Related Literature Review: Personal Development And Personality Development

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT: According to Philip Lewis of Auburn University, the topic of personality development lies at the interface of two larger and more familiar topics, and that is personality theory and developmental psychology. However, most explorations of personality development focus on broad issues of identity and not on the narrower personality traits and dispositions that dominated the field of personality theory during the end of 20th century. For all intents and purpose, the topic of personality development could as easily be termed “person development.” Most people undergo significant psychological change as they age. With respect to their psychological characteristics, infants become children, who become adolescents, who then become adults. These progressive age-related changes are much more than changes in what or how much the person knows. People “grow up” as they age and an important part of growing up entails progressive shifts in how they know

friendly, extroverted, sensitive), as well actual self-description s and descriptions of others’ personality traits, can be summarized using five relatively independent personality dimensions. These five dimensions (often labeled Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openess to Experience) appear to work well in describing individuals at different ages, and across many different cultures. However, these traits do not capture many important features of personality, and are not the features of personality that are the focus of most psychologists who study personality development. Indeed, these broad personality traits, once they become a consistent feature of someone’s personality- usually in middle childhood, tend to be remarkably stable across the remainder of one’s