Chapter-9: Personality and Self-Concept

Chapter-9: Personality and Self-Concept

Personalities Theories and Applications:

Usually personality is defined, as what a person is that is his personality. However, personality is not a single concept rather multidimensional in nature. The study of personality and its relationships to human behavior can be traced back to earliest writings of the Europeans, Greeks, Chinese, and Egyptians. Also, people have always made judgments about the personalities of other in terms of the degree to which they an aggressive, adventuresome, sociable, charismatic, and so on.

Despite the long history of interest, and even though most of us believe that we have an intuitive grasps of what constitutes personality, behavioral scientists have been unable to agree on a precise definition of the concept. However, it has been noted that there are three major aspects of similarity among the various definitions: (i) They focus on unique characteristics that account for differences between individuals rather than on how people are alike; (ii) They stress the consistency of an individual’s dispositions rather than changes in his or her actual behavior across different situations; (iii) Each definition includes a behavioral tendency to reflect how an individual’s personality will tend to influence his or her actions and reactions to environmental situations.  

Most theories of personality also stress how it is integrative in nature, encompassing various processes that interact with each other. That is among other factor, personality is usually considered to include the interactions of an individual’s modes, values, attitudes, motives, and habitual methods of responding to situations.

Measuring personality: It should be clear that personality is not a concept that has a single characteristic. Therefore, rather than focusing solely on only one aspect of the complex whole, methods designed to assess the aggregate personality have to account in some way for this variety.

(i) Rating method: this method involves one or more evaluators assessing predetermined personality characteristics of a subject on a number of standardized rating scales. In some cases, the basis of the evaluation is a somewhat informal interview with the subject. In other cases, observation of the subject’s behavior is used in place of interview. This observation may be accomplished in a setting designed for the purpose, or it may take place in a portion of the subject’s everyday environment such as a home or shopping setting. Of course, the type of scale employed for evaluation (five point versus six point, definitions of each category provided versus no definition provided, and so on), the personality characteristics chosen for study, and skills of evaluators can all have influence on final results. 

(ii) Situational tests: a situation is devised that closely resembles a typically real-life situation. Usually several people are allowed to interact with each other in a group setting. A topic or scenario is provided to them as a focus of discussing, and the behavior of the subject is measured or observed and measured. This method may take the form of tabulating the frequency of occurrence for specific activities or rating the intensity of certain behaviors on standard scales. A special form of situational technique is the stress test, which places an individual in a pressure-type situation; his methods of acting in the situation are assessed to reveal aspects of his personality.

(iii) Projective techniques: the objective behind development of most projective methods in to uncover the basic organization of an individual’s personality, as well as his underlying conflicts and motives. Typically, the individual is presented with an ambiguous visual image and is asked to explain it or relate any meaning it has to him. The assumption is that because the stimulus itself is ambiguous, the individual is actually projecting his own interpretations onto it, and in the process he reveals aspects of his own personality.

(iv) Inventory schemes: A potential limitation of rating methods, situational tests, and projective techniques is subjective scoring. That is, the measurement of an individual’s personality is largely dependent upon the evaluator’s subjective interpretation of the information obtained. The personality inventory is designed to minimize these potential problems by exposing subjects to a large number of standardized questions with specified answer options for which they can select. Usually the inventory is in written form and objective in nature.

Some Major Personality Theories:

(i) Psychoanalytic Personality Theory: Freud, the father of psychoanalytic theory proposed that every individual’s personality is the product of a struggle among three interacting forces the id, the ego, and the superego.

Id is the source of strong inborn drives and urges such as aggression and sex. The id operates on what is called the pleasure principle that is it acts to avoid tension and seeks immediate pleasure. For example, when an individual is hot and thirsty his id would urge him to grab something cold to drink. There would no concern about how the drink was acquired or whether it belongs to someone else.

The ego comes into being because of the limitations of the id in dealing with the real world though learning and experience, the ego develops the individual’s capabilities of realistic thinking and ability to deal appropriately with his environment. It operates on what is called the reality principal.

The Superego constitutes the moral part of the individual’s psychic structure through internalizing the value of society. It represents the ideal by defining what is right and good, and it influences the individual to strive for perfection. Therefore, if acts to control basic striving of the id which could disrupt the social system and influences the ego to strive for socially approved goals rather than purely realistic ones.

Defense mechanisms can be thought of as unconsciously determined techniques for avoiding or escaping from high levels of tension brought about by unresolved conflict between components of the personality. Repression mechanism allows the individual to minimize aspects of the conflicting situations that the conflict is no longer apparent. Projection is the feeling generated by the individual’s id or superego are ascribed by her to another person or group. In identification, the individual unconsciously imitates the behavior of another person whom he believes has successfully handled the conflict with which he is currently dealing.

(ii) Social Theories: Social theorists viewed individuals as striving to overcome feelings of inferiority and searching for ways to obtain love, security and brotherhood. They stressed that childhood experiences in relation to others produce feeling of inferiority, insecurity and lack of love. These feelings motivate individuals to perfect themselves and also to develop methods to cope with anxieties produced by such feelings of inferiority. 

These needs are classified into thee major orientations (a) Complaint orientation: Those who move toward people and stress the need for love, approval, modesty, and affection. (b) Aggressive orientation: Those who move against people and stress the need for power, strength, and ability to manipulate others. (c) Detached orientation: Those who move away from people and stress the need for independence, freedom, and self-reliance in their dealings with others.

(iii) Trait and Factor Theories: The concept of trait is based upon three assumptions or propositions (a) individuals possess relatively stable behavioral tendencies, (b) people differ in the degree to which they possess these tendencies, and (c) when identified and measured, these relative differences between individuals are useful characterizing their personalities.

Factor theories are based on the qualitative technique of factor analysis, which explores the interrelationship between various personality measures across a large number of individuals. Basically, the underlying logic is that if responses to certain personality-inventory items are correlated across many different testing situations, then these responses are probably each relates to some underlying personality characteristics trait.

Various traits or factors are identified when sub groups of measures form. That is factors emerge when certain measures show higher levels of correlation within themselves but quite low degree of correlation across other subgroups of items. The actual number of factors that will be identified depends on how well the various in different subgroups correlate among themselves. Once the factors are identified, each one can be quantified with a factor score a weighted combination of the measures that measures that have correlated together to identify the factor.

Self-Concept:

How individuals perceive themselves and what behavior they exhibit as consumers. An advantage of studying self-concept is that consumers provide descriptions of themselves, as opposed to having descriptions made by outside observers.

Self-concept and Consumer behavior: Consumers’ self-perceptions can have a strong influence on their behavior in the marketplace. The way an individual perceive various products could be affected by the image he has of himself. In fact, preferences might actually develop for certain brands because the consumer perceives them as reflecting his own self-image.     

Alternative views of the self: (i) Actual self: the perception of oneself as one believes he actually is. (ii) Ideal self: the perception of oneself as one would ideally like to be. (iii) Social self: the perception of oneself as one believes others actually perceive him to be. (iv) Ideal social self: the perception of one’s image as he would like other to have of him. (v) Expressive self: the ideal self or the social self, depending on situational and social factors.

Marketing Applications: Different interpretations of the concept can create uncertainty regarding its use in understanding consumers. Self-image is a powerful concept, which has many implications and applications in the field of consumer behavior. The concept has been used in market segmentation, advertising, packaging, personal selling, product development, and retailing. Some people have suggested that companies can segment markets into more homogenous sets of self-image profiles. The self-image concept is quite heavily used in a variety of aspects of promotion.

This is clearly demonstrated in the area of clothing. Analysis of consumer self-images and their images of brands can also aid marketers in developing products. New brands can be created based on consumer self-image profiles for which there are no matching brand images existing. Product categories having particular promise in this area include those that generate high ego involvement and have high social visibility among upper social classes. This can be an important predictor of consumers’ brand preferences. However, brand preferences are not necessarily translated directly into purchase. Prices and other individual factors can modify these brand preferences before they are acted upon.

• Consumer Behavior @ Md. Akteruzzaman, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Chittagong University