PERSONALITY

TRAIT AND TYPE APPROACH

INTRODUCTION TO PERSONALITY
• The term ‘personality’ is derived from the Latin word persona, the mask used by actors in the Roman theatre for changing their
facial make-up.

• In psychological terms, personality refers to our ways of responding to individuals and situations.

• Personality refers to the enduring characteristics and behavior that comprise a person's unique adjustment to life, including
major traits, interests, drives, values, self-concept, abilities, and emotional patterns. (APA)

• Allport defined personality as: Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psycho-physical systems
that determine his unique adjustment to the environment”. (Allport, 1961)
• Dynamic organization: Personality is constantly changing and growing, this growth is organized and not random

• Psycho-physical: Psychophysical means that personality is composed of both mind and body functioning together as a unit. It is
neither all mental nor all biological.

• Determine: By determine, Allport means that all facets of personality activate or direct specific behaviors and thoughts.

• Characteristic behavior and thought: This refers that everything we think and do is characteristic, or typical, of us. Thus, each
person is unique
INTRODUCTION TO PERSONALITY

• Two ways to approach the study of Personality:

• The idiographic approach and the nomothetic approach
• The Idiographic approach: It is the strategy of studying the many unique psychological
attributes of an individual’s personality.
• It examines the individual persons in detail, with the aim of identifying the unique features of
each individual's personality.
• There is greater focus on qualitative methods and in-depth rich analysis of the individual’s life.
• Limitation:
• 1. It would simply be too expensive and too time-consuming to study a large number of people
in so much detail, and as a result our knowledge of personality would be based on a very small
number of cases
• 2. It does not allow us to figure out any general laws about personality
INTRODUCTION TO PERSONALITY

• The Nomothetic Approach: Here, the researcher studies certain features of the personalities
of many different people, and then compares those people in an effort to figure out
some general rules about personality.
• The goal is generalization to a larger population by using quantitative methods and
statistical analysis to make conclusions.
• It usually involves measuring some interesting variables in a large group of people, and
then finding out how those variables are related.
• The great strength of the nomothetic approach is that it does allow us to find general laws
of personality. Because the aim of any scientific research is to discover the laws that govern
nature, therefore it becomes the best choice for studying the laws governing Personality.
PERSONALITY THEORIES

• Trait Theories • Type Theories Psychoanaly

(Genetics Approach) tic
• Gordon Allport’s Trait Theory • Hippocrates Humoural
Theory Sigmund Frued’s
• Raymond Cattell’s 16 PF
Psychoanalysis
Theory • Charaka Samhita’s
• Hans Eysenck’s Three Tridosha Theory
Dimension Theory
• Robert McCrae & Paul
• William Sheldon’s
Costa’s The Five Factor
Physiognomy Theory
Model
• Friedman & Rosenman’s
Personality Type- Type A &
Type B
GORDON ALLPORT (1897 - 1967)

• Father of Personality Psychology

• In 1936, he went through English-language dictionaries and identified more than 4500 traits
which he categorized into three-tiered hierarchy
• Allport believed that individual’s personality reflect both heredity and our environment.
Heredity provides the personality with raw materials (such as physique, intelligence, and
temperament) that may be shaped, expanded by the environment.
• Allport believed in two set of personalities: One for Infants and One for Adults
• Allport found no continuum of personality between childhood and adulthood.
• The adult is not constrained by childhood experiences.
• He focused on the conscious than the unconscious; present and future than the past.
• He proposed the uniqueness of each individual’s personality than proposing the generalities
or similarities among people.
GORDON ALLPORT

• TRAITS ACCORDING TO ALLPORT:- Allport defined traits to be predispositions to respond, in same or

similar manner, to different kinds of stimuli. These are enduring and consistent characteristics that
guide behavior.
• Allport gave three categorisation of traits and all three are present in all human beings.
• Cardinal Trait: These are pervasive and influential in all aspects of life. It is the ‘ruling passion’, a
powerful force that dominated behavior. These dominant are displayed relatively rarely and tend to
develop later in life. For e.g., Total Pacifism became the guiding principles of Mahatma Gandhi’s life and
self-sacrifice of Mother Teresa.
• Central Trait: Everyone has some 5 to 10 themes that best describes their behavior. These are
prominent and general; building blocks of personality. For e.g., Terms like intelligent, honest, shy,
anxious, aggressive.
• Secondary Trait: These are the least influential traits that appear much less consistently than other
traits. Disposition that varies from situation; displays itself occasionally and they flow out of our Central
Traits. For e.g., impatient while waiting for traffic, or minor preference for a particular type of music
RAYMOND CATTELL (1905 - 1998)
• He used a statistical technique known as factor analysis to identify traits that are related to one another. With
this method, he was able to whittle his list to 16 key personality factors.
• He defined traits as the mental elements of the personality.
• He believed that by knowing someone’s trait or the pattern of their traits we can predict how the person will
behave in a given situation
• His categorisation of traits were:-

Surface and Source Traits

Surface traits are those personality factors that show a correlation with one another but do not constitute a single
factor. Thus, they do not have a single source.
For e.g., The surface Trait Introversion is a combination of several behavioural elements such as being shy,
reserved. Since surface traits are composed of several elements, they are less stable and permanent and, therefore,
less important in describing personality.
Source traits are unitary personality factors that are stable and permanent. They form the basic factors of
personality, derived by the method of FA.
RAYMOND CATTELL’S 16 P.F.

• Indian Adaptation by S.D. Kapoor

• It measures 16 factors or source traits which are relatively free from
each other
• This test contains 187 questions with three options each
• Here the raw scores obtained are converted into STEN SCORES
EYSENCK’S 3-DIMENSIONS

• EYESANCK agreed with Raymond Cattell that Personality is composed of Traits, or

factors derived by the factor analysis.
• H.J. Eysenck proposed that personality could be reduced into three broad
dimensions, referred to as SUPERFACTORS that are combinations of traits or factors.
• All these three dimension are determined primarily by hereditary.
• These dimensions are: ENP
• Extraversion vs. Introversion : It refers to the degree to which people are socially
outgoing or socially withdrawn. At one extreme are those who are active, gregarious,
impulsive and thrill-seeking. At the other extreme are people who are passive, quiet,
cautious and reserved. He found that cortical arousal levels for extraverts are less
they need and actively seek excitation and stimulation. In contrast, introverts shy
away from excitement and stimulation because introvert’s cortical arousal levels are
high.
HANS EYSENCK (1916 - 1997)

• Neuroticism vs. Emotional Stability : It refers to the degree to which people

have control over their feelings.
• At one extreme of the dimension, we find people who are neurotic- anxious,
moody, touchy, restless and quickly lose control. At the other extreme lie
people who are calm, even tempered, reliable and remain under control.
• Eysenck suggested that neuroticism is largely inherited and thus it is a
product of genetics.
• Research showed that people who scored high in neuroticism on the
Eysenck Personality Inventory performed better than low scorers in a fast-
paced and stressful work environment.
EYSENCK’S 3-DIMENSIONS

• Psychoticism vs. Impulse Control:- A person who scores high on psychoticism

dimension tends to be hostile, anti-social, tough-minded, cold and egocentric. They
express cruelty, hostility and insensitivity towards other’s feelings.
• They are reported to have greater problems with drug abuse and alcohol.
• Men tend to score generally higher than women suggesting the role of male
hormones
• Key finding:
• He proposed evidence that intelligence and personality are interrelated. E.g., a
person with an IQ of 120 is likely to have a more complex and multidimensional
personality than someone with an IQ of 80
EYESANCK’S THEORY OF PERSONALITY

• Eyesanck developed many Personality Assessment devices: •

• Eysenck Personality Inventory
• • Eysenck Personality Profiler
• • Maudsley Medical Questionnaire
• • Maudsley Personality Inventory
THE BIG 5 PERSONALITY THEORY

• Given by- Robert McCrae (1949 - Current) and Paul Costa (1942 -
Current)
• Costa and McCrae acknowledged the important role that Eysenck
played when he identified extraversion and neuroticism, and for
developing the assessment devices. However, they disagreed with
Eysenck regarding psychoticism. They initially proposed a different
factor called Openness
• Together, Costa and McCrae developed the NEO Personality Inventory
(or NEO-PI) to measure neuroticism, extraversion, and openness, and
later they developed the Revised NEO-PI, or NEO-PI-R, which also
measures agreeableness and conscientiousness.
TYPE THEORIES

• These theories categorise persons by systematised observed behaviour

in terms of a pattern
• They refer to certain basic types in which people are classified into
categories
• Any two persons of a society are not alike, they may be same at some
points or the other point,
• According to these similarities type theorists classify persons
• According to Indian Ayurveda- Persons are classified into 3 categories Vatt,
Pitt, Kuff
• The Ethics and Moral Science gives 3 types Satvic, Rajsik and Tamsik
• Sheldon classified people in three categories on the basis of their physical
structure, The categories are Endomorphic, Mesomorphic and Ectomorphic
• Type A & Type B Personality emerged from the works of Meyer Friedman
and Ray Rosenman.