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Biological And Humanistic Approaches To Personality


Understanding factors that contribute to personality is a very complicated thing. There are many things that are involved and some may be hard to comprehend. There many theories that have been used to try to explain how we get the personality that we display. There are the biological traits that grow our character and there are other factors. All these factors will be affected by our needs. According to Maslow, human needs are divided into levels. They appear in a pyramid like manner. The funny thing is that we can never lack needs. Once you meet a certain need, you develop another need that is in the higher order. These needs are linked with our personality. They greatly influence who we are and our behavior.

Humanistic Approaches

This deals with how we think of ourselves and the rest of the world. We are given a chance to have the free will. Human beings also have the optimistic nature. They have dreams and aspire many things. These are the things that influence the things that we do. Our aspirations will dictate the actions and behavior that we exhibit at times. They thus guide us towards building our personality. We are always in constant thinking. This at times prompts us to act in a way that we do not follow our biological traits. Our thoughts and what we aspire to achieve may lead us to developing habits and behaviors that suppress the urge to satisfy some of our needs. This dictates the personality that we create.

Biological Factors

Our personality is substantially rooted in the traits that we inherit from our parents. Our nervous systems and the endocrine glands also play a significant role in determining the personality that we exhibit. The glands produce hormones that aid in growth and development of the body. The nervous system controls the actions, states and reactions of the body. As we satisfy particular needs, our body will react differently. Some characters that we display will be determined by what hormones are produced in our bodies and the levels. Hormones being produced depend on how much we satisfy our needs and the level of the needs. You now can see that the biological factors significantly influence and indicate the direction our personality growth. Sometimes, we could get learned traits. Instead of acting because of the hormone or in response to the nervous system, we could act in different ways. This could be as a result of learned traits from past experiences in life.