Understanding Individual

Understanding Individual

Introduction

We are all psychologist to some extent whether or not we have received specialized education in the subject. When one of our friends goes to a number of parties, we say that he does it because he is outgoing. What we are doing in this case is using personality to give reason for his behavior. There are certain personality features person exhibits, which form the basis of his different behaviors. In social context these traits usually take the form of adjectives with the help of which we describe the person. Psychological research has led to a better understanding of the traits exhibited by people which helps in return to understand our behaviors (Feist 2008, 3). This essay aims to understand the traits of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and use different theories to explain his behavior, which led to his success.

Case Study: Mark Zuckerberg

Mark was born in Dobbs Ferry, New York on May 14, 1984. He was fortunate to be born in a financially sound and well educated family. There was a dental practice office attached to his family's house, where Edward Zuckerberg; Marks father used to do his practice. However, his mother names Karen was a psychiatrist and was mother to four children including Mark.

Zuckerberg was very much interested in computers from a very early age and used his Atari Basic gaming console to make a messaging program called “Zucknet”, when he was only 12 years old. The program was used by his father in his office to allow the receptionist to inform him regarding the new patients. The program was also used by the members of the family to communicate within the house. Mark used to collaborate with his friends and make games just to fulfill his curious brain. He used to have some friends who had artistic aspirations and Mark used to ask them to draw stuff. Later Mark would transfer the drawing into a computer game.

His parents realized his interest in computers and hired a private tutor David Newman, who used to visit them once a week and teach Mark about computers. Mark excelled at computers and David admitted that it was tough to keep pace with Mark's learning skills because he was taking on courses designed for graduate students at Mercy College at that time. Mark was admitted in the Phillips Exeter Academy, which used to be an exclusive preparatory school in the New Hampshire County (Grossman 2010, 3). He developed an interest in the sport of fencing and excelled in it to later become the team captain of his school's team. At the same time, Mark excelled in classical literature and earned a diploma in the same. However, his interest in computers never faded.

Mark kept his love for developing programs at a personal level by designing various games on his own. While he was in High School, he developed the earliest version of Pandora, famous music software. However, he used to call it Synapse and many companies including AOL and Microsoft expressed great interest ...