Personality Theory

Personality Theory

What is Personality?

Personality includes an individual's motivations (e.g., needs, motives), cognitions (e.g., values, beliefs) and traits (e.g., Extraversion, shyness). Personality is often conceptualized into a hierarchical taxonomy in which lower-level, narrow traits (e.g., competent, orderly) are subsumed by broad, higher-level traits (e.g., conscientiousness) (Condon & Revelle, 2012).

Traits of Personality

Personality is a complex construct. Personality is not just the traits that describe a person, but also involves psychological mechanisms and processes that, together, influence a person's interactions with, and adaptations to, the environment within and around them. Therefore, all the issues and aspects related to personality theory will be discussed in detail (Oehlberg, Revelle & Mineka, 2012).

Different Definitions of Personality Theories

The taxonomy that has received the most support and attention in the psychological literature recently is the Big Five, which includes Extraversion (outgoing, talkative), Agreeableness (cooperative, kind), Conscientiousness (organized, orderly), Emotional Stability, often traditionally referred to as Neuroticism in previous literature, (anxious, insecure, in its negative form), and Openness (creative, intellectual) (Paunonen, 2013).

The Big Five factors have been shown to be moderately heritable, suggesting a potential biological or genetic influence, to be reliable and valid, to include socially important dimensions, and to be generalizable across different types of measures and cultures. The Big Five is not without criticism, namely the inconsistency across cultures of at least one of the factors (i.e., openness) and the possibility of other factors beyond the five indentified. Despite these criticisms, however, the Big Five remains a popular and viable taxonomy in psychological research as no other comprehensive model yet exists which explains personality as accurately (Revelle, 2013).

Various Factors of Personality

There are many models that describe the relation between personality, stress, and strain. Although a comprehensive review of this literature is beyond the scope of the current study, a brief review follows. In general, research in this area purports that personality influences the stress-strain relationship through influencing how people cope and interpret events and on the events themselves (Swarat, Ortony & Revelle, 2012).

Here, events capable of producing stress occur and are appraised as threatening or uncontrollable; different coping responses are used and physiological arousal and illness follow. Personality is thought to not only influence how individuals cope and appraise a situation but also influence the situation itself. That is, people choose to be in certain kinds of situations, they evoke certain responses from those situations and they manipulate the people in those situations, all in ways that may reflect their personalities (Schalet, Durbin & Revelle, 2011).

There have been many studies on personality, the stress-strain relation, and health and well-being outcomes. Much of this research has focused on single personality traits, such as external locus of control, negative affectivity (NA), and Type-A behavior (i.e., competitive, hostile, impatient. In general, this research has shown these single traits to be associated with negative outcomes (Skodol, 2012).

Specifically, an external locus of control has been associated with burnout. NA has been associated with poor mental health occupational injuries and emotional exhaustion and type-A behavior ...