Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

Kuhn’s five distinct categories about an individual: social group an individual
belongs to, ideological beliefs, personal interests, personal ambitions, and selfevaluations.
After categorizing your list, ask yourself what your list says about your
self-concept, self-image, self-esteem, and self-respect.
• Complete the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (http://www.wwnorton.com/college/
psych/psychsci/media/rosenberg.htm). After getting your results, do you agree
with your results? Why or why not? Why do you think you scored the way you
did on the measure?
3.2 Personality and Perception in Intrapersonal Communication
Learning
Outcomes
temperament.
2. Explain common temperament types seen in both research
and pop culture.
3. Categorize personality traits as either cognitive dispositions or
After the previous discussions of self-concept, self-image, and self-esteem, it should be obvious that the
statements and judgments of others and your view of yourself can affect your communication with others.
Additional factors, such as your personality and perception, affect communication as well. Let us next
examine these factors and the influence each has on communication.
Personality
is defined as the combination of traits or qualities—such as behavior, emotional stability,
and mental attributes—that make a person unique. Before going further, let’s quickly examine some of
the research related to personality. John Daly categorizes personality into four general categories: cognitive
dispositions, personal-social dispositions, communicative dispositions, and relational dispositions. 27
Before we delve into these four categories of personality, let’s take a quick look at two common themes
in this area of research: nature or nurture and temperament.
Nature or Nurture
One of the oldest debates in the area of personality research is whether a specific behavior or thought
process occurs within an individual because of their nature (genetics) or nurture (how he/she/they were
raised). The first person to start investigating this phenomenon was Sir Francis Galton back in the
1870s. 28 In 1875, Galton sought out twins and their families to learn more about similarities and differences.
As a whole, Galton found that there were more similarities than differences: “There is no escape
from the conclusion that nature prevails enormously over nurture when the differences of nurture do
not exceed what is commonly to be found among persons of the same rank of society and in the same
country.” 29 However, the reality is that Galton’s twin participants had been raised together, so parsing out
nature and nurture (despite Galton’s attempts) wasn’t completely possible. Although Galton’s anecdotes
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