Grasping Complex Human Personality

Often times, it is heard that professional calibre, intellectual capacity, and power are not the determining factors for a person to be good or bad. Rather, it is a matter of intrinsic personality:  how one grows with what kind of life value.  There are various factors set in a person in terms of physical, emotional, social and psychological perspectives, we are baffled by shocking behaviour of the people whom we have long admired. This can be spectacular in case of Nepali politics when we aspire for social change, transformation, and well-being on part of political leaders, but we end up having worsening situations each day. Nepali political leaders have changed political landscapes of the countries and we are now enjoying political rights, inclusive constitution, and guarantee to the press freedom and legal sovereignty. 

Despite these bright sides, the political leaders have failed to ensure service delivery and development. Why it is so? It is a matter of lack of commitment or will power, solely ingrained in human personality, to say candidly about political personality. In recent times, there have been several manifestations of human personalities, ranging from one which is manifested and another is an innate.  This means personality is not that easy to define as human personality comprises several factors:  the outer face value represented in the physical appearance and inner personality constructed in emotional and psychological components. 

Psychologists tend to believe that face value is just the tip of iceberg. This includes physical build and appearance, roughly a persona's appealing look, moderate, mediocre, and non-appealing aspects of the personality. The biological composition of personality has a unique nature; it comprises a host of things like gene, hormones, neurotic compositions, and secretions of chemicals differently in different persons.  According to the recent psychological studies, babies from the birth to the formative development have typical traits of personality. According to Barbara and Kalb, because of certain chemical secretions, boys are expressive and girls are reflective. That is the reason why boys and girls behave differently: boys shake hands, move their eye brows while talk, speak loudly, while girls smile, speak in clarity and do not show domineering attitude. 

Inherent factors 

Furthermore personality is part of social and cultural orientation of life a person comes through.  We commonly understand that human being is obsessed with appealing personality since the dawn of human civilization. Even children like to read stories that contain beautiful fairies and graceful princes punishing awkward and hideous monsters and witches. This has some relevance because studies indicate that appealing personalities of a person can outdo a person of normal personality. Diane Ackerman, in her phenomenal essay, "Face of Beauty" asserts that people with good looking and appealing personalities in even army and force can do better as compared with people who have less appealing personalities. In addition, she makes a point that good looking students achieve higher grades as compared to those who are simple looking. 

A substantial reflection over personality elucidates that it is the way how a person takes himself.  Most often it sounds to be indulged and full of egoistical pride as Sophenhaur put, "Nought can surpass me, replace or supply obsessive concept --- for God is God and I am I". Having that said, personality is not shown, but how it is formulated being self-consciousness.  Psychologists tend to believe that human being is always self-conscious of his personality which fact is not prevalent in other creatures. Since human beings can easily make use of intellectual faculties like rationality, conscience, responsibility, and freewill, personality enhancement is persistent in the process of life.  

However, things have slightly changed over the years, as people try to see the intrinsic personality influencing rather than one which is just an appearance or bearing.  This concept has brought a revolutionary outlook with ideal concept a persona is complete personality no matter whether he is good looking or not, black or white, tall or short. Moving ahead, people now see a personality is rather composite of several intrinsic values, namely self- love, self-esteem, self- confidence, and self-appreciation. All these have their ways. When we talk of any personality of self-love, it is to accept her or his personality in whatever in form. Self-esteem is the way to feel good of her and his personality. Self-confidence of a personality indicates one's capacity in dealing with him with others in social, professional, ethical and moral context. 

Confusing personality 

 Different workshops are conducted in developing human personality and motivational speakers inspire people to upgrade personalities for professional growth and social mobility. Some people have a sense of confusing personality and identity. Personality is about a person how he feels about, whereas identity is what he is given by the society, being the citizen of the person. Generally to note, human personality is a combination of physical, emotional, social, psychological and somatic components. These days even medical scientists and genetic experts try to study about human personalities and then see the process of diagnosis because modern research indicates that certain types of personality are prone to certain types of diseases. 

Some studies indicate that personality framing of a person takes place with certain propositions.  One category of this kind is the organic concept of personality which is formulation of nature and nurture concept. Innovative it may sound, these days personality framing is something of matters of soft skills. No matter how a personal is good looking, he should have a considerable possession of soft skills. These soft skills may need communication skills, interpersonal skills, adaptation skills. Most of these things are conditioned through emotional intelligence, a new dimension taking vogue in the present time. This said, personality these days is a combination of holistic entity of a person not just shaped by intellectual faculty.  Certain personalities are modelled in course of time that are often appropriate for certain social and cultural standard which, though, keep on changing over the times.    

 (The author is assistant professor at the RR Campus)