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UNDERSTANDING PERSONALITY 

Harni Jusuf 

 

(Mahasiswa Pascasarjana Universitas Negeri Makassar) 

harni.jusuf@yahoo.co.id 
 

ABSTRACT 

Educational can not be separeted from learning. To support the successful of teaching learning 

process, it must be supported by some apsects, such as: learning syles, teaching strategies, affective 

factors, and socio-cultural factors. One of the affective factors that must be pay attention in language 

learning is personality. Personality is a term in psychology which is depict the character of a person in 

everyday life. As human beings experience growth and development, personality also experiences 

development and change. That is why personality can be measured. One way to measure personality 

is by using psychometric. 

Pendidikan tidak dapat dipisahkan dari yang namanya pembelajaran. Ada beberapa aspek yang 

mendukung kesuksesan proses pembelajaran yakni, gaya belajar, strategi pengajaran dan faktor sikap 

dan sosial budaya. Faktor sikap dalam hal ini lebih ditekankan pada personaliti atau kepribadian 

seorang pembelajar bahasa. Kepribadian merupakan istilah psikologi yang digambarkan sebagai 

karakter seseorang dalam kesehariannya. Sama halnya dengan manusia yang tumbuh dan 

berkembang, kepribadian seseorang juga mengalami perkembangan. Oleh sebab itu kepribadian 

dapan diukur. Salah satu cara untuk mengukur kepribadian adalah dengan menggunakan psikometrik.  

Keywords: personality, personality development, personality change, and personality measurement 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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A. Introduction 

Talking about personality will never be endless. Personality has always been an 

interesting topic to discuss. It is undeniable that one’s success in work, study, home, and so 

on is influenced by personality. Personality is a term in psychology which is depict the 

character of a person in everyday life.  

According to Long (2000:99), personality refers to: 

“those stable characteristics by which individuals differ from each other and which 

acts as the basis for what they do. It is a label normally applied to interpersonal 

behaviour and we would for instance typically say that a person who is socially 

outgoing has an extraverted personality”.  

According to Pervin and John (2001) in Dornyei, standard definition, “personality 

represents those characteristics of the person that account for consistent patterns of feeling, 

thinking, and behaving”.  

Based on these two definitions, it can be seen that both of the experts emphasize on 

behavior. It means that personality can be separated from behavior, or someone behavior 

shown his/her personality. McAdams (2005 : 15) stated that personality is: 

a unique variation on the general design of human nature. Human nature itself—what 

we human beings have in common with each other by virtue of the fact that we are all 

human beings—is a product of our species’ evolution. Whereas personality develops 

across the individual life course, from birth through old age, human nature has 

“developed” over millions of years of evolutionary history. And it continues to 

develop, of course, for evolution never goes away. 

From the definition of personality according to McAdams, it can be seen that 

someone personality develops throughout his/her life. In regards to personality, the Holly 

Qur’an also describe the importance of personality, good and bad personality, and the model 

of human personalities. Many researchs over the worlds also have been conducted to see the 

affect of personalities, and/ or the role of personalities in second language learning.  

Zhang, Su, and Liu (2013 : 58) conducted a research of Chinese EFL learners’ 

personality traits and motivation in relation to their contributions to achievement in English at 

the tertiary level. The research result revealed that: ......(3) the personality traits were 

significantly related to all or many of the motivation measures; and (4) most of the 

personality and motivation scales were significantly correlated with the students’ attainment 



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in English, among which, language requirement, intrinsic motivation, psychoticism and lie 

were good predictors of the latter. 

In this theoretical studies, this article purposes to describe 3 things related to 

understand personality, namely: (1) personality development; (2) personality change; and (3) 

measuring personality.     

B. Discussion 

Personality Development 

Personality development can be defined as the continuities, consistencies, and 

stabilities in people over time and the ways in which people change over time. Each of these 

two facets—stability and change—requires definitions and qualifications (Randy J. Larsen and 

David M. Buss, 2008 : 138). In fact, there are some theories of personality development, such as 

personality development in person centered theory, the developmental theories of Erikson 

and Levinson, and psychoanalitic developmental theories. In terms of personality 

development, this paper discuss the developmental theories of Erikson. 

Cited from Personality Development, Pearce and Simanowitz (2003 : 30-42) 

explained the developmental theories of Erikson. One of Erikson’s most significant 

contributions to developmental theory is the emphasis he placed on the relationship of society 

and the interpersonal to the unfolding of personality.   

Erikson writes Personality can be said to develop according to steps predetermined in 

the human organism’s readiness to be driven towards, to be aware of, and to interact with 

widening social radius, beginning with the dim image of a mother and ending with mankind, 

or at any rate that segment of mankind which counts in the particular individual’s life. 

Erikson integrates these developmental ideas into his theory encompassing an overview of 

the human life cycle, in the eight discrete stages. At each stage of life Erikson seeks to 

describe how baby, child or adult encounters his/her environment. Each stage involves a 

crisis because ‘incipient growth goes together with a shift in instinctual energy, yet causes 

specific vulnerability’.  

In the following are the eight stages of personality development according to Erikson. 

a. Stage 1. Infancy: trust versus mistrust 

Erikson considers that basic trust is the cornerstone of the healthy personality. The 

need for taking in food through the mouth is overwhelming in early babyhood, but the visual 

and tactile senses are also important. Erikson refers to this stage as the incorporative stage; 



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the baby is receptive to what is being offered. After 6 months the baby has to learn to seek the 

nipple without biting and to get used to a form of mutual regulation. At this stage there may 

be a sense of loss as complete unity with the mother is gradually destroyed. ‘When/if the 

baby has the impression of being deprived; divided or abandoned, a residue of mistrust can 

form.’  

However, Erikson highlights that the cultural aspects may be as significant as the 

instinctual ones. Some cultures swaddle the baby; others leave limbs free. What is good for 

children and what may happen to them depends on what they are supposed to become and 

where. Although the establishment of trust is the first task of maternal care, Erikson 

concludes that in the current times of change mothers have often lost their own sense of trust 

in themselves.  

b. Stage 2. Early childhood: autonomy versus shame and doubt (2 to 4 years) 

Freud called this stage the anal stage, but Erikson sees it as a time when there is 

emphasis on general muscular achievement and not just on sphincter control. At this stage the 

infant battles for autonomy and ‘the growing ability to hold on and let go, with discretion, to 

stand “on his own feet”. Shame and doubt, the negative consequences of seeking autonomy, 

are associated with ‘being completely exposed and conscious of being looked at’. Doubt is 

linked particularly with having ‘a back, an area behind which one cannot see but which may 

be the source of evil and decay – it is the source of fear of attack from behind. 

At this stage Erikson thinks the adult needs to be firm but tolerant, but that the dignity 

and autonomy of the child are often dependent on the parents’ dignity within the social 

hierarchy. He considers that much of the ‘shame and doubt, the indignity and uncertainty 

which is aroused in children are a consequence of the parents’ frustrations in marriage, work 

and citizenship.  

c. Stages 3 and 4. Play age: initiative versus guilt (4 to 5 years); School age: industry 

versus inferiority (5 to 12 years) 

By this stage the child has often identified herself as a little person, but must find out 

what kind of person she wants to be. Concurrent with the development of movement, 

language and imagination, the child develops a sense of unbroken initiative. The child often 

becomes intrusive, invading others’ space, sometimes by physical attack, and acquiring 

knowledge with a consuming curiosity. The child can perform ‘Acts of aggressive 

manipulation and coercion’. This evokes a reaction from significant others and can make the 



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child aware of the hazards in the environment. A sense of badness and fear of punishment 

evolves, and thus a sense of guilt is born. 

This is the stage in which children develop ‘a sense of industry’ and  learn to ‘win 

recognition by producing things’. They often feel ‘I am what I learn’. Children want to be 

shown how to get busy with something and how to get busy alongside others. 

Trends in educational philosophy have varied between making schools ‘an extension 

of grim adulthood emphasizing self-restraint and a strict sense of duty’ and a place where 

children can learn by doing what they like to do. Erikson thinks that different children can 

thrive in both these approaches and that schools need to steer a middle course between work 

and play. Play can help a child ‘restore a sense of mastery and introduce a child to a world 

shared with others’. It helps a child ‘master experience by meditating, experimenting, 

planning and sharing’. 

There is a danger at this stage of the development of a sense of inferiority, particularly 

if the previous conflicts of the earlier stages have not been resolved. Children may still want 

the mother or they may not be acknowledged by the teacher for what they have learned to do 

well earlier at home. The calibre of teachers and the degree to which they understand the 

child’s behaviour are vitally important factors in a child’s development.  

 

d. Stage 5. Adolescence: identity versus identity diffusion (12–18 years) 

The need for ego identity Erikson affirms that in human existence there is no feeling 

of being alive without a sense of ego identity. This term ‘identity’ is the one most associated 

with Erikson’s work. Adolescence is the period when the young person often attempts to 

form a lasting ego identity which is ‘the accrued experience of the ego’s ability to integrate 

all identifications with the vicissitudes of the libido, with the aptitudes developed out of 

endowment, and with the opportunities offered in social roles’. They need to develop a sense 

of ego identity such that they do not feel a discrepancy between their own sense of who they 

are and their concept of how they appear to others.  

Ego identity develops from a gradual integration of all earlier identifications, but the 

whole has a different quality to the sum of its parts. Erikson asserts that a lasting ego identity 

cannot exist without the trust of the first oral stage and that the establishment of a confident 

sense of identity rests on the ongoing promise of fulfilment from significant adult figures in 

the person’s life. The dangers of identity diffusion Erikson recognizes that a watering down 



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of the emergent sense of identity, by what he calls ‘identity diffusion’, causes many of the 

problems experienced by adolescents. This can happen when the adolescent is assailed by 

doubts about her ethnic, sexual, religious or class identity. 

e. Stage 6: Early adulthood: intimacy versus self-absorption 

Erikson was one of the first theorists to identify and focus on life stages in adulthood, 

and thus gave a lead to later writers such as David Levinson and Naomi Golan. He asserts 

that it is only after a young person has established a real sense of identity that true intimacy 

with another can occur. Intimacy is ‘the capacity to commit. Relationships and marriage can 

often be the abortive attempt to find the self through finding another.  

The alternative to intimacy is distantiation, the readiness to destroy those people and 

forces that seem to threaten one’s own identity. This kind of behaviour can be an extension of 

reactive adolescent intolerance of difference; it often surfaces and is exploited in politics and 

war. Sometimes intimate, competitive and combative relations can be experienced with and 

against the self-same people. 

 

f. Stage 7. Adulthood: generativity versus stagnation 

Erikson thinks that sexual mates who have a fulfilled sexual relationship ‘will soon 

wish to combine their personalities and energies in the production and care of offspring’; he 

calls this generativity. He considers this stage a crucial one because it is the link between 

generations. Again, his focus on the heterosexual couple excludes alternative lifestyles. If 

people do not engage with this stage ‘they can experience an obsessive need for pseudo-

intimacy with a pervading sense of stagnation and interpersonal impoverishment’. Such 

stagnation is important because it affects successive generations.  

g. Stage 8. Old age: integrity versus despair 

Erikson is one of the few theorists of personality development who saw old age as a 

separate life stage with its own tasks and crises and who lived to experience it and reflect 

upon it personally (he lived to the age of 92). Integrity in the later stages of life is the 

culmination of the seven stages. It can be achieved ‘only in him who in some way has taken 

care of people and things and has adapted himself to the triumphs and disappointments 

adherent to being the originator of others or the generator of products and ideas’.  

Erikson claims that people who have achieved this state accept their life cycles and 

those of significant others. They no longer wish that their parents were different and they 



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accept that they are responsible for their own lives. People at this stage have a sense of 

connection with other human beings who have come before them and who have created 

‘order, objects and sayings conveying human dignity and love’. 

Erikson adds that clinically he has found that despair and a fear of death signify the 

lack or loss of this ego integration. This despair can take the form of disgust, misanthropy and 

contempt for institutions and people, and it reflects the individual’s own contempt for 

themself. Ego integration implies emotional integration, which includes dependency as well 

as leadership. It involves an awareness of ‘the relativity of all the various life styles’ but also 

a readiness ‘to defend the dignity of his own life style against all physical and economic 

threats’. It applies to all aspects of living and all fields of human activity. 

 

Personality Change 

Like achievement and motivation, personality also can change. According to Larsen 

and Buss (Randy J. Larsen and David M. Buss, 141), personality change has two defining 

qualities. First, the changes are typ ically internal to the person, not merely changes in the 

external surroundings, such as walking into another room. Second, the changes are relatively 

enduring over time, rather than being merely temporary.   

a. Moderators of Change 

Personality change itself can be affected by some factors. Costa and McCrae said that 

there are 3 kinds moderators of change. They are as follow. 

1. Psychological characterisitcs 

One approach is to look for those characteristics of people that might make certain 

individuals susceptible to change. McCrae examined several of these. One obvious candidate 

is personality itself—especially the dimension of Openness to Experience. Some people are 

much more willing to explore their world, to listen to different views, and to reflect on their 

own feelings. Perhaps this continued processing of new information might lead to changes in 

emotional maturity or patterns of social interaction, or dedication to goals—to changes in 

personality from which the closed individual would be insulated. The changes might be in 

either direction: Some open people might discover reasons to become more sociable, whereas 

others might find new meaning in solitude. The former would become more extraverted; the 

latter, more introverted. We would not, therefore, expect an overall increase or decrease. But 



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we would expect that people high in Openness would be less predictable over time: Retest 

correlations should be lower for them than for people low in Openness.  

McCrae (1993) used the same design with three other variables that were potential 

moderators of change. Private self-consciousness refers to a tendency to be introspective and 

interested in understanding oneself. (This construct must be 

distinguished from neurotic self-consciousness, which refers to feelings of discomfort in 

social situations.) Because people high in private selfconsciousness know themselves well, 

they may be more consistent in their self-descriptions and thus show higher stability 

coefficients.   

Personal agency is a cognitive construct that concerns the way people think about 

their own behavior. People high in personal agency view behaviors as steps toward long-term 

goals, whereas people low in personal agency take a more immediate and concrete view. 

Self-monitoring is the tendency to watch what one is doing and modify it to fit the situation. 

At best, high self-monitors are socially sensitive and functionally flexible people; at worst, 

they are other-directed chameleons without any enduring principles of their own. Because 

they can change to suit the occasion, high self-monitors might be expected to be lower in trait 

stability. 

2. Life Events 

Perhaps a more likely candidate for a moderator of change is some external event that 

alters one’s life and thus one’s personality traits. Costa, Herbst, and colleagues (2000) 

conducted exploratory analyses based on this premise. In their large midlife study, they asked 

participants to report which of 30 specific life events they had experienced in the past 6years. 

Events included got married, your parent died, and your spouse was fired. Individual events 

were relatively rare in this sample, so an index of total life events was created by summing 

across the 30 events.   

Contrary to the hypothesis, there was no evidence that more events led to more 

change in personality traits from before the 6-year period to after it. However, analyses of 

selected events did show small effects. A small group of people (4% of the sample) were 

fired from a job; compared to the group of people who were promoted during the same 

period, these individuals increased in Neuroticism and decreased in Conscientiousness. 

Again, women who were divorced became a bit higher in Extraversion and Openness 



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compared to women who got married. It remains to be seen how replicable these findings are 

and how enduring the changes may be. 

3. Physical and Mental Health 

There is one last category of potential moderators of personality change: health status. 

There is, however, a more direct test of this hypothesis. In collaboration with a BLSA 

physician, we examined the medical histories of men and women on whom we had before-

and-after personality measures (Costa, Metter, & McCrae, 1994). Initially, 153 volunteers 

were considered healthy, 93 had a minor disease (e.g., treated hypertension), and 27 had a 

major disease (e.g., a history of cancer). Over time, 175 volunteers stayed the same or 

improved in health whereas 98 had worse health status. These two groups did not differ in 

longitudinal changes in any of the five personality traits, and retest correlations were equally 

high in both groups. Deterioration in physical health status was unrelated to change in 

personality in this group. It should be noted, however, that all of the subjects in this study 

were sufficiently well at the second administration to complete a personality questionnaire. 

More serious illness might have affected personality scores. 

b. Two Universal Observations of Personality Change 

In contrast to the aforementioned theoretical impossibilities, most theories of 

personality cite two observations, which they assert are nearly always involved in personality 

change. They are 1) major personality change involves some sort of intense affective or 

feeling process occurring in the individual; 2) major personality change occurs nearly always 

in the context of an ongoing personal relationship. For more clearly, the two universal 

observation of personality change (Eugene T. Gendlin, 1964 : 5-7) will explain in the following. 

1. The Feeling Process 

 When major personality change occurs, intense, emotional, inwardly felt events are 

usually observed. I would like to give the name "feeling process" to this affective dimension 

of personality change. The word "feeling" is preferable to "affective," because "feeling" 

usually refers to something concretely sensed by an individual. In personality change the 

individual directly feels an inward reworking. His own concepts and constructs become 

partly unstructured and his felt experiencing at times exceeds his intellectual grasp.  

In various contexts it has been noted that major personality change requires not only 

intellectual or actional operations, but also this felt process. For instance, psychotherapists (of 

whatever orientation) often discuss the presence or absence of this feeling process in a 



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particular case. They discuss whether the individual, in a given psychotherapy hour, is 

engaged in "merely" intellectualizing, or whether (as they phrase it) he is "really" engaged in 

psychotherapy. The former they consider a waste of time or a defense, and they predict that 

no major personality change will result from it. The latter they consider promising of 

personality change. Now, although this difference is universally discussed, it is most often 

phrased so unclearly, and the words following "merely" ("merely" intellectualizing, 

defending, avoiding, externalizing, etc.), and the words following "really" ("really" engaged, 

facing, dealing with) are so undefined that we may as well simply refer to this difference as 

the difference between "merely" and "really." Although it may not be phrased well, what is 

always meant of referred to by "really" is a feeling process which is absent when something 

is termed "merely."  

A similar distinction between "merely" and "really" is talked about in education: 

There has always been much concern with the contrast between "mere" rote learnings of facts 

and "really" learning something (making it one's own, becoming able to "integrate," "apply," 

and "creatively elaborate" it). "Really" learning is predicted to result in observable behavior 

changes, while "mere" rote 

learning is predicted to result in little (or different) behavior change. The learning process is 

said to differ in the two instances, depending upon the degree of the individual's "internal 

motivation," his way of "taking the new material in," his "application of himself to what he 

learns," his genuine grasp of meanings. These metaphoric phrases indicate that, here again 

during learning, the difference between "really" and "merely" refers to a certain participation 

of the individual's feelings in the learning process. 

2. The Personal Relationship  

Just as the feeling process is observed as essential in personality change-while little is 

said to delineate, observably define, or theoretically account for it-so also the personal 

relationship is always cited. Can theory define this enormous and critical difference which it 

makes to the individual to live in relation to another person? We observe that when the 

individual thinks about his experiences and emotions by himself, there is often little change. 

We observe that when he speaks about these things to some other people, equally little 

change occurs.  

However, when we come to the "therapeutic" or "effective" personal relationship, we 

say that "suggestion," or "libidinal support," or "approval and reinforcement," or the other 



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person's "therapeutic attitudes," or the "conversation between the two unconsciousnesses," 

somehow obviates the factors which otherwise shape all his experiences and personal 

relations to keep the individual as he is. Somehow, now, he is said to "become aware" of 

what he previously could not be aware of, he is "influenced" by suggestions, he "overcomes" 

the transference, his "libidinal balance" is altered, he somehow now "perceives the attitudes" 

of the therapist, where he has always distorted and anticipated the attitudes of others. This is 

really the problem, not the explanation, of personality change. 

Rogers discovered how, in practice, the individual can be helped to overcome the 

repression model. His discovery is that defensiveness and resistance are obviated when one 

responds to an individual "within his own internal frame of reference." This phrase means 

that the psychotherapist's response always refers to something which is directly present in the 

individual's own momentary awareness. 

Rogers at first found that even if the therapist did nothing, more than to rephrase the patient's 

communication-that is to say, if the therapist clearly showed that he was receiving and 

exactly understanding the patient's moment-by moment communications-a very deep and 

self-propelled change process began and continued in the patient. Something happens in an 

individual when he is understood in this way. Some change takes place in what he 

momentarily confronts. Something releases. He then has something else, further, to say; and 

if this, again, is received and understood, something still further emerges which ;he individual 

would not even have thought of (nor was capable of thinking), had not such a sequence of 

expressions and responses taken place. 

But we do observe that almost always these changes occur in the context of a personal 

relationship. Some definitions of the kind of relationship which does (and the kind which 

does not) effect personality change have been offered (Rogers, 1957, 1959b). Very little has 

been said about how relationship events affect the conditions making for repression and the 

nature of contents, so that these alter.  

 

 

Measuring Personality 

Measuring personality is one of the areas studied in personality. To measure 

personality, we can use psychometric.  



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“The word psychometric originates from the terms ‘psycho’ referring to mind, and 

‘metric’ meaning measurement, and simply means measurement of the mind, or 

measurement of an aspect of the mind. Examples include the measurement of 

intelligence, attitudes and personality, and would typically involve the use of 

questionnaires or tests” (Abbot, 2001:11).  

Meanwhile, Mathews (2009:13) states that  

“psychometrics provides statistical techniques which tell us how good a measuring 

tool a particular questionnaire is, just as we might assess the accuracy of a 

thermometer or balance in the physicalsciences. The sophistication of modern 

techniques, and the number-crunching power afforded by computers, provide the 

contemporary researcher with powers of data analysis far beyond those envisaged 

by the pioneering trait researchers”.  

In Social and Personality Development, Abbot (2001:6-7) states that historically, 

research into personality has tended to be split between two approaches: the idiographic 

approach and the nomothetic approach. This division reflects an important difference of 

opinion in the way psychologists view people as the subject matter. When studied 

idiographically people are seen as unique individuals, whereas taking a nomothetic approach 

assumes that people are essentially similar and share characteristics with each other. The 

difference between these two approaches is discussed in more detail below. 

1. Idiographic approaches 

The idiographic approach (from the Greek ‘idios’ meaning personal or private) takes 

the view that we are unique individuals and should be studied as such. This means that we 

cannot rely on descriptions of common behaviours to describe certain types of people, such 

as people who are shy or people who are aggressive, but should treat each person as uniquely 

different from any other.  

So how can this approach be applied to the study of personality? Taking a purely 

idiographic approach would require a detailed analysis of an individual’s thoughts, feelings 

and behaviours, and would not assume that the resulting profile could be applied to anybody 

else. The idea of universal features or general behaviours put forward to explain human 

behaviour does not belong to, and is not the language of an idiographic approach.  

The main advocates of the idiographic approach are from the humanistic school of 

thought. This school includes prominent theorists such as Carl Rogers who took a person-



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centred approach to therapy, George Kelly who developed the personal construct theory, and 

Gordon Allport who described people as possessing ‘unique personal characteristics’. 

Sigmund Freud was another theorist who took an idiographic approach, by focusing on the 

individual as the main unit of study. Freud’s personality theory was developed from case 

studies of his patients. A final example is Eric Erikson, who put forward a whole life theory 

of psychosocial stages, through which each person must pass during their lifetime. Both 

Freud and Erikson will be discussed in detail later in the book.  

To conclude, taking an idiographic approach means researching a theory or 

phenomena by studying people individually and recognising their uniqueness, without trying 

to categorise them. 

2. Nomothetic approaches 

The nomothetic approach (from the Greek ‘nomos’ meaning law) relies on the 

assumption that we share many characteristics with our fellow human beings, and that the 

study of behaviours we hold in common will lead to a more useful understanding of people. It 

is typically characterised by the use of experimental methods, such as measuring individuals 

on a scale, or carrying out controlled studies where variables can be isolated, in order to 

uncover universal laws that can be applied to everyone. Taking a nomothetic approach 

involves categorising people in order to describe or uncover the causes of common 

behaviours, such as sociability or generosity.  

This approach has been employed by cognitive psychologists such as Raymond 

Cattell and Hans Eysenck, both of whom believe that the basic core of human personality is 

made up of a number of traits or dimensions. As a well-known example, Eysenck put forward 

introversion/extroversion as a universal personality dimension that can be employed to 

describe and measure part of any individual’s personality in varying degrees.  

 

C. Conclusions  

Based on the two discussions of personality above, it can be concluded that 

understanding personality development is an important thing for everyone, especially both for 

parents and teachers. For parents, they have to emphasize on stage 1 to 5, and, for the 

teachers, they should pay attention on stage 3 to 5. Personality as one of the areas studied in 

psycholinguistic not only affect learning, but also affect the lives of every human being in all 

aspects.  



Journal al-Lisan 
ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 
Volume 3 Nomor 1 -Februari 2018 
http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 

 
 

58 

 

Personality also not stable. It can change because of some moderators, such as 

psychological characters, life events, and physical and mental health. Understanding 

personality measurement is also important for those who want to conduct research, 

particularly in considering which approach will be used based on the type of research.  

 

 

 

 

  

  



Journal al-Lisan 
ISSN 2442-8965 & E ISSN 2442-8973 
Volume 3 Nomor 1 -Februari 2018 
http://journal.iaingorontalo.ac.id/index.php/al 

 
 

59 

 

REFERENCES 

Abbot, Tina. 2001. Social and Personality Development. USA: Routledge, Taylor & Francis 

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Dornyei, Zoltan. 2005. The Psychology of the Language Learners. London; LEA. 

Gendlin, Eugene T. 1964. A Theory of Personality Change in  Philip Worchel & Donn Byrne 

(Eds.), Personality Change. New York: John Wiley & Sons.  

Larsen, Randy J and David M. Buss. 2008. Personality Psychology:  Domainss of Knowledge 

about Human Nature, 3
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Long, Martin. 2000. The Psychology of Education. London: Routledge/Falmer. 

Mathews, Gerald, Ian J. Deary, and Martha C. Whiteman. 2009. Personality Traits, 3
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UK: Cambridge University Press. 

McAdams, Dan P. 2015. The Art and Science of Personality Development. New York: 

Guilford Press. 

McCrae, Robert R. and Paul T. Costa Jr. 2006. Personality in Adulhood: A Five Factors 

Theory Perspective, 2nd Ed. New York: The Guilford Press. 

Simanowitz, Valeria, and Peter Pearce. 2003. Perssonality Development. London: Open 

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Zhang, Wenxia, Danli Su, and Meihua Liu. 2013. Personality Traits, Motivation and Foreign 

Language Attainment. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 4 (1), 

doi:10.4304/jltr.4.1.58-66  

 

 


