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Personality
¶
In psychology,
personality
is a description of consistent emotional,
thought, and behavior patterns in a person.
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology which studies
personality and individual differences. One emphasis in this area is to
construct a coherent picture of a person and his or her major
psychological processes. Another emphasis views personality as the study
of individual differences, in other words, how people differ from each
other. A third area of emphasis examines human nature and how all people
are similar to one other. These three viewpoints merge together in the
study of personality.
Personality can be defined as a dynamic and organized set of
characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or
her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations
(Ryckman, 2004). The word “personality” originates from the greek
persona, which means mask. Significantly, in the theatre of the ancient
Latin-speaking world, the mask was not used as a plot device to disguise
the identity of a character, but rather was a convention employed to
represent or typify that character.
The pioneering American psychologist, Gordon Allport (1937) described
two major ways to study personality, the nomothetic and the idiographic.
Nomothetic psychology seeks general laws that can be applied to many
different people, such as the principle of self-actualization, or the
trait of extraversion. Idiographic psychology is an attempt to
understand the unique aspects of a particular individual.
The study of personality has a rich and varied history in psychology,
with an abundance of theoretical traditions. Some psychologists have
taken a highly scientific approach, whereas others have focused their
attention on theory development.
Critics of personality theory claim that personality is “plastic” across
time, places, moods, and situations. Changes in personality may indeed
result from diet (or lack thereof), medical effects, significant events,
or learning. However, most personality theories emphasize stability over
fluctuation.
Trait theories
¶
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American
Psychiatric Association, personality traits are “enduring patterns of
perceiving, relating to, and thinking about the environment and oneself
that are exhibited in a wide range of social and personal contexts.”
Theorists generally assume that a) traits are relatively stable over
time, b) traits differ among individuals (e.g. some people are outgoing
while others are shy), and c) traits influence behavior.
The most common models of traits incorporate three to five broad
dimensions or factors. The least controversial dimension, observed as
far back as the ancient Greeks, is simply extraversion vs. introversion
(outgoing and physical-stimulation-oriented vs. quiet and
physical-stimulation-averse).
Gordon Allport delineated different kinds of traits, which he also
called dispositions. Central traits are basic to an individual’s
personality, while secondary traits are more peripheral. Common
traits are those recognized within a culture and thus may vary from
culture to culture. Cardinal traits are those by which an individual
may be strongly recognized.
Raymond Cattell’s research propagated a two-tiered personality
structure with sixteen “primary factors” (16 Personality Factors) and
five “secondary factors.” A different model was proposed by Hans
Eysenck, who believed that just three traits - extraversion,
neuroticism and psychoticism - were sufficient to describe human
personality. Differences between Cattell and Eysenck emerged due to
preferences for different forms of factor analysis, with Cattell
using oblique, Eysenck orthogonal, rotation to analyse the factors
that emerged when personality questionnaires were subjected to
statistical analysis. Today, the Big Five factors have the weight of
a considerable amount of empirical research behind them. Building on
the work of Cattell and others, Lewis Goldberg proposed a
five-dimension personality model, nicknamed the “Big Five”:
Extraversion - outgoing and stimulation-oriented vs. quiet and
stimulation-avoiding
Neuroticism - emotionally reactive, prone to negative emotions vs.
calm, imperturbable, optimistic
Agreeableness - affable, friendly, conciliatory vs.
aggressive, dominant, disagreeable
Conscientiousness - dutiful, planful, and orderly vs. laidback,
spontaneous, and unreliable
Openness to experience - open to new ideas and change vs. traditional
and oriented toward routine
For ease of remembrance this can be written as OCEAN
John L. Holland’s RIASEC vocational model, commonly referred to as
the Holland Codes, stipulates that there are six personality traits
that lead people to choose their career paths. This model is widely
used in vocational counseling and is a circumplex model where the six
types are represented as a hexagon where adjacent types are more
closely related than those more distant.
Trait models have been criticized as being purely descriptive and
offering little explanation of the underlying causes of personality.
Eysenck’s theory, however, does propose biological mechanisms as driving
traits, and modern behavior genetics researchers have demonstrated a
clear genetic substrate to them. Another potential weakness with trait
theories is that they lead people to accept oversimplified
classifications, or worse offer advice, based on a superficial analysis
of one’s personality. Finally, trait models often underestimate the
effect of specific situations on people’s behavior. It is important to
remember that traits are statistical generalizations that do not always
correspond to an individual’s behavior.
Type theories
¶
Personality type refers to the psychological classification of different
types of people. Personality types are distinguished from personality
traits, which come in different levels or degrees. According to type
theories, for example, there are two types of people, introverts and
extraverts. According to trait theories, introversion and extraversion
are ends of a continuous spectrum, with many people in the middle. The
idea of psychological types originated in the theoretical work of Carl
Jung.
Psychoanalytic theories
¶
Psychoanalytic theories explain human behaviour in terms of the
interaction of various components of personality. Sigmund Freud was the
founder of this school. Freud drew on the physics of his day
(thermodynamics) to coin the term psychodynamics. Based on the idea of
converting heat into mechanical energy, he proposed that psychic energy
could be converted into behavior. Freud’s theory places central
importance on dynamic, unconscious psychological conflicts.
Behaviorist theories
¶
Behaviorists explain personality in terms of reactions to external
stimuli, and was a radical shift away from Freudian philosophy. This
school of thought was developed by B. F. Skinner who put forth a model
which emphasized the mutual interaction of the person or “the organism”
with its environment. Skinner believed that children do bad things in
order to get the attention that they crave. For example: a child cries
because the child desires attention and knows it will be given. These
are the stimulus, response, and consequences. The stimulus is the child
being ignored, the response is the child acting out, and the attention
that child gets is the consequence. According to this theory, people’s
behavior is formed by processes such as operant conditioning. Skinner
put forward a ‘three term contingency model’ which helped promote
analysis of behavior based on the ‘Stimulus - Response - Consequence
Model’ in which the critical question is: “Under which circumstances or
antecedent “stimuli” does the organism engage in a particular behavior
or “response,” which in turn produces a particular “consequence”?”
Ivan Pavlov is another notable influence. He is well known for his
classical conditions experiments involving a dog. These physiological
studies on this dog led him to discover the foundation of behaviorism as
well as classical conditioning. Pavlov would begin his experiment by
first ringing a bell, which would cause no response from the dog. He
would proceed to place food in front of the dog’s face, causing the dog
to salivate. Several seconds later, he would ring the bell again,
causing the dog to now salivate. After continuing this experiment
several times, the dog would salivate at just the ring of the bell.
These conditioning experiments can be used for many different types of
experiments. He can do these experiments for any situation. For example,
If every time someone ate fish they got sick, and he rang the bell when
they ate the fish, eventually they would get sick from just the sound of
the bell.
John B. Watson, The Father of American Behaviorism, made four major
assumptions about radical Behaviorisms -
Evolutionary Continuity: The laws of behavior are applied equally to
all living organisms, so we can study animals as simple models of
complex human responses.
Reductionism: All behaviors are linked to physiology.
Determinism: Animals do not respond freely, they respond in a
programmed way to external stimuli. Biological organisms respond to
outside influences.
Empiricism: Only our actions are observable evidence of our
personality. Psychology should involve the study of observable
(overt) behavior.
All behaviorists focus on observable behavior. Thus there is no emphasis
on unconscious motives, internal traits, introspection, or self
analysis. Behavior modification is a form of therapy that applies the
principles of learning to achieve changes in behavior.
Cognitive theories
¶
In cognitivism, behavior is explained as guided by cognitions (e.g.
expectations) about the world, especially those about other people.
Cognitive theories are theories of personality that emphasize cognitive
processes such as thinking and judging.
Albert Bandura, a social learning theorist suggested that the forces of
memory and emotions worked in conjunction with environmental influences.
Bandura was known mostly for his studies involving his “bobo doll.”
During these experiments, Bandura video taped a college student kicking
and verbally abusing a bobo doll. He then showed this video to a class
of kindergartners who were getting ready to go out to play. When they
entered the play room, they saw bobo dolls, and some hammers. The people
observing these children at play saw a group of children beating the
doll. He called this study and his findings observational learning, or
modeling.
Early examples of approaches to cognitive style are listed by Baron
(1982). These include Witkin’s (1965) work on field dependency,
Gardner’s (1953) discovering people had consistent preference for the
number of categories they used to categorise heterogeneous objects, and
Block and Petersen’s (1955) work on confidence in line discrimination
judgments. More central to this field have been:
Self-efficacy work, dealing with confidence people have in abilities
to do tasks (Bandura, 1997);
Locus of control theory (Lefcourt, 1966; Rotter, 1966) dealing with
different beliefs people have about whether their worlds are
controlled by themselves or external factors;
Attributional style theory (Abramson, Seligman and Teasdale, 1978)
dealing with different ways in which people explain events in their
lives. This approach builds upon locus of control, but extends it by
stating that we also need to consider whether people attribute to
stable causes or variable causes, and to global causes or specific
causes.
Humanistic theories
¶
In humanistic psychology it is emphasized that people have free will and
that they play an active role in determining how they behave.
Accordingly, humanistic psychology focuses on subjective experiences of
persons as opposed to forced, definitive factors that determine
behaviour. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers were proponents of this view.
Maslow and Rogers emphasized a view of the person as an active,
creative, experiencing human being who lives in the present and
subjectively responds to current perceptions, relationships, and
encounters. They disagree with the dark, pessimistic outlook of those in
the Freudian psychoanalysis ranks, but rather view humanistic theories
as positive and optimistic proposals which stress the tendency of the
human personality toward growth and self-actualization. This progressing
self will remain the center of its constantly changing world; a world
that will help mold the self but not necessarily confine it. Rather, the
self has opportunity for maturation based on its encounters with this
world. This understanding attempts to reduce the acceptance of hopeless
redundancy. Humanistic therapy typically relies on the client for
information of the past and its effect on the present, therefore the
client dictates the type of guidance the therapist may initiate. This
allows for an individualized approach to therapy.Rogers found that
patients differ in how they respond to other people. Rogers tried to
model a particular approach to therapy- he stressed the response. These
responses came in a variety of fashions:
A. Evaluative Response  Place a value judgment on persons feelings B.
Interpretive Response- tells the person what theyre really thinking or
feeling. C. Reflective Response- Captures how someone is feeling right
now about the situation.
Biopsychological theories
¶
Around the 1990s, neuroscience entered the domain of personality
psychology. Whereas previous efforts for identifying personality
differences relied upon simple, direct, human observation, neuroscience
introduced powerful brain analysis tools like Electroencephalography
(EEG), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), and Functional Magnetic
Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to this study. One of the founders of this area
of brain research is Richard Davidson of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Davidson’s research lab has focussed on the role of
the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and amygdala in manifesting human
personality. In particular, this research has looked at hemispheric
asymmetry of activity in these regions. Neuropsychological studies have
illustrated how hemispheric asymmetry can affect an individual’s
personality (particularly in social settings) for individuals who have
NLD (non-verbal learning disorder) which is marked by the impairment of
nonverbal information controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain.
Difficulties will arise in the areas of gross motor skills, inability to
organize visual-spatial relations, or adapt to novel social situations.
Frequently, a person with NLD is unable to interpret non-verbal cues,
and therefore experiences difficulty interacting with peers in socially
normative ways.