Individual Differences and Interpersonal Relationships — Page 225, Lesson 366

Let’s begin. We’re starting a new topic: Individual Differences and Interpersonal Relationships. This chapter is meant to be read alongside Chapter 13, which covers Communication and Co‑operation, because both are part of the bigger picture of how individual differences, communication, and inter‑crew cooperation all fit together. We’ll start with Personality. People differ from one another in many ways — size, skin colour, gender, intelligence, and personal characteristics. Some of these differences are irrelevant in aviation, but many are not. For example, an individual’s size may limit the type of aircraft they can fly. More importantly, a person’s personality and intelligence will determine how they interact with other crew members and with people in general. So what is personality? Personality traits are initially innate — that means they are inherited through our genes — and they are acquired very early in life. They are deep‑seated characteristics that constitute the essence of a person. They are stable and very resistant to change. However, over time, personality can be influenced and developed by outside factors, and thereby undergo a degree of change. These changes can occur at any stage in a person’s life. One of the greatest challenges in psychology is understanding how much people bring into the world — their biological or genetic nature — and how much the environmental conditions and events affect them after they arrive — that’s nurture. It is generally accepted today that the two intertwine to shape personality and mental processes. So heredity, upbringing, and experience all tend to contribute to a greater or lesser degree. A useful way of thinking about the relative contributions of nature and nurture is this: think of genetics as roughly defining a fairly broad potential range of abilities, and nurture as pushing a child up or down within that range. Now let’s move to Self‑Concept. A child first develops an awareness of himself or herself as an entity separate and distinct from the surrounding environment. This happens because other people respond to him as a separate and autonomous object. As he develops a concept of “self”, he becomes aware of himself as an object of his own perception. Furthermore, his own evaluation of himself arises as a reflection of others’ evaluations. As he grows, his personality is gradually developed by social interaction with other people. So we can say two important things: - Self‑concept is crucial to any change or adjustment in personality. - Self‑evaluation changes in response to changes in others’ evaluations of oneself. To amplify those two statements: a gradual change in personality will only take place if either the individual is unhappy about the person he sees himself to be, or this realization is triggered by the reaction of others to him. For example, a spoilt and only child is sent to school and, from the reaction of other children to his selfishness, realizes the kind of personality he has and may deliberately set about to change it. That’s the core of how personality forms and how self‑concept drives change.