Personality development – Behavioral sciences explore the cognitive processes within organisms and the behavioral interactions between organisms in the natural world. It involves the systematic analysis and investigation of human and animal behavior through the study of the past, controlled and naturalistic observation of the present and disciplined scientific experimentation and modeling.
It attempts to accomplish legitimate, objective conclusions through rigorous formulations and observation. Generally, behavior science deals primarily with human action and often seeks to generalize about human behavior as it relates to society.
Personality development
Personality development is defined as a process of enhancing one’s personality. Personality development sessions guide an individual as to how he/she can develop his/her personality.
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Personality development is the development of the organized pattern of behaviors and attitudes that makes a person distinctive. Personality development occurs by the ongoing interaction of temperament, character, and environment.
Domains of Personality Development
A. Physical Development
- It involves all those changes occurring in a person’s body like changes in height, weight, in the brain, heart and other structures and processes and in skeletal, muscular and neurological features that affect motor skills. At puberty boys and girls undergo growth and development very fast.
B. Cognitive Development
- It involves all those changes that occur in the mental activity including sensation, perception, memory, thought, reasoning and language.
C. Psychological Development
- It includes all those changes that concern a person’s personality, emotions and relationship with others. Society distinguishes between children, adolescents and adults.
Factors Influencing Personality Development
Personality is a dynamic growing thing different in each person and influenced by the following three factors :
A. Environmental or social factors
a) Heredity
b) Influence of home
c) Order of birth-the first born child may be dominating
d) Only child-may become a problem child
e) School and peer group
f) Community and social roles
g) TV, cinema, radio and newspaper
B. Biological factors
a) Endocrinal glands and personality
- Thyroid glands
- Adrenal glands
- Sex glands
b) Blood glucose level
c) Externally imposed biological conditions
- Drugs and alcoholism
- Diseases
- Diet.
C. Mental or psychological factors
These include
a) Our motives
b) Acquired interests,
c) Our attitudes,
d) Our will and character,
e) Intellectual capacities such as intelligence
f) Reasoning
g) Attention
h) Perception and imagination. c
These determine our reactions in various situation and thus affect the growth and direction of our personality. An individual with a lot of will power will make decisions more quickly than others. Intelligence will enable him to make adequate adjustment and in collecting facts and understanding relationships.
Process of Personality Development
A. Growth
The increase in size that occurs with changing age is called growth. Most organisms become larger as they become older. Growth takes place through metabolic processes from within. The organism takes in a variety of substances, breaks them down into their chemical components and then reassemble them into new materials.
B. Maturation
Maturation is the unfolding of genetically prescribed patterns of behavior or biological potential. Such changes are relatively independent of the environment. For example, an infant’s motor development after birth, i.e. grasping, sitting, crawling,, standing and walking follows a regular sequence. Both growth and maturation involve biological change. While growth refers to the increase in the individual’s cells and tissue, maturation concerns the development of organs and limbs to become functional.
C. Learning
It is more or less a permanent modification in behavior that results from the individual’s experience in the environment. It differs from maturation which occurs without any specific experience or practice.