PERSONALITY THEORIES

Personality Theories

Personality Theories

Introduction

Personality is fundamental to the study of psychology. The major systems developed by psychiatrists and psychologists since Sigmund Freud to interpret human mental and behavioral methods can be considered ideas of personality. These ideas generally provide ways of recounting individual characteristics and demeanour, establish an general structure for coordinating a wide range of information, and address such matters as one-by-one dissimilarities, personality development from birth through adulthood, and the causes, environment, and treatment of psychological disorders. (Kassin 2003)

Discussion and Analysis

Trait Theory

Amajor flaw of Sheldon's morphological classification scheme and other type theories in general is the element of oversimplification inherent in placing persons into a lone class, which disregards the fact that every character represents a unique blend of qualities. Systems that address character as a blend of features or dimensions are called trait theories. (Kassin 2003) Well-known trait theorist Gordon Allport (1897-1967) extensively investigated the ways in which traits combine to form normal personalities, cataloguing over 18,000 separate traits over a period of 30 years. He proposed that each individual has about seven centered traits that override his or her behavior. Allport's try to make trait analysis more manageable and useful by simplifying it was amplified by subsequent investigators, who found ways to assembly traits into clusters through a process known as component analysis. Raymond B. Cattell decreased Allport's comprehensive register to 16 fundamental assemblies of inter-related characteristics, and Hans Eysenck claimed that character could be recounted based on three fundamental components: psychoticism (such antisocial traits as cruelty and rejection of social customs), introversion-extroversion, and emotionality-stability (also called neuroticism). Eysenck furthermore formulated a quadrant based on intersecting emotional-stable and introverted-extroverted axes. (Kassin 2003)

In dramatic compare to the psychoanalytic approach to character popularized by Sigmund Freud and his followers, character trait idea sought to find out general values that ...