Abstract
Personality is an attribute that everyone has that reveals their true identity. It helps to define a person. The behaviors that one portrays can lead to some characterization about the conduct. There have been various theorists who have come up with studies on personality and its development. Freud developed the psychosocial stages of human development. It begins at childhood to adulthood. The primary concern in his study was that people grow through various stages.
He emphasized on the elaboration of the boy child at the expense of the girls. And hence various studies followed up in the same direction. There have been numerous studies that have brought up a debate about gender issues. The Five-Factor Theory is one of the researchers that have helped to develop the concept that males and females have some similar personalities. It leads the argument that when given a chance, women tend to utilize those opportunities to become better in their lives.
The only difference is that people have built up ancient walls on gender issues. The societies that existed many years ago gave men more power in almost every aspect of life and diminished the women’s impact in the social building. However, today, the feminists in society like Ayaan Hirsi are slowly opening doors for many women to come up and build their lifelong careers.
Personality is a result of processes and lessons through an individual’s life. The development of feelings, attitudes, and character takes time. In the end, it is the inborn and the adapted behavior that helps to define a person. Personality traits contribute to explain the reason people copy other’s behavior and gender differences.
The Five-Factor Theory
From the five-factor model personality traits, Extroversion character is one that has pronounced engagement with the external world. Individuals with this trait enjoy being with others and experience positive emotions (Funder, 2010). They are full of energy and very enthusiastic. People who like viewing Television personalities and copying them are in this category. They do not want anything fashionable to pass them. They seem to be the ones in the know about modernity among their colleagues or peers. They are unlike the next category of the introverts. From this theory, it is the extrovert people who have the zeal for presentable personalities. They will move from one channel to another, one program to another, looking for something that excites them from the role models.
Agreeableness is the third factor in this personality trait. It allows a person to flow with the events. Individuals with this aspect tend to cooperate and promote social harmony in society. They want to go along with others who seem to be a good example for them. They become friends and tend to compromise their interests with others’ concerns. Due to this trait, one gains fame and tend to have many people liking them for who they have become. Their weakness is that they do not say no to things and individuals.
Conscientiousness mainly looks at the way people control their impulses. The way they regulate and direct them can lead to specific actions. They have fun in their actions. When they watch reality shows, they don’t think twice about what to do. They take up the new events and act on them very fast. Companies that have new products or services to hit the market rely on people with such impulses for their market to take off. Such people may not have neuroticism. However, they can develop mental distress and inability to cope with the ordinary demands due to their curiosity and agreeableness.
Another trait that affects people who like watching reality shows is the openness to experience. They are intellectually curious, sensitive to beauty, and appreciative of art. They are mostly individualistic and are commonly transformative. Openness to experience leads to more adaptive behavior to new experiences. People with such traits are always searching for something new to try out.
Gender Differences in Personality
The western nations have minimal gender differences because of the environment they have created through laws to dismiss the old traditions. The different methods for identifying such characters also give varying information. However, the Big-Five Factor method helps to determine such differences.
The implicit self-concept reveals that the differences originate from accumulated experience over time. The explicit self-concept results from the influence through experience and other factors. For instance, there are some conscious self-perception, social desirability concerns, and societal norms. Women portray higher levels of the five factors than men.
The evolutionary account gives the reason for the different sex differences. It results from historical traditions that men and women faced (Funder, 2010). Women developed higher levels of agreeableness and nurturing because they had to raise children and bond them with society. Men spent a little time with kids because they were warriors and hunters. They were always out of their homesteads to protect the community.
Some differences arise from shared social expectations. The social role model approach reveals that adaptive behavior results from how men and women think. They behave and feel differently about themselves and the other genders because of how they relate. They internalize gender roles very early in life through socializing. It shapes their personality to a great extent. The gender roles develop through modeling by others and the available differential feedback (Funder, 2010).
Some of the social differences are just measurement artifacts. The social desirability of people results from different values that may not be the same everywhere. Dominance is differently desirable. There are more biases in measurements than the actual differences in personality. The social context moderates the gender differences.
Feminism and Masculinism
The sex topic has been available for such a long time. Although in the traditional setting, women had accepted their position as being subordinated to men, recent events have shown that things are changing. Males portrayed their dominance through body strength, ruling, and even making laws that were discriminative against one gender.
Freud’s theory that involved the psychosexual stages revealed the development stages of a child. The theory had supported the development of the male child positively and did not promote female development in the same manner (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). The boy child became the center of the study.
Tradition had taught people that a male child was more valuable than a female child. Every woman in the traditional setting was happier to bring to the world a boy child than a girl. It was even better than the first child in the family is a male child. As the children grew up, male children had more rights than their counterpart girls. Boys inherited their parents’ wealth, and the girls had to get married and help their husbands start new families. Women could not become leaders, eat some foods, and go to some places (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Men had almost every right in the family and society.
People had carried this lifestyle wherever they went. Religion also helped to portray that women had lesser rights than men. Priests and servants in the religious centers were mainly men. It is what defined and has continued to affect the masculine and feminine world. The predisposed values are usually hard to dispose of quickly.
Today as society changes, the masculine and feminine boundaries are slowly receding. Women have been empowered to take up roles that were previously dominated by men. The only difference there is now is the God-given physical features between men and females. Children these days grow up knowing that they have equal rights. However, some societies and religious institutions are yet to internalize the changing world. The previous belief that boys were adventurous and girls were dependants is just a myth (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Being aggressive or nurturing is something that one learns from the environment as he or she adapts to it.
Therefore, personality is not just binding to one’s gender. Every gender has the same right to pursue whatever they want in life without gender boundaries. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is just one among many people who are helping to break the gender hard-line mentalities to promote women’s rights.
Personality is what one comes with to the world and learns from the world. Therefore, there should be no boundaries based on gender. The contemporary society will judge harshly anyone who puts limitations on people based on their sex.
References
Friedman, H. & Schustack, M. (2012). Personality. Boston, MA: Pearson Allyn & Bacon.
Funder, D. (2010). The personality puzzle. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.