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Personality

Without a doubt, personality is the most distinctive characteristic of a human being. As

Pervin and John (2001, p. 3) state, “Personality is the part of the field of psychology that most
considers people in their entirety as individuals and as complex beings.” The study of
personality is a central theme in psychology, and the subdiscipline dedicated to this area is
known as personality psychology.

What is personality?

The Collins Cobuild Dictionary defines personality as one’s “whole character and
nature.” Similarly, Pervin and John’s (2001) widely accepted definition describes personality as
the characteristics of an individual that “account for consistent patterns of feeling, thinking, and
behaving” (p. 4). Among the most frequently cited definitions is that of Allport (1961, p. 28),
who describes personality as “the dynamic organization within the individual of those
psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought.”

These definitions emphasize the notion of consistent patterns, suggesting a certain

constancy in how individuals behave, think, and feel, regardless of situational changes. These
consistent patterns are referred to as personality traits. Personality theories aim to identify these
traits and organize them into broad personality dimensions.

It is important to distinguish between temperament, mood, and personality.

Temperament refers to individual differences that are deeply rooted in the biological basis of
behavior and are highly heritable (Snow et al., 1996). These are traits that we can often observe
as early as early childhood. Ehrman, Leaver, and Oxford (2003, p. 314) describe temperament as
“biological differences in life and learning.” While temperament and personality overlap,
temperament serves as the biological foundation on which personality develops (Hogan,
Harkness, & Lubinski, 2000).

A classic example of temperament in psychological theory comes from the Greek temperamental
taxonomy proposed over 2,000 years ago by Hippocrates and Galen. This model, which remains
relevant in many countries today, categorizes individuals into four personality types:

 Phlegmatic: Slow to take action, calm, and steady.

 Sanguine: Easily excited but not strongly attached, with short-lived interests.
 Choleric: Impulsive, ambitious, and often perfectionist.
 Melancholic: Reflective, serious, and often introspective.

In contrast to the relatively stable construct of temperament, a mood is a temporary, changing

state that occurs in response to specific life events. Unlike temperament, moods are contextual
and dynamic, shifting according to circumstances.

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Understanding these distinctions is crucial for exploring how individual differences influence
behavior and learning.

While temperament and personality refer to traits, moods refer to states.

Different approaches to the study of personality; Different taxonomies

Throughout the history of personality research, various approaches to the study of it and
various taxonomies have been proposed. One of the most popular models nowadays is the Big
Five model.
Let us examine the five main components of the Big Five construct (the initials of which
enable the acronym OCEAN).
• Openness to experience: High scorers could be described as imaginative, curious,
flexible, creative, moved by art, novelty seeking, original, and untraditional. In contrast, low
scorers are conservative, conventional, down-to-earth, unartistic, and practical (Dörnyei, 2005, p.
15). Openness to experience is, therefore, a matter of willingness to adopt novel and
unconventional ways of thinking and behaving. High scorers on the trait are heavily invested in
cultivating new experiences, whereas its low scorers are conventional and narrow in their
interests as well as conservative and sometimes rigid in their approach to life’s challenges and
opportunities (Haslam, Smilie & Song, 2017, p. 27).
• Conscientiousness: Conscientiousness is linked to self-control, planfulness, as well as
being organised, efficient and deliberate in one’s approach to tasks. Unconscientious people tend
to be impulsive, disorganised, and careless towards their responsibilities. Therefore,
Conscientiousness seems to reflect one’s approach to long-term goals and interests, resisting
impulses that threaten to sabotage them, as well as harnessing one’s efforts to accomplish these
goals and interests competently (Haslam, Smilie & Song, 2017, p. 26).
• Extraversion–introversion: Extraversion is best exemplified by traits involving
sociability, encompassing traits that involve energy and activity levels, sensation seeking,
interpersonal dominance, and tendency to experience positive emotional states. In other words,
extraverts are people who are sociable, outgoing and good in interpersonal contacts. They are
also characterised by the quantity of interpersonal interaction, their activity level, their need for
stimulation and capacity for joy. On the other hand, introverts can be defined as serious, shy,
avoiding meeting people, self-sufficient, passive, quiet, reserved, withdrawn. Introversion is
understood as “the tendency to be quiet and reserved with other people, to shun crowds and
excitement, and to act on thoughtful consideration rather than impulse” (Plotnik & Mollenauer,
1986, p. 647).
• Agreeableness: Agreeableness, just like Extraversion, is primarily linked to
interpersonal qualities but involves cooperativeness, altruism, as well as a warm stance towards
others (Haslam, Smilie & Song, 2017, p. 26). Therefore, high scorers could be described as
friendly, good-natured, likeable, kind, forgiving, trusting, cooperative, modest, and generous.

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Low scorers are characterised as cold, cynical, rude, unpleasant, critical, suspicious, vengeful,
irritable, and uncooperative.
• Neuroticism–Emotional stability: Neuroticism has to do mostly with people’s
emotional stability referring to a wide range of negative emotions including anger, sadness,
shame, and embarrassment. Neurotic people are more prone to experience negative emotions, to
be psychologically maladjusted and vulnerable as well as reporting low self-esteem. On the other
hand, people who are low scorers on the trait Neuroticism are emotionally stable, calm, and able
to cope well with stress (Haslam, Smilie & Song, 2017, p. 27).

Although the set of the “Big Five” personality factors is the most dominant model of
personality structure in contemporary personality psychology, there are some other personality
constructs that are also very popular in SLA research. Another popular instrument for
investigating one’s personality is Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), proposed by a mother
and daughter, Isabel Myers and Katharine Briggs (1976). It is established on Jung’s theory of
three bipolar types. The authors added one more dichotomy. The model includes:
 Extraversion–Introversion, referring to where people prefer to focus their
attention and get their energy from: the outer world of people and activity or their inner
world of ideas and experiences. This facet is also part of the Big Five model.
• Sensing–Intuition, referring to how people perceive the world and gather information.
‘Sensing’ concerns what is real and actual as experienced through one or more of the five
senses; a sensing person is interested in the observable physical world with all its rich
details (Ehrman, 1996). In contrast, an intuitive person does not rely on the process of
sensing and is less interested in the factual details; instead, he/she relies on the process of
intuition, preferring the abstract to the concrete, and tends to focus on the meanings in the
data.
• Thinking–Feeling, referring to how people prefer to arrive at conclusions and make
decisions. ‘Thinking’ types follow rational principles while trying to reduce the impact of
any subjective, emotional factors; they make decisions on the basis of logical
consequences. ‘Feeling’ types are guided by concern for others and for social values; they
are slow to voice criticism even if it is due but are quick to show appreciation; thus, they
‘think with their hearts’ (Ehrman, 1996).
• Judging–Perceiving, referring to how people prefer to deal with the outer world and
take action. Judging types favor a planned and orderly way, seeking closure, whereas
people on the perceiving end of the scale like flexibility and spontaneity and therefore
like to keep their options open.

Personality and foreign language learning

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Personality is an important factor that influences the process of learning and the final
outcome of the process. However, most specialists in the field claim that about (up to) 15% of
the variance in academic success can be explained by personality. This relatively low percentage.
In a similar vein, in the field of FLL personality cannot predetermine one’s success (or at least it
can but only to a certain extent). Namely, successful learners are those who wisely and
successfully combine their personality features by utilizing their specific strengths and
compensating for their possible weaknesses.
In applied linguistics it is well known that some people are simply more gifted language
learners than others, which naturally led researchers to test whether this giftedness was related to
personality features. The first “good language learner” studies revealed that successful language
learners are: meticulous, persevering, sociable, independent, inquisitive, involved, organized,
active, flexible, assertive, and imaginative.
The most researched personality aspect in language studies has been the extraversion–
introversion dimension. Extroversion and introversion were traditionally considered very
important in successful language learning. An extrovert student is usually imagined as lively,
talkative and active in the classroom, thus more likely to learn a foreign language easily.
Extraverts are found to be more fluent than introverts both in L1and L2 and particularly in
formal situations or in the settings that provoke stress. On the other hand, an introvert student is
the one who is shy, reserved and unwilling to participate, which means less likely to make
progress. In formal and other situations when they are expected to communicate, introverts can
suffer from increased pressure and stress, which in turn inhibits the automaticity of speech
production. They slide back to controlled utterances, their speech slows down, they hesitate more
often, they tend to make more errors, and they are unable to produce longer utterances. Some
studies have also shown that extraverted L2 speakers tend to use colloquial words freely whereas
introverts tended to avoid them. This means that introverts do not benefit from communication
and speaking practice, which further means that teachers should consider providing introverts
with the activities that go beyond talking-to-learning activities. The traditional assumptions that
extroverts are better language learners are quite misleading. A number of studies have shown
that extroversion can be a positive factor only developing oral skills, but not in other aspects of
language learning.