Explain the concept of personality. Discuss Behavioral Approach of Personality.

Personality refers to characteristic ways of responding to individuals and situations.

Personality is characterised by the following features:

1. It has both physical and psychological components.
2. Its expression in terms of behaviour is fairly unique in a given individual.
3. Its main features do not easily change with time.
4. It is dynamic in the sense that some of its features may change due to internal or external situational demands. Thus, personality is adaptive to situations.

Behavioural Approach:

This approach does not give importance to the internal dynamics of behaviour. The behaviourists believe in data, which they feel are definable, observable, and measurable. Thus, they focus on learning
of stimulus-response connections and their reinforcement.

The structural unit of personality is the response.Each response is a behaviour, which is emitted to satisfy a specific need.

Cultural Approach:

It proposes that a group’s ‘economic maintenance system’ plays a vital role in the origin of cultural and behavioural variations.

The climatic conditions, the nature of terrain of the habitat and the availability of food (flora and fauna) in it determine not only people’s economic activities, but also their settlement patterns, social structures, division of labour, and other features such as child- rearing practices.