In psychology, the word aptitude refers to the psychological conditions of a person that are linked to their abilities and possibilities in the field of learning. The concept of aptitude originates from the Latin aptus.
For example: “My son has a great aptitude for music”, “We are looking for people with an aptitude for generating new business opportunities”, “Sorry, but I do not have an aptitude for this type of work”.
In this sense we can establish that when we refer to the term aptitude we are determining the capacity that a specific person has in the area of logic or mathematics. In this way, we could highlight that among the types of skills that an individual may possess are musical abilities, analytical skills, inductive reasoning or observation skills.
Also next to them it would be necessary to emphasize another one that is frequent that takes place between many individuals. We are referring to physical fitness, which is the ability of some of those to carry out exercise while maintaining optimal rhythm and performance while fatigue is minimal.
In this sense, athletes are people who have this ability and are characterized by the fact that thanks to having it, they have the opportunity to recover in a very short period of time after performing an exercise.
It is possible to differentiate between the use of the term in colloquial language and in psychology. In everyday speech, fitness refers to the ability of an individual to carry out an activity correctly and efficiently. In psychology, on the other hand, the term is linked to the emotional traits of the subject and his ability in relation to cognition. Aptitude, in this sense, is associated with the natural ability of the subject, with the knowledge they acquire from learning and with what is known as intelligence.
Aptitude, therefore, can be part of various human dimensions, from the ability to understand statements and texts to abstract and logical reasoning, through manual skills or the power of analysis.
On the other hand, aptitude is a concept of biology that is used in the framework of the theory of evolution. The word describes the ability of a certain genotype to reproduce, which is related to the amount of genes in this individual and their proportion to the totality of the genes of the next generation.
There are many times that two concepts that are pronounced in a similar way, such as attitude and aptitude, have been confused, which is what we are addressing here. In this case, the first term comes to define the posture that a person’s body adopts and that expresses the spirit that the person has. Thus, for example, the following phrase could be used to explain this meaning: “As much as Maria looked at her son, she always saw in him the same attitudes that surprised her, those of an experienced orator.”
