LINK: Biographies of famous personality theorists.

LINK: Learn about personality disorders

LINK: Some personality tests

Traits vs. States

The most central concept in personality psychology is the trait. A trait is a relatively stable predisposition to behave in a certain way. Traits are part of the person, not the environment.

States, on the other hand, are not characteristics that people have or lack in all-or-none fashion. States are dimensions along which people differ by degree. States are temporary.

The goal of trait theories is to specify a manageable set of distinct personality dimension that can be used to summarize the fundamental psychological differences among individuals.

There are many different trait approaches. Each trait approach has its own perspective on what needs to be measured to say you're assessing personality.

Examples of Trait Approaches:

Gordon Allport's list of approximately 4,500 traits

Raymond Cattell's reduction to 16 personality factors

Hans Eysenck's three-factor model

The Idea that Traits are Hierarchically Organized

A basic assumption underlying all trait theories is that behaviors and traits are linked to one another in hierarchical fashion. At the bottom of the hierarchy are specific behaviors. At the next level up are surface traits, each of which is linked directly to a set of related behaviors. At the highest level, linking related surface traits, are central traits, considered to be the fundamental dimensions of personality.


Two Early Trait Theories: Cattell's and Eysenck's

The first well-known trait theory was developed by Raymond Cattell (1950). Cattell developed a trait theory that specified 16 central traits.


Eysenck developed one that specified just two (and later three) central traits. Has found most support for two basic dimensions of personality: Introversion-Extraversion (= inwardly vs. outwardly-directed) Emotional stability-instability, a.k.a. neuroticism (= general moodiness) Has since found support for a third dimension Psychoticism (= coldness, lack of sensitivity/concern for others; lack of loyalty toward others) Combined, these form the PEN (psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism) model of Personality.

One basic tenet of Eysenck's is that people differ in how heritably conditionable they are. This heredity, combined with environmental factors, is used to explain why some people end up as psychopaths.

Ex: A highly conditionable person to fear who comes from a high SES background has a greater risk at becoming psychopathic than a person from a low SES background who also is highly conditionable to fear. Why, do you think?


The Big Five Theory

Consensus today is that there are FIVE trait dimensions that best describe personality (McCrae and Costa)

'O'penness to Experience
'C'onscientiousness
'E'xtraversion (see Eysenck)
'A'greeableness
'N'euroticism (see Eysenck)

HOW do we assess personality?

Personality researchers measure traits with questionnaires that ask individuals (or those who know them well) to report on their own behavioral tendencies that are relevant to each trait

LINK: The Kearsey Temperament Sorter II

Questions About the Predictive Value of Traits

So what do we learn from trait measures? Do they tell us what a person will be like tomorrow or 30 years from now (or both)? Do they allow us to predict, with any degree of accuracy, how individuals will meet real-life challenges?

Using questionnaires, researchers have found that personality traits are quite stable, especially after age 30. People who take personality tests at various times in their lives tend to score similarly each time they are tested. On average, however, as people age they tend (on measures of the Big Five) to show gradual reductions in neuroticism, extroversion and openness and gradual increases in conscientiousness and agreeableness. Personality measures are valid in that they correlate moderately well with indices of everyday behavior, such as sociability and work performance.

Situation-Specific Dispositions: If-Then Relationships

A limitation, however, is that the measures do not specify the context in which peoples' assessed traits are most likely to manifest themselves. Two people may score similarly on extraversion, for example, but one may be most extroverted in formal social situations and the other most extroverted in informal social situations. Mischel and other advocates of the social-cognitive approach to personality prefer to describe people in terms of situation-specific traits rather than global traits.

Biological foundations of Traits

Biologically-oriented psychologists have attempted to explain traits in terms of heritable qualities of the nervous system. Eysenck suggests that introverts seek placid environments because their nervous systems are easily aroused and extroverts seek stimulating environments because their nervous systems are not easily aroused. Studies of twins - including those raised in separate adoptive homes - indicate that roughly half the variability in personality traits stems from genetic variability. The same studies indicate that the same home environment does not generally affect siblings' personalities in the same way. For instance, twins raised in the same home are, on average, not more similar to each other in personality than are twins raised in different homes. In recent years, researchers have attempted to identify specific genes that contribute to personality through known effects on the brain, but so far the results have been inconsistent.

Advantages of Being Different from One Another

From an evolutionary perspective, the production of offspring who differ from one another in their predilections and dispositions may be an adaptation that increases the chance that at least some will survive in a diverse, ever changing, competitive environment. Thus, some pumpkinseed sunfish are adapted for life near the shore and others for life in deeper water. Among the shoreline fish, some are bolder than others. The differences reduce competition among the pumpkinseeds and allow more of them to survive within the pond than would be possible if they were all identical. Similarly, differences among people in traits such as the Big Five may have come about because such diversity allows people to occupy different niches in the human social world.

Occupying Different Niches

Personality differences among siblings derive partly from genetic differences and partly from experiences that lead siblings to occupy different niches. The phenomenon of sibling contrast and split-parent identification may accentuate differences among siblings and thereby reduce sibling rivalry.

Influence of Birth Order on Personality

Birth order may also promote differences among siblings. Research suggests that firstborn children tend to accept the norms of the world into which they are born and later-born children tend to rebel against them. The difference may stem from the fact that firstborns have a head start in occupying the niches favored by parents, and therefore later-borns may do better by seeking or creating alternative niches. (This research is controversial; not all agree.)

Adapting to One's Gender

Personality also correlates in some ways with gender; girls and women tend to be more agreeable, more conscientious, more anxious, and less risk-prone than boys and men.

Evolutionary and Cultural Foundations of Gender Differences

Evolutionary theorists attempt to explain these differences in terms of natural selection based on females' greater roles in childcare and males' greater need to compete in order to reproduce. Cultural theorists attempt to explain the differences in terms of differing roles, expectations, and training that cultures provide for males and females.

Whereas trait theories attempt to describe the differences among individuals in terms of a relatively small number of central traits, other theories - classed as psychodynamic, social cognitive, and humanistic - attempt to explain individual differences in terms of people's mental processes and beliefs.

The Psychodynamic Perspective: Unconscious Motives and Defenses

Freud's psychodynamic theory, called psychoanalysis, posits that the main causes of human behavior lie in the unconscious mind, especially in the unconscious aspects of the sexual and aggressive drives. Freud believed that individuals' unconscious minds can be understood by analyzing clues that occur in slips of the tongue, dreams and uncensored thoughts.

Definition of a Freudian slip: Which is the slip?

"When you say one thing and mean another." OR
"When you mean one thing and say your mother."

Social Drives as Motivating Forces in Other Psychodynamic Theories

All psychodynamic theories focus on the unconscious mind, but the theories after Freud's place relatively less emphasis on sex and aggression and more on other drives. Horney's theory and object relations theories focus on the drive for secure interpersonal relationships; Adler's theory focuses on the drive to feel competent; and Erikson's theory posits a set of social motives, each of which becomes more active at a particular life stage.

The Mind's Defenses Against Anxiety

A central concept of all psychodynamic theories is that of defense mechanisms - psychological processes designed to reduce anxiety by minimizing one's consciousness of upsetting ideas. Vaillant classified defense mechanisms according to the degree to which they distort reality and found, in a long term study, that men who used the most mature defenses (that is, who distorted reality the least) were, on average, happiest and most successful.

LINK: Defense Mechanism exercise.

The Social-Cognitive Perspective: Learned Beliefs and Habits

Social cognitive theories attempt to account for individual differences in terms of learned beliefs or habits of thought that predispose people to react in particular ways. Internal locus of control refers to the tendency to believe that one's fate depends on ones own actions. Self efficacy refers to one's sense of competence in performing certain tasks or set of tasks. Optimism refers to one's tendency to believe that things will work out for the best, and pessimism refers to one's tendency to expect the worst. Research has shown that all these beliefs promote effective functioning to the degree that they lead people to work hard at tasks and to take appropriate precautions.

LINK: Bandura's notion of self-efficacy

The Humanistic Perspective: The Self and Life's Meanings

Humanistic theories focus on peoples' phenomenological reality - that is, on their conscious understandings of themselves and their world - and on the value of acting in accordance with one's own wishes and motives. Rogers found evidence that people feel best and function best when they feel that they are "being themselves", or behaving in accordance with their own wishes. Maslowe posited a needs hierarchy, with self-actualizing needs - having to do to with being fully one's self - at the top. McAdams and others have studied personality by having people tell their own life stories. From the Humanistic perspective, such stories, or personal myths, are important aspects of the person, whether or not they are objectively true.

LINK: Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs

The Cultural Relativity of Personality Theories

Psychodynamic, social cognitive, and humanistic theories have been developed primarily by Western psychologists working with psychiatric patients or university students. The theories emphasize western values of individuality and autonomy that may not apply so well to the rest of the world.