Strengths And Weaknesses Of Personality Traits

Funder (2006) defines personality as a person’s pattern of thought, emotion, and behavior, with psychological mechanisms and underpinnings. Studying personality within the field of social psychology makes logical senses. While the study of personality psychology seeks to determine the various ways that people differ from one another, and figure out individuals from the inside out, personality within social psychology seeks to figure out individuals from the inside out in varying contexts. Personality psychologists deal with one main challenge – there are so many facets to one’s personality that it is hard to view one’s personality within one single lens. Therefore, before exploring personality within the context of social realms, it is important to view the many facets and approaches to examining personality and its variations.

Guilford (1959) defines personality traits as being ‘any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another’. Subsequently, trait theory can be identified as an approach to the study of human personality. The aim of psychologists, specifically trait theorists, is to explain similarities and differences between individuals based on traits. Although numerous psychologists differ on the amount of traits that are significant, each theorist categorizes personality traits along several broad type spectrums. This assignment will focus on comparing and contrasting Eysenck’s Hierarchical Theory of Personality and Costa and McRae’s Five Factor Model (FFM), two different trait theories of personality.

Funder (2007), states that personality is a combination of how people think, feel and behave, with the psychological mechanisms behind those patterns. Therefore, it can be defined as consistent behaviour patterns and processes which happen in the mind of the individual. These behaviour patterns suggest that there are individual differences and that personality is consistent. The combination of these areas, and confliction of these is what psychologist’s try to understand.

Personality and how we behave have been of much interest to psychologists for a long time now and because of this there have been many theories and theorists that have been developed. Personality is defined as consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within and individual (Fritzley, 2012, p. 10). There are six main approaches to personality psychology they include: biological approach, humanistic approach, behaviorist approach, trait approach, psychoanalytic approach and cognitive approach. Each approach shines a little light onto why we behave the way we do and how our personalities are formed, the approaches contain many different theories from

The trait perspective on personality in the field of psychology assumes that there is a given set of character traits defined by any theory and that every individuality maps along the continuum of these characteristics. The approach considers these different traits as the building blocks of personality that in their interaction with each other at different amounts cause the development of a unique individual

In the past couple of weeks I found a common theme about my personality and my strengths through Strengthsfinder, MBTI, and the FOCUS 2 assessments. I have come into touch with my strengths of adaptability, competition, empathy, curiosity, communication, and consistency. On all three assessments I have learned that I am an excellent communicator. For example, on the FOCUS 2 assessment I scored a high of twenty five for the strength of being social and had a score of zero for conventional on the bottom of my chart. As for the personality assessment, I learned I was a campaigner. This is somebody who enjoys emotional connections with other people and somebody who thrives off curiosity and energy. Lastly, the Strengthsfinder assessment allowed me to come in touch with

Trait theory is one of the most critically debated fields of personality studies. Many psychologists have theorised using the trait theory approach to personality, which promotes the difference between individuals. Hans Eysenck developed a model of personality based on 3 set traits. Unlike other theories, Eysenck only used 3 universal traits to describe an individual’s personality, they are:

According the Carver & Schreier (2012), “the trait approach to personality can be exemplified by two traits” (p. 52). One trait can be described as consistency while the other trait usually describes an individual being different from their neighbors. Vollrath and Torgersen argue that the extraversion and neuroticism traits are substantially present among individuals who are likely to participate in “risky health behaviors such as smoking, excessive drinking and drunk driving, drug use and sexual behaviors” that risks the overall wellbeing of a person or a person who lacks both of the following traits in larger quantities. They are generally regarded as individuals who can withstand temptation and are less likely to participate in risky behaviors. “Extraversion seems to relate to having social impact.” (Carver & Schreier, 2012) People with high levels of extraversion seemingly engage with and enjoy being with other people and often are the assertive ones in the group. People with high levels of neuroticism react differently in situations of stress, oftentimes unable to cope with situations. Torgersen (1995) “proposed a typology defined as priori” (p.288). “This typology represents the possible combinations of the Big Three personality factors, which result in eight unique types” (Vollrath & Torgersen, 2008). This study examined that high neuroticism and low constraint played a role in high risk behaviors. Torgersen’s definition of constraint is what the United States

Allport defines personality as ‘the dynamic organisation within the individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment’ (Allport, 1937). An individual’s unique personality traits and attributes are a powerful indicator of how he/she will interact with the work environment. The difference between average and outstanding employees can often be solely personality related. As the employee is the most valuable asset to the company, ‘selecting the right employee during the process is critical’ (Carbery and Cross, 2013, pp. 41-53)

While reading A History Pioneers of Psychology By, R. Fancher and A. Rutherford, in chapter 12, I came across Gordon Willard Allport who was an American psychologist. Allport is known as a "trait" psychologist, who was one of the first psychologists to focus on the study of the personality and in 1937 became editor in chief of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Interesting enough to draw my attention other than Sigmund Freud, even though his meeting with Freud was quit “insightful” as Allport told Freud the story of this “anal retentive boy”.

The term personality has been defined several times in different ways throughout the history of psychology. A definition that captures much of what is meant by personality was described as “more or less stable, internal factors that make one person’s behaviour consistent from one time to another, and different from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations” by Child (1968) (Eysenck, 1994). This definition is very broad and it includes personality traits as well as intelligence that are considered as aspects of personality. There is a difference between moods or emotions and personality. According to many psychologists personality is stable and does not change dramatically over the time, whereas moods and emotions may change over shortish periods, because those can be collated with external behaviour, on the other hand if personality determined behaviour then everyone would behave in identical pattern to different situations. That’s why there are individual differences. It is assumed that there are such individual differences that are revealed by different ways of behaving in different situations. That means that for example introverted people would be shyer in a social group or in the comparison extraverted people will talk more. This leads us to personality traits. There are many theories of personality traits such as: they are habitual patterns of behaviour, thought and emotion (Kassin, 2004), which means that there are different patterns in

To understand personality there are three main aspects that must be looked at: LArsen and Buss Definition of personality, The Six Domains of knowledge of personality, and Costa and McCrae's Five Factor Theory. In this essay I will first break down larsen and Buss definition and connect it to the domains, then connect the domains to the five factor thoery (FFT).

In psychology, personality traits could be explained from many aspects, and one of them describes personality traits as categorizations of people’s particular characteristics (Burger, 1997) while others hold opposite ideas that personalities are more unique and different for each individual depending on his or her peculiar life experience. The former idea relates itself to nomothetic approach, which is a quantitative approach that studies personalities that people share in common to find out a general law that applies to everyone. The nomothetic approach suggests that people show universal traits and that personality traits are consistent within humans. Gordan Allport first brought up this approach to understand personality in 1930s, and

Keeping these basic approaches in mind, Allport’s theory of traits seems a natural part of his

The study of personality traits is beneficial in identifying the many variables that exist from human to human; the combinations of these variables provide us with a true level of individuality and uniqueness. In the field of psychology, trait theory is considered to be a key approach to the study of human personality (Crowne, 2007; Burton, Westen & Kowalski, 2009). This paper aims to identify a number of significant contributors who have played crucial roles in both the development and application of trait theory. This paper then moves focus to these theorists, outlining their theory and analysing both the strengths and weaknesses of those theories. An illustration of the methods used in trait measurement is given and includes the