What do theories of personality do

Eysenck concluded that there were three major dimensions of personality: extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. Eysenck believed that these dimensions then combine in different ways to form an individual's unique personality. Later, Eysenck added the third dimension known as psychoticism, which related to things such as aggression, empathy , and sociability. Later researchers suggested that there are five broad dimensions that make up a person's personalities, often referred to as the Big 5 theory of personality.

The Big 5 theory suggests that all personalities can be characterized by five major personality dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, collectively referred to by the acronym OCEAN. Some of the most famous figures in the history of psychology left a lasting mark on the field of personality. In order to better understand the different theories of personality, it can be helpful to learn more about the lives, theories, and contributions to the psychology of these eminent psychologists.

Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalytic theory. His theories emphasized the importance of the unconscious mind, childhood experiences, dreams, and symbolism. His theory of psychosexual development suggested that children progress through a series of stages during which libidinal energy is focused on different regions of the body.

His ideas are what as known as grand theories because they seek to explain virtually every aspect of human behavior. Some of Freud's ideas are considered outdated by modern psychologists, but he had a major influence on the course of psychology, and some concepts, such as the usefulness of talk therapy and the importance of the unconscious, are enduring. Erik Erikson was an ego psychologist trained by Anna Freud.

His theory of psychosocial stages describes how personality develops throughout the lifespan. Like Freud, some aspects of Erikson's theory are considered outdated by contemporary researchers, but his eight-stage theory of development remains popular and influential. Skinner was a behaviorist best known for his research on operant conditioning and the discovery of schedules of reinforcement. Schedules of reinforcement influence how quickly a behavior is acquired and the strength of response.

The schedules described by Skinner are fixed-ratio schedules, fixed-variable schedules, variable-ratio schedules, and variable-interval schedules. Sandra Bem had an important influence in psychology and on our understanding of sex roles, gender, and sexuality.

She developed her gender schema theory to explain how society and culture transmit ideas about sex and gender. Gender schemas, Bem suggested, were formed by things such as parenting, school, mass media, and other cultural influences. Abraham Maslow was a humanist psychologist who developed the well-known hierarchy of needs. The hierarchy includes physiological needs, safety and security needs, love and affection needs, self-esteem needs, and self-actualizing needs.

Carl Rogers was a humanist psychologist who believed that all people have an actualizing tendency - a drive to fulfill the individual potential that motivates behavior.

Rogers called healthy individuals fully-functioning , describing these individuals as those who are open to experience, live in the moment, trust their own judgment, feel free, and are creative. Personality makes us who we are, so it is no wonder why it has been the source of such fascination in both science and in daily life.

The various theories of personality that have been proposed by different psychologists have helped us gain a deeper and richer understanding of what makes each person unique. By learning more about these theories, you can better understand how researchers have come to know the psychology of personality as well as consider questions that future research might explore. Ever wonder what your personality type means?

Sign up to find out more in our Healthy Mind newsletter. Perspect Psychol Sci. Boag S. Ego, drives, and the dynamics of internal objects. Front Psychol. Heritability of personality: A meta-analysis of behavior genetic studies.

Psychol Bull. Psychiatry Investig. Behavioral perspectives on personality. Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Cham: Springer; Bornstein RF. Psychodynamic models of personality. Handbook of psychology: Personality and social psychology, Vol. Wong PTP. Existential and Humanistic Theories. Comprehensive Handbook of Personality and Psychopathology, Vol. Personality and Everyday Functioning.

Taub JM. Eysenck's descriptive and biological theory of personality: A review of construct validity. Int J Neurosci. Novikova IA. In: Keith KD, ed. What kind of support do you have for your theory? Or was it something you dreamed up while on a hallucinogenic? There are several kinds of evidence: Anecdotal, clinical, phenomenological, correlational, and experimental.

Anecdotal evidence is the casual kind of evidence, usually given in story form: "I remember when It is, of course, notoriously inaccurate. It is best to use this kind of evidence only as a motivation for further research. Clinical evidence is evidence gathered from therapy sessions. It is more carefully recorded by people with considerable training. Its major weakness is that it tends to be highly individual and even unusual, because you are describing a person who is almost by definition an unusual individual!

Clinical evidence does provide the foundation of most of the theories we will look at, although most follow up with further research. Phenomenological evidence is the result of careful observation of people in various circumstances, as well as introspection involving one's own psychological processes. Many of the theorists we will look at have done phenomenological research, either formally or informally.

It requires considerable training as well as a certain natural ability. Its weakness is that we have a hard time telling whether the researcher has done a good job. Correlational research in personality usually involves the creation and use of personality tests. The scores from these tests are compared with other measurable aspects of life, as well as with other tests. So we might create a test for shyness introversion , and compare it with the scores on intelligence tests or with ratings of job satisfaction.

Unfortunately, measuring things doesn't tell you how they work or even if they are real, and many things resist measurement altogether. Experimental research is the most controlled and precise form of research, and, if the issues you are concerned with are amenable to experimentation, it is the preferred method. Experimentation, as you know, involves random selection of subjects, careful control of conditions, great concern to avoid undue influence, and usually measurement and statistics.

Its weakness is that it has a hard time getting at many of the issues personality theorists are most interested in. How do you control or measure things like love, anger, or awareness? That people -- even famous geniuses -- make mistakes should not have been a big surprise to you. It should also not surprise you that people are limited. There are many questions, ones we need to have answers to in order to build our theories, that have no answer.

Some are just beyond us presently; some may never have an answer. But we answer them anyway, because we need to get on with life. We can call these our philosophical assumptions. Free will vs. Are we and the world completely determined? Is the sense that we make choices just an illusion? Or is it the other way around, that the spirit has the potential to rise above all restraints, that it is determinism which is an illusion? Most theorists make more moderate assumptions.

A moderate determinist position might say that, although we are ultimately determined, we are capable of participating in that determinism. A moderate free-will position might say that freedom is intrinsic to our nature, but we must live out that nature in an otherwise determined world.

Uniqueness vs. Is each person unique, or will we eventually discover universal laws which will explain all of human behavior? Again, more moderate positions are available: Perhaps there are broad rules of human nature with room for individual variation within them; Or perhaps or individuality outweighs our commonalities. I am sure you can see how this assumption relates to the previous one: Determinism suggests the possibility of universal laws, while free will is one possible source of uniqueness.

But the relationship is not perfect, and in the moderate versions quite complex. Physiological vs. Are we more "pushed" by basic physiological needs, such as the need for food, water, and sexual activity? Or are we more "pulled" by our purposes, goals, values, principles, and so on?

More moderate possibilities include the idea that purposive behavior is powerful but grows out of physiological needs, or simply that both types of motivation are important, perhaps at different times and places. A more philosophical version of this contrasts causality and teleology. The first says that your state of mind now is determined by prior events; The second says that it is determined by its orientation to the future. The causality position is by far the more common in psychology generally, but the teleological position is very strong in personality psychology.

Conscious vs. Is much, most, or even all of our behavior and experience determined by unconscious forces, i. Or is some, little, or even none determined by unconscious forces. Or, to put it another way, how much of what determines our behavior are we conscious of? This might be an answerable question, but consciousness and unconsciousness are slippery things.

For example, if we were aware of something a moment ago, and it has changed us in some way, but we are now unable to bring it to awareness, are we consciously motivated or unconsciously?

Or if we deny some truth, keeping it from awareness, must we not have seen it coming in order to take that action to begin with? Nature vs. This is another question that may someday be answerable: To what degree is what we are due to our genetic inheritance "nature" or to our upbringing and other experiences "nurture"?

The question is such a difficult one because nature and nurture do not exist independently of each other. Both a body and experience are probably essential to being a person, and it is very difficult to separate their effects. As you will see, the issue comes up in many forms, including the possible existence of instincts in human beings and the nature of temperament, genetically based personality characteristics.

It is also very debatable whether "nature" as in human nature even refers to genetics. Stage vs. One aspect of the nature-nurture issue that is very important to personality psychology is whether or not we all pass through predetermined stages of development. We do, after all, go through certain stages of physiological development -- fetal, childhood, puberty, adulthood, senescence -- powerfully controlled by genetics.

Shouldn't we expect the same for psychological development? We will see a full range of positions on this issue, from true stage theories such as Freud's, who saw stages as universal an fairly clearly marked, to behaviorist and humanist theories that consider what appear to be stages to be artifacts created by certain patterns of upbringing and culture.

Cultural determinism vs. To what extent do our cultures mold us? Totally, or are we capable of "rising above" transcending those influences? And if so, how easy or difficult is it? Notice that this is not quite the same as the determinism-free will issue: If we are not determined by culture, our "transcendence" may be nothing more than some other determinism, by physiological needs, for example, or genetics.

Another way to look at the issue is to ask yourself, "How difficult is it to really get to know someone from a different culture? If it is relatively easy, perhaps it is not so powerful. Early or late personality formation. Are our personality characteristics established in early childhood, to remain relatively fixed through the rest of our lives?

Or are we every bit as flexible in adulthood? Or is that, although change is always a possibility, it just gets increasingly difficult as time goes on? This question is intimately tied up with the issues of genetics, stages, and cultural determination, as you can imagine. The biggest hurdle we face before we find a resolution, however, is in specifying what we mean by personality characteristics.

If we mean things that never change from the moment of birth -- i. Because of this exclusive focus, other factors that are integral to personality are not included. Hormones, neurotransmitters, and genetics are the key factors in this focus; the effects of environmental and social factors, however, are often overlooked. Twin studies have shown that heritable factors are not the only predictor of personality or even diseases such as schizophrenia; the biological perspective does not fully address non-heritable factors.

In addition, the correlational studies used for measuring normal personality traits are subjected to the same rules as normal correlational research: they cannot be used alone to establish causation.

Just because two factors are shown to be related does not mean that one causes the other. For example, if you have data that show that as ice cream sales increase, the rate of drowning deaths also increases, you should not necessarily conclude that ice cream consumption causes drowning.

In this case, more ice cream is sold during the hot summer months—the same time that people are more likely to go swimming. Therefore, the cause of the increases in both ice cream sales and drowning deaths is most likely the hot summer weather. That said, properly designed experimental studies can help scientists determine cause-and-effect relationships in order to develop treatment options for people with personality disorders.

Personality psychologists are interested in understanding the role that culture plays in the development of personality. Research investigating the variations of personality traits across cultures suggests that there are both universal and culture-specific aspects that account for these variations. The term culture refers to all of the beliefs, customs, ideas, behaviors, and traditions of a particular society that are passed through generations. Culture is transmitted to people through language as well as through the modeling of behavior, and it defines which traits and behaviors are considered important, desirable, or undesirable.

Within a culture there are norms and behavioral expectations. These cultural norms can dictate which personality traits are considered important.

The researcher Gordon Allport considered culture to be an important influence on traits and defined common traits as those that are recognized within a culture. These traits may vary from culture to culture based on differing values, needs, and beliefs.

Positive and negative traits can be determined by cultural expectations: what is considered a positive trait in one culture may be considered negative in another, thus resulting in different expressions of personality across cultures. There is a great deal of evidence that the strength of personality traits varies across cultures, and this is especially true when comparing individualist cultures such as European, North American, and Australian cultures and collectivist cultures such as Asian, African, and South American cultures.

People who live in individualist cultures tend to believe that independence, competition, and personal achievement are important. In contrast, people who live in collectivist cultures tend to value social harmony, respectfulness, and group needs over individual needs. These values influence personality in different but substantial ways; for example, Yang found that people in individualist cultures displayed more personally-oriented personality traits, whereas people in collectivist cultures displayed more socially-oriented personality traits.

In much the same manner that cultural norms can influence personality and behavior, gender norms the behaviors that males and females are expected to conform to in a given society can also influence personality by emphasizing different traits between different genders. Ideas of appropriate behavior for each gender masculine and feminine vary among cultures and tend to change over time.

For example, aggression and assertiveness have historically been emphasized as positive masculine personality traits in the United States. Meanwhile, submissiveness and caretaking have historically been held as ideal feminine traits.

While many gender roles remain the same, others change over time. In , for example, only 1 out of 5 Americans agreed that a married woman should earn money in industry and business. By , however, 4 out of 5 Americans approved of women working in these fields.

This type of attitude change has been accompanied by behavioral shifts that coincide with changes in trait expectations and shifts in personal identity for men and women. Influence of gender roles on personality expression : Gender roles can determine which traits are considered positive or desirable.

These traits vary from culture to culture. There are three approaches that can be used to study personality in a cultural context: the cultural-comparative approach, the indigenous approach, and the combined approach, which incorporates elements of the first two approaches.

Privacy Policy.