Summary
Personality is an integral part of each person, distinguishing them from others. In a broad, traditional sense, personality is a person as a subject of social relations and conscious activity. One’s personality determines their essence, behavior, and mental inclinations. Without a personality, a person would be empty, like a puppet, existing and doing daily activities. This work contains the concept of personality and describes personality traits, including traits that affect academic performance and approaches to ensure academic success.
Personality
A personality is an individual person with intelligence that functions in society. Personality structure is a set of socially significant mental properties, relationships, and actions of a person that have developed in his development and determine his behavior. In psychology, it is customary to emphasize the social nature of the individual – its emergence and growth are possible only through a person’s life in society (Pappas, 2017). In the modern world, there is no single definition of the concept of personality, which is associated with the phenomenon’s complexity. At the same time, any existing definition has the right to exist and be taken into account when compiling the most complete and objective concept (Pappas, 2017). The most common purpose is the following: Personality is a human individual who has a specific set of psychological traits, properties, and qualities that base his actions and are essential for society.
Another critical factor in studying this topic is the structure of personality. It is a special set of personality components functioning among themselves, such as character, emotions, etc. These components are their properties and are defined as traits. These traits are delimited into levels due to their large number. These levels are described below:
- The first level of personality is the lowest and contains gender, age, and natural properties of the psyche.
- The second level of personality determines the individual manifestations of thinking, memory, various abilities, sensations, and perceptions, which depend on innate and developmental factors (Pappas, 2017).
- The third level of personality is an individual experience, which contains acquired knowledge, habits, skills, and various skills. This level is formed in the process of human activity and has a social character.
- The last level of personality is the highest level which contains its orientation, including interests, desires, drives, inclinations, beliefs, views, ideas, worldviews, self-esteem, and character traits (Pappas, 2017).
Personality Traits
Personal qualities are features acquired by a person who manifests them in a stable way of human behavior. Psychologists widely believe that unique qualities are formed at the early stages of a child’s development. They are only corrected under the influence of various factors in the future (El Othman et al., 2020). There is a conditional division of personality traits into positive and negative, based on generally accepted rules and norms of morality and ethics (Pappas, 2017). Undoubtedly, personal qualities impact all aspects of human activity, and professional activity or studies are no exception.
The personal qualities of a person can be both innate and acquired. Certain unique qualities are developed either under the influence of the environment and society (upbringing) or result from self-education. Many qualities, traits, features of behavior, abilities, and skills a person in himself can both develop and eradicate (Ali, 2018). A person always has the opportunity to learn to compensate for any qualities at the expense of the development of others (Diener & Lucas, 2022). Welcomed positive qualities are kindness, responsiveness, diligence, patience, responsibility, empathy, peacefulness, friendliness, morality, high culture of personality, fidelity, and others (Diener & Lucas, 2022). It is safe to say that the above qualities positively affect student performance. For example, developed diligence and purposefulness will help a person progress in performing various complex tasks. At the same time, activity, determination, courage, responsiveness, and friendliness will help the students when working in a team, as they will be able to interact well with group members, which will lead to success.
However, there is a long list of negative qualities of a person that can negatively affect life to one degree or another. Examples include deceit, hypocrisy, irresponsibility, rudeness, irascibility, laziness, pessimism, aggressiveness, excessive selfishness, passivity, indecision, cowardice, greed, envy, insensitivity, indifference, vindictiveness, slovenliness, and many others (Diener & Lucas, 2022). These negative qualities spoil the person’s life or other people around him. They give rise to appropriate behavior, which can be described as unfavorable and not accepted. Naturally, these qualities interfere with learning and distinguish a student who prevails with such attributes not in the best light (El Othman et al., 2020). For example, a person who possesses such qualities as lying, laziness, and negligence will not be respected in group assignments. Moreover, such a quality as irresponsibility prevents the student from completing tasks efficiently and on time, which will affect his education level.
Ways of Improving Study Process
There are several specific ways to ensure academic success and become more productive. First, setting the ultimate goal is the most crucial factor in implementing any task. It is very important to formulate a task plan in order to stimulate yourself and, thereby, increase self-esteem (El Othman et al., 2020). Dividing goals into long-term and short-term goals will help you navigate the process and understand the sequence of tasks. It is worth rewarding emotionally when completing any tasks to increase the desire to study and prepare for the main goal.
Secondly, just like the emotional one, the material reward is a driving mechanism and a stimulus to action. Receiving any compensation leads to satisfaction and receiving pleasant emotions from the expended forces (Ali, 2018). Thus, the idea of a positive factor resulting from hard work is fixed in mind. Emotions will motivate a person to self-improvement in a certain area, so there will be more strength and desire for further work.
Thirdly, one of the strongest motivators for learning is self-motivation. “Correct and sufficient self-motivation increases interest in the educational process, improves discipline, facilitates the understanding and assimilation of new material, and increases grades in all subjects” (El Othman et al., 2020). Intrinsic motivation is a critical element in cognitive, social, and physical development; those inherently motivated people are more likely to perform better and improve their skills (Ali, 2018). Intrinsically motivated behavior is generated by the sense of personal satisfaction it brings. A person derives joy from completing a task. An example of motivation is someone who rewards himself with some entertainment or rest after achieving a specific goal. Therefore, one should rejoice at failures and mistakes because, by making a mistake, a person improves himself, being on the way to finding that very cherished occupation that is interesting and brings pleasure.
References
Ali, I. (2018). Personality traits, individual innovativeness and satisfaction with life. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 4(1).
Diener, E., & Lucas, R. E. (2022). Personality Traits. Noba; Champaign, IL: DEF Publishers.
El Othman, R., El Othman, R., Hallit, R., Obeid, S., & Hallit, S. (2020). Personality traits, emotional intelligence and decision-making styles in Lebanese universities medical students. BMC Psychology, 8(1).
Pappas, S. (2017). Personality traits & personality types: What is personality? Live Science; Live Science.