PERSONALITY

Personality

Abstract

Personality theorists attempt to formulate general principles that explain and predict individual differences in behavior. Theories of personality cover such areas as the development and structure of personality, the psychological processes involved in interactions with the environment, disturbed or pathological aspects of personality, and principles of personality change. Personality study incorporates the results of research from areas such as developmental psychology, learning theory, and social psychology, yet it maintains its own unique emphasis on the study of individual differences and the functioning of the person as a system. The many competing theories of personality that have been formulated offer different approaches to several critical issues. One issue is whether to emphasize characteristics of an individual that tend to remain stable, or to emphasize the ways in which environmental events lead to behavior changes as a person moves from one situation to another. This can be termed the internal-external issue, with "internal" theories emphasizing enduring personality characteristics and "external" theories emphasizing situational variations.

Personality

Introduction

Personality researchers have suggested numerous theories on the structure and organization of personality. These theories are attempts at providing a framework for the study of personality the important ways people differ in their enduring emotional, interpersonal, attitudinal, and motivational styles. The five-factor model has developed as the most influential personality theory currently used by psychologists and other personality researchers. The study of personality, or more specifically the person, has important implications for the study of social behaviors as well, and interest in the role of personality in people's lives continues to have a profound impact on empirical research and theoretical development. Additionally, it suggested that personality traits may play a role in the development of identity. This entry provides an overview of the five-factor model of personality, describes the strategies used to study personality and social behavior, and examines the role of personality and personal identity in social identity theory. (Wetherell, 1987) Five-Factor Model

Although personality psychologists do not agree upon a single definition of personality, the most commonly used definitions consider the relatively permanent traits and characteristics that give consistency to an individual's behavior. Traits refer to individual factors that consistently influence behavior across time and situations. Even though, elaborate theories and classifications developed and used by researchers suggesting the structure and implications of personality traits, including Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and Alfred Adler's individual psychology, no overarching theory or classification system was consistently used by personality researchers until the development of the five-factor model. (Costa, 1997)

Although the idea, of personality consisting of five factors was originally suggested by Lewis Goldberg in the late 1970s, in response to the consistent findings from early factor analyses, the publication of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory by Paul T. Costa Jr. and Robert R. McCrae in 1985 provided the first common taxonomy, a scientific technique for classification, for a five-factor model. Research using the five-factor model, and the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, has found permanence in the five factors with age. That is, people tend to maintain their personality structure throughout their ...