Character is a structure of persistent, relatively constant mental properties that determine the characteristics of a person’s behavior. As a rule, it is understood as a set of qualities and properties of a person that leave a certain imprint on his actions.
Character is manifested in a person’s relationship to the world around him:
- To oneself: modesty, self-criticism, self-esteem, vanity, impudence, arrogance, resentment, self-centeredness, shyness.
- Towards other people: isolation or sociability, self-confidence or self-criticism, humiliation or pride.
- To the point: laziness or hard work, conscientiousness or dishonesty, responsibility or irresponsibility.
- To property: greed or generosity, wastefulness or frugality, sloppiness or neatness.
The central personality traits are the attitude towards others, work and oneself. These are recognizable, stable characteristics that allow a fairly complete and accurate description of a personality. The famous psychologist Gordon Allport came to the conclusion that every person has between five and ten central personality traits. Additional (secondary) character traits are less stable and recognizable and are often situationally determined.
For example, for one person a certain trait (say, selfishness) may be central, while for another it may be secondary, because it is clearly manifested only in a certain situation and does not dominate as much as in the first.
Essence of Character
The general quality of a person and the totality of a number of his unique traits is character. A person, when interacting with the environment in his activities, is formed and displays various individual psychological characteristics.
Some of these features are too insignificant to talk about, others are short-term, others do not affect a person’s attitude towards the environment at all and do not affect his activities, however, there are also stable individual psychological features that determine human behavior.
Some general character traits are associated with the development and characteristics of certain human mental processes. These features become character traits only when, together with other personality traits, they begin to determine the way of action and attitude towards the environment characteristic of this particular person.
Character
is not just a summation of individual personality traits. Each person has many individual character traits, and even more shades of each of them. And to study a person’s character, you need to answer the question: what is most important about him?
General concept of character. Character Structure
Differences in the properties of temperament do not exhaust the entire wide range of individual characteristics. The differences that exist between people are manifold and affect all aspects of their lives. People differ not only in external characteristics, but also in mental makeup, behavior, and relationships that connect them with the world of other people and objects. Each person is characterized by a unique psyche and personality, uniqueness. This reveals a person's individuality. Character is one of the main components of individuality.
The word “character” is widely used in life and in literature. When interacting with other people, each person shows his own character and evaluates it from others. The generally accepted definitions of character are “good”, “bad”, “heavy”, “light”. When a relationship breaks up, they often say: “We didn’t get along.” People with different characters behave differently in similar circumstances, react and experience differently. If we know the character of another person, we can better understand his actions, choose the optimal style of communication with him, and anticipate his behavior in certain situations.
For example, the class teacher is considering which of the students would be more appropriate to appoint as class leader. One of the candidates is a good organizer, but often displays rudeness and rigidity when communicating with his comrades. The other is honest, principled, but uncommunicative; it will be difficult for him to establish contacts with all the guys. The class teacher is looking for a student with leadership qualities, conscientious, efficient, and disciplined. The better he is able to understand the characteristics of his students, the more successful his choice will be.
Knowledge of character traits is important when hiring people, when appointing them to a responsible position, and when forming groups to carry out joint activities. Conflict prevention, establishing a positive psychological climate in the team, and increasing the effectiveness of communication also largely depend on this. This fully applies to the management of the educational team and to pedagogical communication, during which the teacher solves important educational, educational and organizational tasks.
The formation of the first scientific ideas about character dates back to ancient times and is associated with the name of Aristotle, who described the differences in morals and ways of thinking among different people. His student, the ancient Greek philosopher Theophrastus (372 - 287 BC), systematized these differences and identified 30 traits by which one can judge the type of person, for example, a flatterer, a pretender, a talker. He also introduced the term “character” itself (Greek charakter - trait, coinage) into scientific use, writing the treatise “Ethical Characters”. Subsequently, the French writer-moralist J. La Bruyère (1645 - 1696), who for a long time observed the morals of the nobility, described more than a thousand typical character traits. Russian doctor and psychologist A.F. Lazursky (1874 - 1917), who considered the study of personality and character to be one of the main tasks of psychology, created characterology - a section of psychological science about the essence, structure, types and development of character.
Currently, character as an integral personal formation is studied in differential psychology, the subject of which is individual psychological differences between people. Character is understood as a set of stable, individual characteristics of a person that determine his typical modes of behavior in certain life situations and circumstances.
Unlike temperament, which depends on congenital, anatomical and physiological characteristics, and above all on the properties of the nervous system, a person’s character is formed during life, in the process of socialization and education as a person enters into a diverse system of relationships with objective reality and other people. The theory of the development of a person’s character depending on his relationship to reality was developed by V.N. Myasishchev and B.G. Ananyev. First, relationships are carried out at a specific emotional level. They determine a person’s experiences, peculiarities of perception of reality, and behavioral reactions to external influences. Positive or negative experience of relationships with people also forms the corresponding system of internal relationships of the individual. Repeated emotional positive and negative reactions cause longer lasting mental states, which are gradually consolidated and become stable personality traits, traits and character.
K.K. Platonov identified three main features of character traits: they must be sufficiently pronounced, closely interrelated with other traits and systematically manifest themselves in various types of activities.
The concepts of “personality traits” and “character traits” are often used interchangeably, but they should be distinguished. Personality as a psychological formation is broader than character, which is only one of its substructures. The central link of personality is the need-motivational sphere. Dominant motives, values and goals determine the direction of the individual. The structure of personality traits includes properties that characterize its orientation. For the sake of core values, a person can show different traits of his character or change them. In this sense, personality is a higher authority than character.
The life path of people, the relationships they enter into, and the conditions of their upbringing are characterized by originality. The natural prerequisites for the development of individuality are also different, so each person develops a unique set of traits and manifestations of character that is unique to him. However, along with individual characteristics, each person’s character also has traits that are common to other people. This is due to the fact that similar life circumstances of people living in the same social conditions form typical character traits. If earlier many people in our country were characterized by obedience, discipline, and passivity, now we meet much more often people who are self-sufficient, independent, and proactive. In addition, each member of society is also a member of other specific groups - family, educational group, production team, various informal communities. Each of them also has its own specific effect on a person’s character. The essence of character lies in the unity of the individual and the typical.
Not all relationships are character-forming, but only the most significant ones related to the satisfaction of a person’s basic vital, material and spiritual needs. First of all, these are relationships to society and other people, to work, to oneself, to things. Currently, more than two thousand traits have been described that are interconnected and form a character structure - stable groups of traits, reflecting their various types of human relationships to reality.
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Attitudes towards society and other people form moral character traits. Humanity, honesty, integrity, justice characterize a high level of moral development. Selfishness, unprincipledness, evil temperament, deceit, on the contrary, speak of moral imperfection of character. In the system of relationships with other people, a special group consists of communicative traits: goodwill, responsiveness, sensitivity, openness, sincerity, politeness. People who have these traits communicate more effectively in a variety of situations: in the family, at work, with colleagues, friends. They are more successful in overcoming psychological barriers in communication caused by socio-cultural differences, or negative feelings that arise during communication, such as mistrust, envy, hostility.
Moral and communicative character traits are professionally significant qualities of a teacher. A teacher’s display of injustice, hostility, or rudeness towards students indicates his professional incompetence, his inability for effective pedagogical communication, and his conflict-proneness. The development of professionally significant character traits is as important for a teacher as his mastery of subject knowledge and pedagogical skills.
In the system of a person’s relationship to work, hard work, conscientiousness, responsibility, and discipline are formed. Teaching can also be considered as a special type of work - educational. Both work and learning are associated with overcoming obstacles and require the development of strong-willed character traits - determination, perseverance, independence, patience. These character traits are important for achieving difficult goals in any activity. Opposite qualities - laziness, irresponsibility, lack of discipline, lack of concentration - disorganize activities and do not allow a person to set and solve educational or professional tasks that are important to him.
Attitude towards oneself is formed in the structure of a person’s self-awareness as its cognitive, emotional and evaluative components. From early childhood and throughout life, people around them treat the child in a certain way, evaluate his actions and actions. These relationships are internalized and become the internal mental relationships of a person to himself, his character traits. Depending on the prevailing types of relationships, modesty or narcissism, self-criticism or self-confidence, pride or humiliation, self-esteem or a sense of inferiority are formed in the character.
His relationship to things is also important for a person. From birth, a child uses a wide variety of things created by the work of other people. The older he gets, the more needs he has for various things. Things include toys, books, clothes, dishes, and much more. One child breaks a toy and is scolded for it, another is immediately bought a new one. Someone doesn’t let a friend play with his car, and someone gives away all the toys that belong to him. Gradually, the child develops character traits such as neatness, thrift, generosity, or negative traits - sloppiness, wastefulness, greed. In the future, these features will largely determine a person’s lifestyle, the arrangement of his home, and the content of his workplace. Sloppiness and untidiness cause people around them to feel disrespectful towards a person and prevent him from establishing positive industrial and interpersonal relationships.
In addition to the listed types of relationships that are most significant for a person, there are many others, for example, relationships to nature, to objects of art, to creativity, which, repeated in various life situations and fixed in the way of life, turn into character traits.
Each person’s character has both positive and negative traits, although their ratio may be different. Sometimes it is quite difficult to determine a particular trait as positive or negative due to the existence within each property of many facets and shades. Thus, frugality can reach the point of stinginess, accuracy - to pedantry. Pride is sometimes perceived by others as arrogance and arrogance, self-confidence - as self-confidence. It is possible to say unequivocally about a rare person that he is kind, evil, energetic or passive.
L.H. warned against this. Tolstoy: “We can say about a person that he is more often kind than evil, more often smart than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic, and vice versa; but it will not be true if we say about one person that he is kind or smart, and about another that he is evil or stupid. And we always divide people. And this is not true. People are like rivers: the water is the same in everyone and the same everywhere, but each river is sometimes narrow, sometimes fast, sometimes wide, sometimes quiet, sometimes clean, sometimes cold, sometimes muddy, sometimes warm. So are people. Each person carries within himself the rudiments of all human properties and sometimes displays some, sometimes others, and is often completely unlike himself, remaining at the same time the same as himself.”
What traits a person displays more often, and how other people perceive them, depends on his environment, attitude towards him, and mutual understanding. In the processes of communication and education, one should rely on positive character traits. If a child is constantly told that he is bad, he will almost certainly become that way. It is important to notice all the positive manifestations of his character and support their development.
Different character traits can be expressed in a person to varying degrees. Certain traits can be so sharply and excessively expressed that they begin to hinder his adaptation to society and personal development. Character traits that are sharply expressed and represent extreme variants of the norm are called accentuations, and traits that deviate from the norm are called psychopathy. P.B. Gannushkin identified three criteria by which they can be differentiated: totality, stability, social maladjustment.
The totality lies in the fact that psychopathy manifests itself always and everywhere, regardless of specific conditions, regardless of the harm that it can bring to the person himself or to other people. Stability lies in the fact that they manifest themselves over many years, sometimes throughout life. A person constantly has difficulties interacting with other people - both in the family, in school and at work, which indicates social maladjustment. Totality, stability and social maladjustment with character accentuations also occur, but to a lesser extent and are easier to correct.
K. Leonhard and A.E. Lichko described various types of accentuations and psychopathy, for example, hyperthymic type (excessive excitability), asthenic (increased sensitivity and rapid exhaustion), hysteroid (demonstrative behavior), epileptoid (severe irritability, formation of overvalued ideas), schizoid (violation of emotional contacts with people) and etc. People whose character structure contains accentuations require a special differentiated attitude towards themselves, taking into account their type and degree of expression. As a rule, they need consultations and help from a psychologist. Psychopathy is considered to be pathological character traits, and their treatment requires the professional competence of a neuropsychiatrist. Character accentuations often appear in teenage schoolchildren. If one of them shows rapid fatigue, frequent emotions for no apparent reason, significant difficulties in communicating with peers, failure to maintain distance in communication with adults, isolation and isolation from others, or other behavioral deviations, they should be given close attention with by teachers and school psychologists.
Every teacher should be able to observe the activities and behavior of students, determine their character traits and draw up a psychological and pedagogical characteristics of the child’s personality. It is advisable to do this from the moment the child enters school throughout all years of education, which makes it possible to trace the individual path of his development. Theoretical and methodological work, conducting psychodiagnostic character studies, developing and applying corrective measures if necessary are the tasks of a school psychologist.
Type and classification of character
The set of distinctive, essential, typical traits forms a character type that reflects the typical conditions of human life. Under the influence of life circumstances, upbringing, the demands of society and the requirements of the person himself, the type of character changes and develops.
A classification is needed that describes individual types of character, their patterns and connections with each other. And such classifications exist in psychology. One of the classifications divides characters according to the predominance of will, reason and emotions; it is obvious that such a classification is very limited, so intermediate types of character were introduced, but this was not enough.
There is also a classification according to the degree of independence of the individual: conformal and independent type. The conformist type of people easily agree with other people's opinions, obey and fulfill all requirements, but they cannot adapt under stress. An independent type of person always has his own opinion on everything, is independent in his decisions, and does not get lost in stressful situations.
The most widespread classification of personality orientation towards the internal or external world, it is also sometimes called Jung’s classification.
Jung's classification
Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung
(1875-1961) developed
a typology of characters
(“Psychological types”, 1921), which is based on the identification of the dominant mental function (thinking, feeling, intuition, sensation) and classified all people according to their predominant focus on the external or internal world (extroverted and introverted types).
This classification seems simple, but is based on the complex, opposing relationships between the conscious and unconscious in the human psyche.
Extrovert
- an open, direct person, understandable to everyone, active and extremely sociable, having many friends and acquaintances, he does not like loneliness, loves to travel, has little interest in his health, tries to take everything he can from life. He, as a rule, becomes the life of the party, loves to tell jokes, is the initiator of various parties and meetings, and in everyday life is guided by circumstances, and not by subjective opinion.
Introvert
- an internally focused, closed thinker, turned inward, into himself, a person fenced off from the outside world, carefully analyzing events, while suspecting a second meaning, subtext in the actions of others. He has few friends, because... It is difficult to establish new contacts, loneliness is closer to him, he is not used to changing his habits. An introvert is a suspicious person with a high degree of anxiety (Spielberger-Hanin Scale); he values his health, listening to the feelings within himself.
However, we can also distinguish people who are amboverts; they have equally extroverted and introverted character traits.
You can check the typology of individual characteristics using the Eysenck personality questionnaire from the “Personality” package.
Basic character types
There are many different theories according to which human character can be divided into several types. Here are some of the most common ones in the scientific community.
Character types according to Kretschmer
According to the famous German psychologist Kretschmer, all individuals living on Earth belong to one of three main groups/character types (the main role in determining a person into one type or another is his physiological data):
- Asthenics. People are of thin build with thin, long arms and legs, and a weak chest. Most often, people from this group have poorly developed muscles. Psychologically, this type corresponds to the schizothymic type of character: people with this type of character are characterized by isolation, stubbornness, and poor adaptation to changes in the environment.
- Athletics. People are quite strong, with well-developed muscles. This type corresponds to the ixothymic type of character: people with this type of character are characterized by calmness, practicality, restraint, authority, etc.
- Picnics. People are quite dense or even overweight, have a large head, a short neck, and a face with small features. The appropriate type of character is sociability, emotionality, quick adaptation to new conditions.
Classification of characters according to Carl Gustav Jung
The famous psychiatrist and psychologist from Switzerland created a simple at first glance, but quite deep classification of characters, since we are talking about the interaction of the conscious with the unconscious. So, K.G. Jung identified three main character types: extrovert, introvert, ambovert.
Thus, the reactions and activities of an extrovert depend to a greater extent on external impressions of events, people, etc. For an introvert, the opposite is true: he is more guided by his own experiences, sensations, etc.
Extroverts are sociable people, pleasant conversationalists, open, cheerful, and have a large number of friends. They always try to take everything from life, they care little about their own health
Introverts are a special type of person who is quite difficult to understand. He is always closed, uncommunicative, strives to analyze everything, is rather suspicious, and has few friends.
Well, and finally, an ambivert is a person who, so to speak, has learned the best from the first two types. This person is an excellent analyst with a subtle soul, prone to periodic “attacks” of loneliness and at the same time capable of “stirring up” a large company with his wit, humor and charisma.
Types of characters according to Hippocrates
Hippocrates is considered the founder of one of the key theories of human essence. True, in distant ancient times, the typology of temperament he created was understood, rather, to be the physical component of a person. And only a couple of centuries ago, the concept of four temperaments that he developed began to be studied from a psychological point of view.
So, there are 4 main types of character/temperament:
- Choleric; a rather passionate, quick-tempered, sometimes aggressive person who finds it quite difficult to control his emotional state and reactions to irritating external factors. A choleric person is characterized by frequent outbursts of anger, mood swings and other sudden changes in behavior. Quickly consumes energy, depleting your reserve of strength.
- Sanguine. A very active and cheerful person, who, like a choleric person, is characterized by sudden mood swings, but at the same time a quick and stable reaction to external factors. A sanguine person is a productive and purposeful person.
- Phlegmatic person. The person is very reserved and shows virtually no emotions. He is unhurried, has a balanced psyche, is persistent and persistent in his work.
- Melancholic. A very impressionable and easily vulnerable person, acutely experiencing his own failures. It reacts quite sharply to external stimuli.
This is, perhaps, all you need to know about a person’s character, his main types, characteristics and manifestations in the world around him. From all of the above, we can draw a simple conclusion: each person is very individual, his personality is complex, multifaceted and unusual.
Modern character classifications
What can be said about all character classifications? All of them are one-sided, and make it possible to somehow approximately and conditionally differentiate people by types, temperaments or other characteristics.
When trying to divide character types into a more detailed division, the classifiers themselves get confused in such a complex classification. After all, not only is there a very large number of character traits, but each of the traits has a different quantitative degree of expression. The quantitative development of any character trait can reach its limit, the limit that is still normal, acceptable behavior in society.
Currently, there is no generally accepted classification of character types; obviously, this issue should be approached to some extent conditionally, distinguishing people by types, temperaments and other characteristics.
What is human character?
Character is a set of stable mental properties that determine the characteristics of behavior and building relationships. It is interconnected with other aspects of personality, for example, with temperament, which determines its external expression. What type of character you have is influenced by social conditions. To determine its type, you need to rely on a set of traits, which are divided into:
- Certain . One or more traits are dominant.
- Uncertain . There are no dominant characteristics.
- Controversial . When the awareness of the goals and actions of the individual are dissonant.
- Solid . No contradictions.
Stability and Neuroticism
Character, from a natural science point of view, is a combination of traits such as the nervous system and life impressions, deposited in the form of certain temporary nerve connections in the cerebral cortex.
Balance or imbalance, strength or weakness, mobility or inertia of nervous processes determines the tone of a person’s reaction, his behavior and activity.
Emotional instability (or neuroticism) can progress from emotional stability to a state close to hysteria or neurosis. A neurotic personality exhibits inappropriately strong reactions in relation to the stimuli that cause them.
Eysenck Questionnaire (adult and adolescent)
Eysenck EPI questionnaires (adult and adolescent) from the “Personality” package are designed to identify individual psychological characteristics and consist of 57 (for adolescents 60) questions, of which 24 questions are intended for diagnosing extraversion-introversion, 24 questions for diagnosing neuroticism, 9 (for teenagers 12) questions make up a lie scale.
With high scores for extraversion and neuroticism, a person’s condition approaches a psychiatric diagnosis of hysteria, and with high scores for introversion and neuroticism, a state of anxiety or reactive depression.
Such a study may be informative for the purposes of psychological diagnostics: for the needs of psychocorrection. Depending on the combination of indicators of extraversion and neuroticism, you can use a correction program that allows you to eliminate or reduce the negative characterological manifestations of individual psychological characteristics.
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