Personality and Ethics

1.0 Introduction
By 2012, our world population stands at 7 billion and counting (Nasser, 2011). And not a single person is without a personality. Our personality is what makes who we are, what we do, who we interact with and how we live our life. It is a vital aspect that drives most of the decisions and choices an individual makes in his lifespan, and throughout this lifespan, the individual’s personality are tempered by external factors. In spite of all that, the nature of an individual’s personality still commands a degree of stability across time and situations as they grow from childhood to old age. And every individual’s personality begins the moment they are capable of perceiving the world. The development of one’s personality depends on two factors which are nature and nurture. As cited in Carducci (2009) Plomin, DeFries, McClearn & McGuffin (2001) it’s stated that biological factors do contribute to the physical and personality characteristic such as genetic heritability; however, this does not shows that all individuals’ personality is determined only from the biological process. Every individual contains a unique group of genes that require environments during an individual’s entire life to produce a recognizable individual (Larsen & Buss, 2005). It is often debated which of the two factors has a stronger impact on the development of personality, as supported by Carducci (2009) stating about the nature versus nurture controversy.

Nature refers to biological factors such as hormones and genetics inherited from one’s parents whereas nurture emphasizes on environmental factors such as parenting styles, education opportunities and the circumstances in which one goes through in their life as well as perceptions, reasoning and beliefs. To understand an individual’s personality, society strives to understand the traits of individuals. Trait is the internal psychological disposition that remains largely unchanged throughout the lifespan and determines differences among individuals. According to Funder (1997) as cited in Chamorro-Premuzic (2007) personality traits refer to an individual‘s characteristic pattern of thought, emotion and behavior. Traits make people unique, identifiable, and generally predictable across time. So how do people think and act differently? Human behavior is difficult to predict (Nairne, 2009); therefore people tend to use personality as a reference to predict people behavior. Different personality will have different perception, judgment and behavior in any given situation. According to Velasquez (2001, p.1), he defined ethics as “The principle of conduct or behavior that govern an individual or a group of people.” Ferrell, Fraedrich and Ferrell (2010, p.6) have also defined ethics as “Inquiry into the nature and ground of morality…”

Morality is the judgment of standards and conducts which an individual or group has about what is right and wrong, or good and bad. Essentially, ethics is the process of examining the moral standards of a person or society in which the degree of reasonableness in applying the moral standards to concrete situations is determined. In regards to this, developing a body of moral standards that are reasonable for people to accept and apply to the choices people have to make in life, is the ultimate aim of ethics (Velasquez, 2001). The relationship between personality and ethics is reflected from an individual’s behavior. Behavior is the physical reflection of an individual’s personality which is visible to outsiders. With certain personalities that people have, they will reflect their personalities towards their social group by repeating such behavior every day. Social groups will then comment or judge the behavior, whether the behavior is right or wrong, good or bad. Such judgments and comments can be from the viewpoint of religious, cultural, education or society perspective that fits to the standard behaviors and rules.

The moral standards for certain behavior for individuals are set in place by a collection of beliefs, attitudes and values (Mustamil & Quaddus, 2009). Therefore, as people realize their behavior whether ethical or unethical, they will have the tendency to change our personality so that it meets the social acceptance level. This is because when people behave in alignment to social expectations, they will be perceived as doing the correct thing. This relationship leads to an endless cycle among personality, behavior and ethics. The importance of having personality is that it helps in predicting and understanding people’s behaviors (Carven & Scheier, 2008). It is believed that people always try to understand someone and predict what will be his or her behavior in varying situation by observing his or her physical characteristics to trim down the risk of uncertainty (Arthur, Hall & Lawrence, 1996). Through personality, people’s fear of insecurity and ambiguity can be reduced as they merely know what will be they actions and behaviors in certain circumstances. Moreover, personality can also help humans to understand disease and health-related behavior of an individual such as exercising, smoking and consumption of alcohol. Feist and Feist (2008) says that personality is incapable of causing a disease which people suffered from, but it can help to recognize what is the cause of some disease to occur from their personality, behavior and emotional reaction under certain conditions. It can also help people to interpret, cope and adapt to every situations (Larsen & Buss, 2005).

2.0 Content
2.1 What is Personality?
For an individual, one of their most important assets is their personality. This personality acts as a sense of causal force within the individual and influential force in people’s lives and influencing their decision-making capabilities (Carver & Scheier, 2008). Personality influences the way people think, the view an individual has of himself or herself, how people interact amongst each other, how people regard the world, how they feel and the way they react to different circumstances (Larsen & Buss, 2005). Not only that, it also confines or expands people’s opinions and choices, enable or disable a person from sharing certain experiences as well as prompting one to take advantage. In a way, personality rests on a wide spectrum where on one end, it restricts someone and opens up the world for others on the other end (Schultz & Schultz, 2009).

However, there is no single definition agreed by most researchers. They do have their own view of defining “personality” as they believe that human personality is not easily defined (Carducci, 2009). According to Shultz and Shultz (2009) the reason a simplified description is unable to explain all is because humans are too complex. Although there are many definitions have been offered, none of them is universally accepted.

As sourced from Carducci (2009), the definitions from those prominent researchers are as following: * “That which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a given situation” – Cattell (1950, p.2). * “The most adequate conceptualization of a person’s behavior in all its detail” – McCelland (1951, p.69). * “A person’s unique pattern of traits” – Guilford (1959, p.5). * “The dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behavior and thought” – Allport (1961, p.28). * “The distinctive patterns of behavior (including thoughts as well as ‘affects,’ that is, feelings, and emotions and actions) that characterize each individual enduringly” – Mischel (1999, p.4). * “Personality represents those characteristics og the person that account for consistent patterns of feeling, thinking and behaving”– (Pervin & John, 2001, p.4). * “Personality refers to an individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotions, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms – hidden or not – behind those patterns” – Funder (2001, p.2). * “Personality is consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within the individual” – Burger (2004, p.4).

* “Personality is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments” – Larsen & Buss (2005, p.4). * “Personality is reflected partly in what people do and say. Partly, though, it’s a matter of how they do what they do – the style that puts a unique stamp on their actions” – Carver & Scheier (2008, p.3). * “A pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person’s behavior” – Feist & Feist (2008, p.4). * “Personality is defined as trait(s) that denotes some uniqueness to the individual life and that can account for differences in behavior across time and situation” – McFerran, Aquino & Duffy ( 2010, p.38). * Traits of personality “are classified by the adaptive problems they were designed to solve and … traits evolve as a function of the adaptive problems faced by the organism over evolution-ary time” – Figueredo et al. (2005, p.871).

Although there are so many different definitions from researchers, there are certain features common to most of the definitions developed (Carducci, 2009). Uniqueness of an Individual

Individual uniqueness refers to the enduring and unique cluster of characteristic of an individual. Society strives to see similarity among people, yet each of the individual possesses special properties that distinguish the individual from all others. For example, in a group of friends, one has a characteristic of egoism, one is caring and another one is talkative. Although they are interacting closely with each other frequently, they do have their unique characteristics which their friends do not possess. However, individual uniqueness attempts to change in response to different situation (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). In addition, individual nature compounds of uniform psychological mechanism, an information-processing activity which produce an individual differences from one another as a result of different individual experiences (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990). Consistency of Behavior

Another feature common to most definitions of personality is the concern of behavioral consistency across time and situations. This is because personality is something a person carries with him or herself over time and from one situation to the next within an individual (Larsen & Buss, 2005). For example, a person that talks a lot the moment you see him will still be dominating conversations years down the road. However, emphasizing on behavioral consistency does not mean that an individual’s personality never changes. The degree of behavioral consistency is influenced by the extent of situational factors, thoughts, feelings and behavior (Carducci, 2009). Undergoing psychological or physical trauma for example, is one of the most powerful ways that can modify the personality of an individual. Such events that deal a great impact to the facilities of the human mind are often negative.

2.2 How Personality is Shaped?
Nature versus Nurture
What actually determine an individual’s personality and how personality is shaped? Most of the researchers stand on the same point that personality is shaped by both nature and nurture. Everyone has their own personality which consists of both nature genetics and environmental factors throughout their lifespan. According to Carducci (2009) personality is naturally born with genetically inherited. What we inherit, common and unique, exists through the action of genes. As cited in Mayer (2007) Plomin and Rowe (1994) stated that genetic factors contribute significantly in relationship and interaction between parents and children. Parent-child influence is bidirectional; not only will the parents influence the child, but the child might also have an influence on the parents (Corr & Matthews, 2009). This is all linked to the genetic inheritance from parents to their children, also known as nature. Parents not only pass physical characteristics such as eye colors and skin tone but also some of the personalities which have significant effect on the attitudes, decisions and behaviors to the next generation (Burger, 2004).

Studies of identical twins especially those who were separated since they were born showed that heredity has a large effect on personality. Individual personality is not only affected genetically but they are also attributed to differences in experiences, external environments and individual’s socialization, the nurture determinant (Burger, 2004). Through shared environments and non-shared environments, humans are able to gain unique experiences and knowledge which will eventually affect their thinking and behaviors. According to Larsen and Buss (2005) shared environments are religious beliefs, culture and attitudes in a family. However, it cannot be concluded that all members in the same shared environment family will have the same thoughts, emotions and behaviors; how the family members are treated will also contribute to different personality (Harris, 1995). While the non-shared environments are learning institutions, relationships with non-family members and the way individual is treated by his or her family members (Mayer, 2007). Unique experiences and environments exposed appear to be vital for the development of individual personality (Larsen & Buss, 2005).

Nevertheless, the effects of the environment, whether shared or non-shared, on the individuals’ personality begin to gradually decrease as they reach their midlife status signifying a personality that has stabilized over so many years of molding the environment. As cited in Ardelt (2000) Mortimer, Finch and Kumka (1982) stated that this is because an individual selects, shapes and transforms the environment to fit his or her personality. As the personalities of individuals stabilize, their behaviors tend to become more consistent and predictable. This is because they have learned through two kinds of conditioning, classical conditioning and operant condition which behaviors are acted (Feist & Feist, 2008).

Classical conditioning is known as a behavioral training process where a neutral (conditioned) stimulus is coupled with an unconditioned stimulus for as long as needed until it can bring about a previously unconditioned stimulus. For example, a dog may excitedly jump up and down when it is shown with a slide of meat (natural responses). This condition is repeated several times with a bell ringing (neutral stimulus) when showing food to the dog. After that, when a bell rings, the dog will automatically jump up and down. On the other hand, operant conditioning is a type of learning which concern on how to teach others to behave in different situations. Behaviors which are pleasurable and agreeable will be reinforced which will lead to the repetition of the behaviors. For example, if a child does not complete homework given, the child might be punished. If the child performs well, he or she will be rewarded with sweets. Through this, the child learns which action will lead to desirable consequences, continuing on to establish the repetition of good behavior.

2.3 The Genesis of Personality
Imagine a blank piece of paper. Lines are drawn upon it and individually they mean nothing. But when you look at it as a whole, it forms a picture. The same can be said for our personality, the lines representing the experiences and the picture representing our personality. Our personality takes time to develop, growing from our experiences and for everybody, it starts from birth. Childhood is a process every child goes through since birth. The processes involved are the process of learning and mastering skills such as sitting, walking, talking, and skipping. There will be different personalities at every stage of childhood and between different children under varying situations and environment (Thomas, Chess & Birch, 2006). A research showed that genetic factors contribute significantly in relationship and interaction between parents and children, also known as nature (Plomin, 1994; Rowe, 1994; Mayer 2007). As an example, genes determine whether a child will have black hair or brown hair, black eyes or brown eyes, and left-handed or right-handed.

There is shared environment among parent-child or family members. Shared environments are religious beliefs, culture and attitudes (Larsen & Buss, 2005). These shared environments will eventually lead them to having almost the same personality. However, there are still other non-shared environments which will influence the personality of a child during his or her process of growing such as peer or friends (Mayer, 2007). Unique experiences and environment exposed appear to be vital for the development of children personality (Larsen & Buss, 2005). The period of a person from puberty until middle life is called youth or adolescence. In this period, young people will start to gain psychological and physical independence from their parents. They begin to find a mate and organize a family in the world. The recognition of the problem-free era of childhood is gone forever for the youth. Therefore, according to Jung, youth is a period of increased activity, maturing sexuality and growing consciousness (Feist & Feist, 2008). Adolescent individual becomes familiar with new types of activity and experience. Those of the activity may broaden their understanding of their self and personality trait (Allik, Laidra, Realo & Pullmann, 2004).

Personality traits become increasingly stable across the life span from children to adolescence to young adult. Lower stability is expected for early adolescence because an individual is faced with dramatic environmental changes. It perhaps is the most volatile normative transition in the life span during the adolescence. During adolescence, it entails a combination of social, cognitive, and biological changes (Donnellan, Trzesniewski & Robins, 2006). Furthermore, young people will explore new identities and roles during adolescence and the changes may differently influence individuals. As cited in Fleeson, Malanos and Achille (2002) Jung (1923) believed that middle life begins at approximately age 35 or 40 at which time begins its downward descent and middle age people are increasing their anxieties. Recent theoretical and empirical work with adults has pointed out three possible central features which are the tendency to experience frequent positive moods (Fleeson et al. 2002), sensitivity to potential rewards (Lucas, Diener, Grob, Suh & Shao, 2000), and the tendency to enjoy and evoke social attention (Ashton, Lee & Paunonen, 2002).

The middle life people are able to give up the extraverted goals of youth and move to the introverted direction of extended consciousness (Feist & Feist, 2008). There are three principles in this mid-life stage which are maturity principle, cumulative continuity principle and corresponsive principle. In the maturity principle, most people become more dominant, agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable over their lives and open to experiences by becoming less defensive and rigid, and open to feelings (Peabody & De Raad 2002). Cumulative continuity principle represents a time for the person to continue the new life structure formed over the years. They are trying to hold on to their physical attractiveness and agility in retaining the social and moral values of the earlier life (Feist & Feist, 2008). The corresponsive principle represents how personality development is affected by life experience that leads people to those experiences in the first place (Roberts & Robins 2004). Old age is the stage of lifespan when one reaches the age of 60 and above. On several personality dimensions, the elderly would have moderate stability for life satisfaction and intellect.

This is the closing chapter of people’s lives. At this time, people would look back and review the choices they had made and reflect on their accomplishments or failures (Carver & Scheier, 2008). Personality may have changed as result of being influenced by changing life circumstances. There will be a decline on the traits of extraversion and energetic, and an increase in agreeableness. The declines on energy and extraversion traits are related to the putative health problems experienced by the aged. Furthermore, when they enter this latter stage of life, they are more likely to be socially isolated. In other words, they are to be frail and bereft of friends (Maiden, Peterson & Caya, 1999). For example, the loneliness of widows and widowers will cause the remaining spouse to lose their will to live, as they lose emotional support from the spouse. Through this it is evident how an individual’s personality is shaped by the many experiences throughout his or her lifespan, every past experience contributing to the making of a future decision.

2.4 Psychological Perspective of Personality
From a psychological perspective, understanding the concept of personality requires one to understand the whole person (Nairne, 2009). Personality cannot be studied by recording the actions of an individual in a restricted situation or particular condition, and then determining the several traits that make up his or her personality. Psychology is the study of the thriving or optimal performance of people and the conditions and processes that contribute to it (Gable & Haidt, 2005). According to Burger (2004) with a proven observation that each individual reacts differently in a same situation, psychology researches aim to identify a pattern that would generally describe the actions most individuals take and the difference of those actions from one another. A discipline within psychology, personality psychology seeks to answer how major psychological processes like motives, emotions and thoughts operate together and the meaning that these processes have in a person’s life (Mayer, 2007). This will be further explained in detail below with two approaches to personality from the psychological standpoint.

2.4.1 Trait Approach to Personality
An individual’s consistent reaction patterns can be predicted from knowing his or her core personality trait. According to Friedman and Schustack (2012) “A trait approach to personality uses a basic, limited set of adjectives or adjective dimension to describe and scale individual.” The basic unit of personality is trait (Carducci, 2009), which traits are stable characteristic serving to influence an individual’s thinking, feeling and behavior in a habitual way across a variety of situations (Wiggins, 1997; Winter, John, Stewart, Klohnen & Duncan, 1998; Pervin, 2002; McCrae & Costa, 2003; McCrae & Costa, 2006; Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Trait is a broad concept that allows people to understand individual differences. According to Ryckman (2004) traits are actually exist but invisible which can be observed through the consistencies in a person’s behavior. There are around 18,000 adjectives in the world to describe an individual such as honesty, lazy, aggressive, calm and talkative. In turn, personality trait is defined as “…a specific characteristic of an individual which has pervasive influence on a wide spectrum of trait-relevant responses” (Ajzen, 2005). As mentioned in Ajzen (2005) Heider (1958) Jones and Davis (1965) and Kelly (1971) pointed out that such trait-relevant responses, also known as external observable cues, like an individual’s behaviors, are used to infer the personality traits of a person.

This is further supported in Ajzen (2005) where Goethe states that “Behavior is a mirror in which everyone shows his image.” What does people referring to when describing someone? Personality psychologists have different view point in the meaning of traits. There are two different viewpoints in determining the meaning of traits. Firstly, they claimed that traits are internal properties of a person which will cause their behavior. For the second viewpoint, they claimed that there is no relationship between traits and behavior, that is, people cannot use traits terms to describe people’s behavior. As cited in Larsen and Buss (2005) Alston (1975) first assumption claimed that traits are assumed to be the internal sense that individuals carry such as their desires, needs and wants from a situation to the next situation. These desires, needs and wants which come within an individual are assumed to be related to their behaviors. For example, one’s internal desire influences his or her external behavior, showing that traits and behavior are correlated. Psychologists who are in the view of first assumption do not link traits with the external behavior.

For example, John is a greedy man, but due to the ethical code of doing business, he did not cheat his customers. Hence, psychologists believe that traits are internal trait, that is, the sense of individual such as the needs, wants and desires will remain even though he or she does not behave in that way. In short, traits are assumed to exist even though the behavior does not exist. On the other hand, the second assumption claimed that traits are descriptive summaries of characteristic of individuals. They simply use traits to describe and do not presume the cause of someone’s behavior (Larsen & Buss, 2005). It is argued in Saucier and Goldberg (1998) and Wiggins (1979) cited in Larsen and Buss (2005) that before the development of causal theories to explain the individual differences in people, the importance of the individual differences must be first identified and described. Personal dispositions are traits that are peculiar to an individual, as opposed to traits shared by a number of people (Schultz & Schultz, 2009).

As cited in Corr and Matthews (2009) Allport (1937) and Funder (1991) pointed out temporally constant tendencies of behaviour are called dispositions in psychology but also other sciences such as medicine, biology and physics. An individual’s personal disposition does not possess the same intensity or significance. Therefore it can be classified as cardinal traits, central traits, and secondary traits. Cardinal trait is pervasive and powerful human traits that it touches almost every aspect of a person’s life. As cited in Schultz and Schultz (2009) Allport (1961) described it as a ruling passion, a powerful force that dominates behaviour. However, not everyone has a ruling passion, and those who do not display it in every situation. For example, a person may want to be powerful, the need for power can infer from virtually all his behaviour which means that this need for power will dominate all his behaviour. He would not only strive to attain a position of power within society but also interact with his friends or family in a similar pattern (Ryckman, 2004). Central traits are the descriptive traits being used to describe a person such as trustworthiness, outgoingness, friendliness, honesty, ego and aggressiveness (Ryckman, 2004). Those descriptive traits are outstanding and visible of an individual’s personality.

These descriptive traits are the essential qualities that can succinctly portray an individual (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Referring to Carducci (2009) Allport (1961) stated that traits used to describe the essential features of an individual generally lie in a range of five to ten traits. Although they do not carry the generality of a cardinal trait, such major characteristics control the individual’s behaviour in various situations. Secondary traits are features that impact an individual’s behavior in a very limited number of circumstances which is less obvious than central trait (Carducci, 2009). It is because they may not appear frequently in behaviors or particular situations, such as a person may be in bad temper when on diet (Feist & Feist, 2008). Secondary traits are the least important traits due to inconsistency and unnoticeably. The characteristics are less important to the person-preferences; their evidence will only be noticed by a close friend or family members. An example illustrates how a close friend can notice your minor preference for a particular food (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). The traits are generally less generalized, and less often called into play than central traits (Allport, 1937; Ryckman, 2004).

2.4.2 Analytical Psychology Approach to Personality
Analytical psychology is an approach from psychology field by Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) which is a new and elaborate explanation of human nature (Shultz & Schultz, 2009). According to Ryckman (2004, p.107) analytical psychology is defined as “Jung’s unique brand of psychology, which emphasizes the complex interplay role between oppositional forces within the psyche and the ways in which these internal conflicts affect personality development.” Psyche is a construct that is proposed to represent all the interacting systems within the human personality that accounts for the mental life and behavior of an individual, the total personality of one self. According to Friedman & Schustack (2012) Jung had initiated a significant stream of work on traits when the terms extroversion and introversion was employed. Among this stream of work were psychological types. Psychological types proposed that people adopt different ways of relating to experience and different attitudes toward life and utilize different psychological processes or functions to make sense out of their expectation. Individuals have a natural preference that will determine how they will behave and react in all situations (Pittenger, n.d.). Extrovert-introvert

The extroversion versus introversion dimension is a reflection of the individual’s perceptual orientation (Pittenger, n.d.). Extroversion can be referred as an orientation towards things outside of oneself whereas introversion is the tendency to turn inwards and explore one’s own feeling and experiences. Hence, in a simple word, the contrast between extroverts and introverts are extroverts focus on external reality while introverts focus on internal reality (O’brien, Bernold & Akroyd, 1998). Extrovert people are outgoing, interested in people and external world as compared to introvert people who prefer to spend time alone. As cited in Shultz and Schultz (2009) Jung (1927) stated that an individual could possess both extroversion and introversion tendencies, but only one would be dominant. Despite the dominant tendency is the one directing the person’s behavior and consciousness, the non-dominant counterpart still remains influential, and becomes parts of the personal unconscious where it can affect behavior. In certain situations, characteristics of extroversion or attraction to an extrovert may be displayed by an introvert.

Despite that, an individual is unable to switch from an introvert to an extrovert as they are both stable traits (Boeree, 2009). Jung points out those extroverts are more objective-oriented and keep away from the subjective one as they tend to suppress the subjective and focus on the objective attitude. Extroverts focus more on the facts whereas introverts are the direct opposite and focus more on their inner world. Introverts are turned into their inner world with biases, fantasies, dreams, and individual perceptions. They prefer subjective which mean they are based on their opinion or idea rather than facts (Feist & Feist, 2008). Extroverted and introverted will affect their thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuition, the four basic functions posited by Jung (Feist & Feist, 2008). One of these four functions will be adopted as people’s dominant mode. Jung combined the four basic functions as thinking/feeling, the other one is sensing/intuition. Thinking-Feeling

An individual’s decision-making process is determined by their thinking and feeling. The thinking and feeling functions apply differently to different individuals when making decisions, as each individual have their own type of thinking and feeling function. The thinking function affects an individual’s use of logic and objective truth when making decisions depending on the individual’s basic attitude (Russell, 2002). Thinking helps people to recognize the meaning. Extroverted thinkers rely heavily on concrete thoughts, where their ideas are impartially based on facts and carry no individual interpretation. Such individuals have are able to more easily remember human stimuli with emotional overtones such as facial expressions and joy (Schultz & Schultz, 2008). In reference to Ryckman (2004) Jung (1923) stated that in order path to pursue their ideas and ideals, individuals keep their feelings contained as well as denying aesthetic activities, the taste of imaginative sense and friendships.

This development of negative fashion within an individual makes everything they do just another step that brings them closer to achieving their personal goals, despite appearances leading people around them to perceive as being concerned with the welfare of others. An example to clearly illustrate this is how a self-serving activist exploiting friendship of others to aid in achieving his or her own goal. On the other hand, introverted thinkers react to external stimuli, allowing individual interpretation. For example, philosophers are always introverted thinking because they want highly subjective and creative state of mind to interpret the old data in new ways (Feist & Feist, 2008). They are interested in ideas just like extroverted thinking individuals. These people may be stubborn, arrogant (Burger, 2004), cold and inconsiderate of others (Ryckman, 2004). Unlike individuals with extroverted thinking, individuals with introverted thinking are able to remember neutral or impersonal stimuli such as numbers more easily (Schultz & Schultz, 2008).

The other function is feeling function, where individuals use the rationality of empathy and subjective values to make decisions (Russell, 2002). The feeling function distinguishes from emotion to tell people the value or worth of something. It is also the evaluation of daily conscious activities by judging whether they are good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable (Ryckman, 2004). Extroverted feelers use objective data for evaluation and are guided by external values and widely accepted standards of judgment. Such people are most often found in social situations, knowing what to say and how to say it. This leads them being well-liked because of their sociability (Feist & Feist, 2008). The feelings and behaviors of these people are controlled by social norms which are the expectation of others. As per Schultz and Schultz (2008), they conform to traditional values and moral codes that they were taught.

Despite that, they appear to be artificial, shallow and unreliable as they change from situation to situation and person to person (Ryckman, 2004). For such people, thinking is largely stifled. Unlike extrovert feelers, introvert feelers repress rational thought. In reference to Feist and Feist (2008), their value judgments are primarily based on subjective perceptions rather than objective facts. These individuals tend to disregard traditional opinions and beliefs, carrying a near complete indifference to the objective world including the people in it causing discomfort to people around them (Feist & Feist, 2008). Introvert feelers may appear to be cold and self-assured, but in spite of all that, introvert feeling people are capable of deep emotions that they avoid expressing outwardly (Schultz & Schultz, 2008). Due to their nature, they have little consideration for the feelings and thoughts of others. Sensing-Intuition

The sensing-intuition spectrum measures direct one’s preference in the area of cognitive perception. For individuals who rely more on sensing, they tends to depend on one or more of the five senses in their interpretation of facts or events whereas for persons who rely on intuition, they rely more on internal sources of information, assigning meaning through the use of a more abstract intuitive process (O’brien, Bernold & Akroyd, 1998). The function that receives physical stimuli and transmits them to perceptual consciousness is sensation. Sensing is simply the individual’s perception of sensory impulses, getting information through the five senses (Leary, Reilly & Brown, 2009). As cited in Boeree (2006) Jung called this sensing as one of the irrational functions which involves perception rather than judging information. Sensors like facts, data and experimentation, solving problems by standard methods, patient with detail but do not like complications, are good at memorizing facts and are careful but may be slow (Felder, 2002). Sensors tend to focus on immediate experience and developed excellent power of observation and good memory for details, for an example (Burger, 2004).

Extroverted sensing people perceive external stimuli objectively in which these stimuli exist in reality. They are interested in experiencing the external world (Burger, 2004). Besides that, these people are able adaptable to different kinds of people and changing situations (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). Their sensations are not greatly influenced by their subjective attitudes. Sometimes, description of attitudes and functions seems to overlap. For example, sensing types often seem to resemble extraverts and all classifications are complicated (McCrae & Costa, 1989). Extroverted sensing people are usually prefer outgoing and enjoyment while some interested in food and concern on physical appearance (Ryckman, 2004). Introverted sensing people are greatly influenced by their subjective sensations of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. Their interpretation comes not from the stimuli, but from how their senses interpret it. According to Jung, the introverted sensing type is uncommonly inaccessible to objective understanding (McCrae & Costa, 1989).

In accordance to this, Burger (2004) states that introverted sensing people are more interested in their own thoughts and inner sensations compared to external objects, and often use music or other abstract behavior to express themselves. Such expressions are normally difficult to be understood by others. Introverted sensing individuals also tend to interpret harmless comments from others in imaginative ways. At times, they may appear to be rational and in control of their actions but this is because of their detachment to the environment and other people (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). Intuition involves perception beyond the working of consciousness. It is the one that provide the raw material for thinking and feeling. Intuitive perception is exploring possibilities through insights, creative discovery and beyond what is visible to senses (Higgs, 2001). Those people prefer principles and theories, like innovation and dislike repetition, bored by detail and welcome complications, quick but may be careless and good at grasping new concepts (Felder, 2002). Intuitive types are disproportionately found in occupations such as art and psychology. According to theory of Jung (1971), both extroverted and introverted intuitive types were described as scenting out new possibilities continually in the inner and outer world respectively.

Extroverted intuitive people are oriented toward facts in which are guided by unconscious perception of facts that are basically subjective intuitive. For example, extroverted intuitive people constantly seeks new challenges and interests in the external world and get bored easily with jobs and relationships. They tend to be unstable and flighty (Burger, 2004). These people are attracted by new ideas and tend to be creative. They are able to inspire others to achieve and accomplish goals. Their decisions are made from hunches and are likely to be corrected (Schultz & Schultz, 2009). Introverted intuition people such as mystics, psychologist or artists appear unusual to people of other types who have little understanding of their purposes (McCrae & Costa, 1989). They like to explore new and different ideas but have difficultly developing communication to other people. However, as they fail to understand reality or social norms, it makes them impractical in planning (Burger, 2004). These people have difficulty coping with everyday life and planning for the future (Schultz & Schultz, 2009).

2.5 The Relationship between Personality and Ethics

Diagram 1: The relationship between personality and ethics is interrelated with an individual’s behavior.

The relationship between personality and ethics is reflected from an individual’s behavior. Behavior is the outcome that reflected from an individual’s personality which is visible to the outsiders. As personality acts as a sense of causal force within the individual and influential force in people’s lives and influencing their decision-making capabilities, in turn, affecting their behaviors in varying situations (Carver & Scheier, 2008). Stewart (2009) mentioned that ethics are being applied by people in their actions and daily life when they are concerned with practical moral problems and worry about which normative theory. Ethics is a part of our lives, and we practice it every day consciously and unconsciously. By involving oneself with the moral problems of on a daily basis, moral language is used to praise and criticize people and their behaviors, to reason about moral principles, to advice others and to decide the proper behavior and what the right thing to do is. Through the guidance external values and widely acceptable standards of judgment, and nurture experiences from what people have learnt throughout their entire life, people tend to behave and act accordingly to the acceptable norms.

As cited in Cremer, Mayer and Schminke (2010) Trevino, Weaver and Reynolds (2006, p.952) stated that “…individual behavior that is subject to or judged according to generally accepted moral norms of behavior.” When people facing ethical issue they often make decision, with the fundamental personality within individuals, and the learning processes from external environments such as cultural and religion influences, peers or friends influence, own beliefs, values, and principles, these affect the behaviors that they choose to behave in certain situations which they believe those behaviors are aligned with their religious values and beliefs.

Personal philosophies are also individual factors which influence decision making, in turn, affect their behavior (Ferrell et al., 2010). Individual philosophies are person-specific, they are often used to justify decision or explain actions whether one behavior is perceived as right or being viewed as wrong. According Cremer, Mayer and Schminke (2010), someone who is apparently good in personality will sometimes behave or do bad things in certain conditions across time. This is due to everyone has their internal self-interests such as desires, needs and wants, and beliefs of what is right and what is wrong. Thus, even an individual with a good personality will sometimes behavior in a way that deviates from the widely accepted social norms.

2.6 The Importance of Personality
Personality is important in predicting and understanding someone’s behavior (Carven & Scheier, 2008). It is an important contributor used to predict one’s view of the other person’s personality as personality deals with a wide range of human behavior. On the other hand, it plays an important role in an individual’s behavior, allowing people to convey some few traits that can summarize what a person is like. As characteristics seem to capture an individual’s personality, hence, most outstanding characteristics of a person will bring to mind their personality. As cited in Rhodewalt (2008) Daniel Dennett (1987) pointed out that people can predict other’s actions according to their physical characteristics and capabilities or by treating them as rational agents with beliefs and desires, then, predicting their actions based on these internal states. Although people do not act the same in every single situation, others can still predict their consistent behavior based on their visible characteristics (Burger, 2004).

Physical or visible characteristics are efficient in predicting a person, for example a person wincing after taking a kick, by having more insight about complex human behaviors (Rhodewalt, 2008). Through this, people are able to reduce the risk of uncertainty as they are capable of understanding and predicting people’s behavior around them through their outstanding traits across the time (Arthur, Hall & Lawrence, 1996). Thus, people will feel more comfortable and safe. Furthermore, personality is a key element in understanding disease and health-related behavior of an individual from something minor like exercise, sleep, smoking, and drinking to something major such as unsafe health practices and the sharing of intravenous needles by drug addicts (Smith, 2006). As cited in Booth-Kewly (1992) Funder (1991), the observation that motives specific to a certain behavior or by limits of the situation may influence a given behavior but this can be predicted by personality is pointed out. In the field of health, personality plays a key role in the way people interpret events, cope and adapt to the instability of daily life (Larsen & Buss, 2005).

For instance, when down with a cold, we are required to rest more to recover. This is a kind of behavior that is affected by our personality. If an individual has a competitive personality and refuses to allow himself or herself to rest because of the cold virus, the individual would quickly become very ill because the individual’s personality influences how well the person copes with the viral infection. Additionally, the predictability of health disease can be based upon the understanding of health-related behavior as well as emotional reaction under certain conditions in which the disease is a result of the interaction of these factors (Feist & Feist, 2008). As personality is unable to cause health disease, it can help people to understand what cause the disease to happen by considering what the person’s personality is with other external factors. For instance, the risk of heart disease for a smoker who’s plagued by negative thoughts and a stressful life is higher than another smoker who leads a happier life.

3.0 Conclusion
An individual should not be judged merely from his or her behavior and be concluded to have a good or bad personality. To do so who would be the same as to judge a book by its cover, as people around do not know the full circumstances that had influenced a person to behave that way in certain situations. This may due to the natural and nurtured experiences which make up an individual’s unique personality. Other than that, everyone has his or her own moral identities through religion, culture and experiences learnt towards something which might not be the same as others. It is believed that it is easier to mold a child’s personality since childhood as this might change his or her thinking, emotions and behavior across time. They can be taught, corrected from mistakes and motivated to have a unique personality which is aligned with widely acceptable standard or norms (Crain, 2011). With this nurtured experiences, individuals might have they own beliefs and values, which might also change the way they think and act leading to a different personality. It is not surprising that sometimes a person behavior might deviate from ethical alignments and his or her behavior is judged as either right or wrong by others. This is because they have their own personality with beliefs and values. And how their personality affects their behavior and the cause and effect of the behavior, it all depends on the individual’s own sense of ethics to make the choice.

There are always two sides to a coin and where there is normal personality; there is definitely the existence of abnormal personality that cannot be neglected. People with abnormal personality is said to suffer from symptoms like anxiety, depression, dissatisfaction, loneliness, disorganized thoughts, disruptive perceptions or unusual beliefs and attitudes that are unsuitable to their circumstances (Larsen and Buss, 2006). This is opposite of the findings in Strack (2006) where a person possessing a normal or healthy personality displays an ability to adapt flexibly to their environment and has typical perceptions and behaviors that promotes personal satisfaction. For people that suffer from abnormal personality, their behavior deviates from standard norms and rules set in a society, resulting in unethical behavior as they are unable to control themselves well. Hence, nurture experiences and external environment factors that shape an individual’s personality is important in governing their behavior across time in varying situations.

People judge others using their own intuition and feelings, with others attempting to criticize them in turn, every one of them trying their best to stay true to the moral principles that they hold. And what is the cause of this continuous cycle of criticizing each other? The answer is individual personality. There are many moral philosophies from different researchers, but not one of them has been accepted universally (Ferrell et al., 2010). With each person’s personality different from the other, they tend to use their own intuition to evaluate ethics, which is why an action from a single person can warrant praise from one group and be condemned by another. Although it was mentioned earlier that not all moral philosophies are accepted universally, they can be widely accepted in certain societies or countries. Such moral philosophies function as an ideal moral perspective that provides individuals with abstract principles as a guide for their social existence. Despite the array of researches in this field over a span of years has been done, there is still much more to be learnt. Nevertheless, of all these researches, the core of it is that ethics plays the important role of influencing and guiding people’s behavior, and it is necessary in the forming of a good personality.

4.0 References

Ajzen, I. (2005). Attitudes, personality and behavior (2nd ed.), New York: LicensingAgency Ltd.

Allik, J. R., Laidra, K., & Pullmann, H. (2004). Personality development from 12 to 18years of age: Changes in mean levels and structure of traits. Eur. J. Pers, 18,445-462.

Ardelt, M. (2000). Still stable after all these years? Personality stability theory revisited.Social Psychology Quarterly, 63(4), 392-405.

Arthur, M. B., Hall, D. T., & Lawrence, B. S. (1996). Handbook of career theory. PressSyndicate of the University Cambridge.

Boeree, C. G. (2009). Trait theories of personality. General Psychology, 1-4.

Burger, J. M. (2004). Personality (6th ed.), United State of America: Thomson learning, Inc.

Carducci, B.J. (2009). The psychology of personality (2nd ed.), United Kingdom: Wiley Blackwell.

Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2008). Perspectives of personality (6th ed.). United Statesof America, CA: Pearson Education.

Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2007). Personality and individual differences. United Kingdom:British Psychological Society and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Corr, P. J., & Matthew, G. (2009). Personality psychology. New York, CA: CambridgeUniversity Press. Crain, W. (2011). Theories of development: Concepts and applications (6th ed.). UnitedStates of America: Pearson Education, Inc.

Cremer, D. D., Mayer, D., & Schminke. M, (2010). Guest Editors’ introduction onunderstanding ethical behavior and decision making: A behavioral ethicsapproach. Business Ethics Quarterly, 20(1), 1-6.

Donnellan, M. B., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Robins, R. W. (2006). Personality and selfesteemdevelopment in adolescence. In D. K. Mroczek & T. Little (Eds.),Handbook ofpersonality development (pp. 285-309). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum

Feist, J., & Feist, G. J. (2008). Theories of personality (7th ed.). CA: McGraw Hill HigherEducation.

Felder, R. M. (2002). Learning and teachings styles in engineering education. EnglishEducation, 78(7), 674–681.

Ferrell, O. C., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrel, L. (2010). Business ethics: Ethical decision makingand cases (asia ed.). New York, CA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Friedman, H.S., & Schustack, M. W. (2012). Personality: Classic Theories and ModernResearch, (5thed.). United States of America, CA: Pearson Education.

Gable, S. L., & Haidt, J. (2005). What and why is positive psychology? Review ofGeneral Psychology, 9(2), 103-110.

Harris, J.R. (1995). Where is the child’s environment? A group socialization theory ofdevelopment. Psychological Review, 102(3), 1-62.

Higgs, H. (2001). Is there a relationship between the Myers-Briggs type indicator andemotional intelligence? Journal of Managerial Psychology, 16(7), 509-533.

Larsen, R. J., & Buss D. M. (2005), Personality psychology: Domains of knowledgeabout human nature (2nd ed.), New York, CA: McGraw-Hill.

Lucas, R. E., Diener, E., Grob, A., Suh, E. M., & Shao L. (2000). Cross-cultural evidencefor the fundamental features of extraversion. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol, 79:45268.

Maiden, R. J., Peterson, S. A., & Caya, M. (1999). Personality changes in the very old, Boston, CA: American Psychological Association.

Mayer, J.D (2007). Personality: A systems approach, United States of America: Pearson Education.

Mustamil, N. & Quaddus, M. (2009). Antecedent factors of ethical
ideologies in moral judgement: Evidence from the mixed method study. Journal of Social and Human Sciences, 723- 731.

Nairne, J. S. (2009). Psychology (5th ed.), United States of America: International Student Edition.

Nasser, H. E. (2011, October 31). World population hits 7 billion. USA Today. Retrieved
July 1, 2012, from http:// http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/story/2011 10- 30/world population-hits-seven-billion/51007670/1.

O’brien, T. P., Bernold, L. E., & Akroyd, D. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Academic Achievement in Engineering Education.

Peabody, D., & De Raad, B. (2002). The substantive nature of psycholexical personality factors: a comparison across languages. J. Personal. Soc. Psychol, 83:983–97.

Pittenger, D. J. (n.d.). Measuring the MBTI and coming up short. Journal of Career Planning & Placement.

Roberts, B. W., & Robins, R. W. (2004). A longitudinal study of person-environment fit and personality development. J. Personal, 72:89–110.

Russell, A. L. (2002). MBTI: Personality preferences and diverse online learning experiences. 8(1), 25-40.

Ryckman, R. M. (2004). Theories of personality (8th ed.). United States of America: Thomson Wadsworth.

Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2009). Theories of personality (9th ed.). United States of America, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Smith, T. W. (2006). Personality as risk and resilience in physical health.
Association for Psychological Science, 15(5), 227-231. Stewart, N. (2009). An introduction to moral philosophy, UK: Polity Press.

Strack, S. (2006). Differentiating normal and abnormal personality (2nd ed.). United States of America: Springer Publishing Company, Inc.

Thomas, A., Chess, S., & Birch, H. G. (1970). The Origin of Personality. Scientific American, 14(5), 102-109.

Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1990). On the University of human nature and the uniqueness of the individual: The role of genetics and adaptation. Journal of Personality, 58(1), 17-67.

Velasquez, M. G. (2001). Business ethics concepts and cases. 1-18.