Most scholars who have studied personality agree that it is considered the most complex phenomenon that the world has ever attempted to study so far. Despite this complexity, human personality remains one of the most intricate phenomena that each of us is interested in studying—whether through organized scientific study (as done by researchers, personality theorists, psychotherapists, and counselors), or through everyday observation. This happens to all of us, young and old, when we encounter different personalities during our daily activities and form judgments and opinions about them. These judgments and opinions about personality—whether expressed in formal or informal situations—are among the most important and unavoidable matters as long as we live and interact within a social environment. (Taher, 2000: 271)
Personality is synonymous with the human being, as it describes him from all aspects: physical, moral, and psychological. It also describes his temperament, emotions, tendencies, potentials, abilities, level of social adjustment, and various interests. From this, the difficulty of arriving at a fixed and final definition of personality becomes clear. Nevertheless, we can consider personality as the concept of the integrated human being with his various interacting traits that distinguish him as a unique individual different from others.
Human personality has distinctive characteristics known as “personality traits” or the structure of these traits, which may be physical traits, psychological traits, or others. Both physical and psychological traits lead the individual to specific behavioral tendencies and shape his readiness to respond to different situations in a distinctive and consistent manner. (Shaheen, 1985: 40)
Allport believes that one must view an individual’s personality as a unique pattern characterized by distinctiveness and non-repeatability.