this, analyzing how a person reacts to certain things, or behaves that is not similar to peers or similar subjects is observed. Eventually, even same reactions and exactly same behaviors and personality traits are studied as well.

An example of a personality psychology theory that has made huge waves in the scientific community is called Big 5. Agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, openness and neuroticism are the five traits that make up the Big 5. The traits mentioned above can be observed in everyone although in different degrees for each individual.

To be able to fully grasp the subject on personality psychology, it is important to check on what the Big 5 means. Openness is distinguished with people who are always welcoming changes and suggestions of new ideas, while extroversion is seen with people who are outgoing and can easily get along with a lot of people. When an individual seems to be too painstaking when it comes to doing a particular job is said to be high on being conscientious and one who is too friendly and is too helpful is high on the agreeableness level.

And lastly, having long bouts of depression, anger, anxiety that are sometimes unexplainable could be symptoms that a person has a trait of neuroticism. Though there may be some more known traits that are not included in the list, this might be because those traits are the products of combining two or more of the Big 5 traits mentioned above. Psychology, as you can see, is very complex and this theory is simply a fraction of what psychology is all about.

Discounting the use of psychology in any field will be hard as everyone is using it whether deliberately or not. Since it is involved in understanding, analyzing, predicting and studying the human mind and soul. Being able to understand how psychology can work for each one of us can help us relate with different people.

As said, any field or work or study can use psychology and will be better off with inputs from a psychologist. Studying the mind is the basis of psychology, thus anything in the world can be a study for psychology. It works for anything, like business, in relationships, even sports. - 32543

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