Personality versus Character
While driving, a car swerves into your lane. Aninfomercial for a product you've been wanting, offers a deal on it, but you only have 10 minutes to get it at this discounted price.
We've all been in similar situations. Today's society is faster paced than ever before. We are forced by this fast pace to evaluate situations at a pace unprecedented in known human history.
However, in doing so, sometimes we forget to differentiate betwixt people, and things. Nobody likes to be judged. Yet, every social situation requires careful judgement of behavior in respect of appropriateness. How do we tell the difference between the thing and the person?
I intend to contend here, that it is an ability of a healthy psyche, to have the ability to distinguish between evaluating behavior, and character.
An article by Psychology today discusses this differentiation by discussing the difference between personality, and character:
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Personality is easy to read, and we're all experts at it. We judge people funny, extroverted, energetic, optimistic, confident—as well as overly serious, lazy, negative, and shy—if not upon first meeting them, then shortly thereafter. And though we may need more than one interaction to confirm the presence of these sorts of traits, by the time we decide they are, in fact, present we've usually amassed enough data to justify our conclusions. Character, on the other hand, takes far longer to puzzle out. It includes traits that reveal themselves only in specific—and often uncommon—circumstances, traits like honesty, virtue, and kindliness. Ironically, research has shown that personality traits are determined largely by heredity and are mostly immutable. The arguably more important traits of character, on the other hand, are more malleable—though, we should note, not without great effort. Character traits, as opposed to personality traits, are based on beliefs (e.g., that honesty and treating others well is important—or not), and though beliefs can be changed, it's far harder than most realize.
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(Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-in-world/201104/personality-vs-character)
So, with this differentiation, we can begin to understand that a single action is not necessarily indicative of character. For instance, even an honest person may feel the need to lie for the greater good sometimes. Or, even a peaceful person may be provoked to violence if backed into a corner.
In Social Psychology, we differentiate between motivation which comes from within, and motivation which comes from the environment. Understanding intrinsic motivation - which arises from character - and extrinsic motivation - which arises from personality - allow us to identify an occurrance called the Fundamental Attribution Error. This is the tendency to assume that behavior of others stems from intrinsic factors - eg: she's just lazy - and that the behavior of ourselves stems from extrinsic factors - eg: I only did that because I had to.
This is an error, because every action is in truth a product of both factors to some degree. Personality and character both shape our behavior. The distinguishment occurs over time. One behavior indicates personality, but it takes a series of events to begin to identify character.
Every behavior is somewhat motivated by our inner belief systems, and somewhat motivated by our environmental situation.
I want to encourage everyone to withhold their judgements of a person based off of an individual action. In fact, I want to encourage everyone to be great evaluators of behavior, while withholding all judgements about the character of a person. Specifically, this relates to my positive psychology orientation. More on that in a bit.
So, behavior indicates personality, but what is character?
"Character is built by becoming strong and determined, patient and observant. Character is not personality. Character is an abiding strength, the willingness to wait, a focused determination, and a patient approach. These are the elements of character. This is where your personal mind becomes strong enough to become a vehicle for Knowledge." (Source: https://www.newmessage.org/the-message/volume-3/living-way-knowledge/the-four-pillars-of-life)
An abiding strength. The willingness to wait. A focused determination. A patient approach. These are all aspects of positive psychology. They are either present or they are not.
I want to encourage everyone to withhold judging a person's character deficiencies. Instead of saying "That politician lies a bunch. He's a liar." You may be more positive by saying: "That politician has great opportunity to build his strength of honesty." This more optimistic outlook prevents us from condemning the person as irreversibly damaged, and acknowledges that we all have opportunity for growth.
In summary:
Personality is simply a style of behavior. Character is a series of abilities which everyone is refining in various stages.
To distinguish between them, acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes, and these do not define us. What defines us, is what we are participating in contributing to the world at large.