Personality: Where does it come from? How does it work?

Personality Traits & Personality Types: What is Personality?

"There are many ways to measure personality, but psychologists have
mostly given up on trying to divide humanity neatly into types. Instead, 
they focus on personality traits." (click to read an excellent article by 


This is the question at the core of fiction:  where does a character's personality come from and how does it work?  Sure, there are works where the characters are ill defined and show no growth over the course of the story.  Lots of violence, plenty of sex, and you can't remember a thing about it ten minutes later.  Annoyingly, films and book of this ilk sell revoltingly well.  Happily there are enough works around where a character gains definition over the course of their story and show growth.  (I can't watch or read works where the characters are as shallow as the writer.)

One of my personal favorite acts of fiction are the Lord Peter mysteries by Dorothy Sayers.  It is unusual but not unknown for characters in crime fiction to develop over the course of a story.  Lord Peter, however, starts as a caricature in the first book, the 1923 Whose Body developing into a complex, vulnerable man in 1937's Busman's Honeymoon.  Over these 13 works we see a somewhat vacuous upper class, Berty Wooster-esque quasi-twit become a deeply vulnerable character with endearing flaws and foibles and a very real feeling complexity.

The article below offers a series of ideas and concepts that a writer can use to develop a character beyond the standard "where did they go to school and why do they hate their mother?"  (By the way, Lord Peter's mum is absolutely delightful - as are the ghosts that inhabit his family home.)

Ms. Dweck, the author of this article, points out that we all have three most basic psychological needs, needs we strive to fulfill from birth.  Answer the question of how your character(s) meets or fails to meet these needs, and you have a real person that your readers or viewers will relate to.

Here's the article with a link to the full piece as published.
*  *  *  *  *


Personality: Where does it come from
and how does it work?

How do our personalities develop? What do we come with and what is built from our experiences? Once developed, how does personality work? These questions have been steeped in controversy for almost as long as psychology has existed.

In an article in Psychological Review, Carol Dweck tackles these issues. She proposes that our personalities develop around basic needs, and she begins by documenting the three basic psychological needs we all come with: the need to predict our world, the need to build competence to act on our world, and, because we are social beings, the need for acceptance from others. (She also shows how new needs emerge later from combinations of these basic needs.)

Infants arrive highly prepared to meet these needs -- they are brilliant, voracious learners on the lookout for need-relevant information. Then, as infants try to meet their needs, something important happens. They start building beliefs about their world and their role in it: Is the world good or bad, safe or dangerous? Can I act on my world to meet my needs? These beliefs, plus the emotions and action tendencies that are stored with them, are termed "BEATs." They represent the accumulated experiences people have had trying to meet their needs, and they play a key role in personality -- both the invisible and the visible parts of personality.

The invisible part of personality consists of the needs and BEATs. They form the basis of personality and they drive and guide the visible part. The visible part happens when the needs and BEATs create the actual goals people pursue in the world -- what people actually do.

Take the following example. Some people are conscientious; they actively pursue achievement and exercise self-discipline and perseverance. That's the visible part. Everyone has a need for competence, but how people pursue competence-whether they do so in a conscientious manner -- will depend on their BEATs (the invisible part, such as their beliefs). Research shows that some people hold the belief that their abilities are simply fixed traits. When they are confronted with a challenging task, they may choose an easier one instead because the challenging task carries a risk. It could expose their fixed ability as deficient; it could undermine their sense of competence. However, other people believe that their abilities can be developed. They are more likely to welcome the challenging task and stick to it in the face of setbacks in order to develop their competence. They display the hallmarks of conscientiousness. In other words, underlying BEATs can have a pronounced effect on the visible "personality" people display as they pursue their goals.

Temperament can also be important. For example, if children are shy or fearful it can make certain needs (such as the need for predictability) stronger than others and it can affect the way they react to things that happen to them -- both of which can mold the BEATs they develop and carry forward.

What are the implications of this theory? First, it means that our personality develops around our motivations (our needs and goals) and is not simply about traits we're born with. The theory also reveals the invisible parts of personality and shows how we can identify and address important BEATs (particularly beliefs) to promote personality change.

In short, like large, classic theories of the last century, the current theory brings together our motivations, our personality, and our development within one framework and helps shed light on processes that contribute to well-being and human growth.

 Story Source:  Materials provided by American Psychological Association.  Carol S. Dweck. From needs to goals and representations: Foundations for a unified theory of motivation, personality, and development.. Psychological Review, 2017

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