Personality

2.1.1 Introduction to Personality

Personality theories have chiefly been concerned with the factors that determine and explain different individuals‟ personalities as they are, and the factors which have brought about the given personality. Personality has been conceptualized from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and at various levels of abstraction or breadth (John, Hampson, & Goldberg, 1991; McAdams, 1995). Each of these levels has made unique contributions to our understanding of individual differences in behavior and experience.

As far back as 1937, Allport collected more than 50 definitions of personality as well as offering one of his own: “Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment”. Paton considered personality to be the dynamic or functional aspect of individuality － “the progressive synthesis of the mosaic of experiences.”

Individuality which is mere organism unity expresses only structural differentia between members of a species; whereas personality is in all cases the peculiar function of the individual. “Personality represents those characteristics of the person that account for consistent patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving.” (Pervin &

John, 1997).

Usually when we talk about someone's personality, we are talking about what makes that person different from other people, perhaps even unique. This aspect of personality is called individual differences. Individual differences in personality may be described at different levels. One of the levels consists of those broad, decontextualized, and relatively no conditional constructs called “traits”, which

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provide a dispositional signature for personality description. Character is defined by this author as the personality evaluated according to prevailing standards of conduct.

Webb defines character as the sum of all personal qualities which are not distinctly intellectual. Thus, personality is usually defined as character, trait and so on.

Interest in the relationship of personality variables and consumer behavior has existed since the importance of marketing was first recognized.Purchasing behavior, media choice, innovation, segmentation, fear, social influence, product choice, opinion leadership, risk taking, attitude change, and almost anything else one can think of have been linked to personality.Since individuals do react fairly consistently in a variety of environmental situations, these generalized patterns of response or modes of coping with the world can be called personality. To predict an individual in the study of consumer behavior, scholars researched many personality character theories to analyze the concepts of personality, for example The Big Five, Type A/B personality, Sixteen Personality Factor and Internals/Externals personality. In order to fit product image (hard vs. soft), we select Type A/B personality as a variable in this study.

Table 2-1 Personality Character Theories (cont.)

Type Authors content

The Big Five Model

McCrae & Costa (1992)

Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness,

Openness to Experience

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Type A behavior pattern as an action-emotion complex that can be observed in any person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and if required to do so, against the

opposing efforts of other things or other persons; Type B behavior is opposite. of events to their own control.

Externals attribute outcomes of events to external circumstances.

2.1.2 Type A Behavior Pattern (TABP)

The Type A behavior pattern (TABP), an established risk factor for coronary

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heart disease (CHD), is defined theoretically as a chronic struggle to achieve a series of poorly defined goals within the shortest period of time possible (Friedman &

Rosenman, 1974).In addition to its recently disputed relationship with heart disease, this behavior pattern has been found to intensify health complaints such as loss of appetite, depression, and headaches (Matteson & Ivancevich, 1982).The Type A behavior pattern (TABP) is an important person factor in the person-environment fit model because TABP means how person considers when she/he confronts a challenge (Ivancevich et al., 1982).Those who demonstrate the inverse behavior patterns are designated Type B. Some scholars brought up concepts of Type A behavior pattern are as follows.

1. Friedman and Rosenman (1959)

Type A behavior pattern as an action-emotion complex that can be observed in any person who is aggressively involved in a chronic, incessant struggle to achieve more and more in less and less time, and if required to do so, against the opposing efforts of other things or other persons.The Structured Interview (SI) resulted from early studies of both sexes to determine the prevalence of coronary heart disease in subjects with Type A behavior (Rosenman & Friedman, 1961).Based upon questions asked in the earlier studies, a new series of items evolved for use in rating degree of drive and ambition, past and present competitive, aggressive, and hostile feelings, and sense of time urgency. This series became the SI, which was used in the Western Collaborative Group Study (WCGS) to determine the prospective role of Type A behavior patterns in the incidence of coronary heart disease (Rosenman et al., 1970).

2. Zyzanski and Jenkins (1978)

The most widely used self-report measure of the Type A behavior pattern is the Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) (Matteson & Ivancevich, 1980). The instrument was constructed from data collected in 1965 and 1966 in the Western Collaborative Group

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Study (Zyzanski & Jenkins, 1970). The test has four major components: the Type A scale and Factor S (Speed and Impatience), Factor J (Job Involvement), and Factor H (Hard-Driving and Competitive). The latter three factors emerged from a factor analysis of the JAS items (Zyzanski & Jenkins, 1978).