What are major areas of individual differences?

1.         Differences in Physique: Differences in physical characteristics is the most obvious and visible difference among people. The differences between people with regard to their height, weight, color are all examples of physical differences among people. For instance, some people are tall while others are short some are fat while others are thin, some are fair while others are dark and so on.

                      There are differences in the physical characteristics among people belonging to different races and different regions. For example, Indians differ from the Chinese. Africans and Europeans in their physical characteristics.

2.      Differences in Intelligence: Intelligence is the ability to reason with symbols. In simple words, intelligence refers to our ability to learn and to utilize what has been learned. Intelligence also includes our ability to adjust to new situations and solve new problems.

3.      Differences in Ability: Ability is defined as what a person can do now and what he can learn to do in the future. It is total of all that an individual has acquired and all that he is capable of acquiring.

4.      Differences in Aptitudes: Aptitude is the ability of an individual to benefit from a certain type of training. It is the potential of an individual to acquire with training some specified knowledge, skill or set of responses_. such s the ability to speak a language, to learn music etc.

5.      Differences in Interests: Interests refer to a person’s liking for something. When we say a person is interested in something, it means that the person likes that thing.

Different people have interest in different things. For example, one boy may be interested in cars, another boy may be interested in films, while a third boy may be ⁱnterested in young girls!

6.      Differences in Achievement: While aptitude refers to what a person can do, achievement refers to what a person has done. Achievement is often an outcome of an individual’s intelligence, aptitude, interest and the availability of opportunities.

These days there is a lot of parental and societal pressure on young boys and girls to be ‘high achievers.’ Unfortunately we tend to see a person as a high or low achiever by comparing the person with other people. This causes a lot of distress and leads to the development of inferiority complexes.

7.      Differences in Personality: An individual’s personality refers to a person’s characteristic way of thinking. feeling and behaving. For instance, some people are generally quiet and shy while others are talkative and outgoing.