Human Thinking

Thinking can be characterized in terms of knowledge, skill, intention, performance and achievements of the individual. Language and thought are the basic vehicles of problem solving which initially and ultimately would depend on the individual himself, the information available to him, his competence to use that information, his intention or desire to achieve a particular goal, and the kind of activities he engages en route the goal.
Early experimental psychologists attempted to identify the fundamental building blocks of thought. Just as it is possible to understand a substance in terms of molecular structure, a molecule in terms of its atoms, or atoms in terms of its elementary particles, it should be possible to understand its behavior in terms of its fundamental components and some forms of associations among them. The analysis of the structure of thought has led psychologists in several different directions.

Theories on personality

There is no single definition of personality. Nearly everyone, theorist and layman alike, has his own idea of what personality is. The term personality comes from the Greek persona which means “mask”. Thus personality is thought of as the appearance a person presents to the family and outsiders. The personality has, thus, been defined as a totality of a person’s manner or his general behavior pattern, that is, the sum of his knowledge, skills, motives, and actions. Another conception of personality involves mainly on surface characteristics such as social skills. A personality description typical of this notion might be. “He is outgoing, smooth and confident”.

Personality theories developed so far can be divided into five major schools of thought:

1.    Psychoanalytic

2.    Self-Study based

3.    Cognitive

4.    Trait

5.    Learning Theory Approach.

Let’s see in detail on the above five theories in further posts.