What is Personality? (Writings in Psychology Book 5)

A seemingly simple question, after all we all have a personality. We all talk about people having ‘great personalities’, or having no more personality than a potato! So it should be easy to define just what personality is. The word personality comes from Latin, persona, meaning mask. Masks were used in theatre at the time in order, not to disguise the actors, but to represent different types of characters. One could tell from the mask what type of person the character was, so the mask indicated the characters disposition, whether they were ‘good’ or ‘bad’ characters in the plot and enabled audiences to predict how these characters would act and react in the course of the story being played out in front of them. If only it were so easy to predict behaviour in real life, but we all know that most individuals wear different ‘masks’ to represent themselves in differing situations, and with different people.