Trait Theory, As Its Name Suggest Is A Platform To Study

Hans Eysenck, a psychologist well known in the field of personality based his trait theory on biological explanations; whereby he believed genetic and biological factors were significant elements of personality (Eysenck 1990). Eysenck also held the view that an individual’s personality traits, or what he referred to as ‘temperament’ was an exact result of one’s genetic make-up (Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2005). Eysenck encompassed the idea that there was a need to highlight the significant dimensions of personality, create a way in which they could be measured and then link them with experimental procedures. Subsequently, Eysenck developed a model of personality based on a theoretical and statistical approach to the classification of traits. This is

Burger (2008), says that there are many theories of personality and psychologists try to explain it with their own approaches. Discussed here will be the psychoanalytic approach, the trait approach, the biological approach the humanistic approach, the behavioural/social learning approach and the cognitive approach. They were devised to search for specific patterns in behaviour and ways of thinking about these

Feist, J., Feist, G. J., & Roberts, T. (2013). Theories of personality (8th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

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

3. Henry Murray created a theory of personality traits that were organized by motivation, presses, and needs or the personological system (1938)

Funder discusses on how personality psychology formulates around numerous basic approaches. One approach Funder talks about is the biological approach, which addresses the mental process on our behavior including anatomy, physiology, genetics, and evolution. This approach analyses our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors through our mind. Another approach that Funder discusses is the trait approach, which is basically the study of human personality; the trait approach concentrates on the way an individual differs in emotion, thought, and behavior and how those differences are measured. These two approaches complement each other because the trait approach focuses on routine patterns of an individual that are behaviors, feelings, and thoughts which those

The Biological and Psychological Trait Theories are theories that are used to try and explain deviance. Biological Trait Theory stems from the Italian School of Criminology (mid-nineteenth century), head by criminologist Cesare Lombroso. Lombroso argued that criminality was a biological trait found in humans. Lombroso’s idea of atavism connected an individual’s appearance and their biological inclination to criminal activity. The Psychological Trait Theory focused on the mental aspects of explaining criminal activity by evaluating their intelligence, personality, and learning behavior. There are three subunits of the Psychological Trait Theory, which are the psychodynamic theory, behavioral theory, and cognitive theory. Sigmund Freud developed the psychodynamic theory with his research of the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious functions of the mind. The behavioral theory is about developing human actions through learning experiences. It explains that crime is learned from life situations. People aren’t born with violent tendencies, rather it’s learned from life experiences. Three sources of this behavior are family, the media, and the environment. Cognitive theory focuses on how people perceive and mentally represent the world around them and solve problems. In the case of Jared Loughner, the psychological trait theory is the most applicable. With his diagnosis of being a paranoid schizophrenic, that connects him to both the psychodynamic perspective and

When it comes to biosocial and trait theories we ask ourselves at times, do some of the previous studies and ideas still relate to some of the new biosocial and trait theories we have in today’s day and age? In the article in Medical News today “Childhood poverty linked to brain changes related to depression by Honor Whiteman. The study provides information as to why children who are poor are more likely to become depressed. The Study shows that children between the ages nine or ten year olds have a higher risk at becoming depressed. (WorkCite).

Raymond Cattell was one of the pioneer trait theorists. He was a strong advocate of the trait approach to human personality. As trait theorists, Raymond Cattell and Hans Eysenck, their primary interest is in the measurement of traits or the patterns/habits of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. He followed the footsteps of psychologist Gordon Allport but differed from Allport’s belief that the human personality is composed of several hundred personality traits. Cattell believed in a defined range traits and that each person has a bit of each of these defined traits in their personality. When one understands those “ranges” of traits, we can understand someone fully and then predict how they will respond/behave in any situation. Hans

This paper is a comparison of three different viewpoints on the subject of personality. Carl Jung, B.F. Skinner, and Carl Rogers all had very different outlooks on what defined someone’s personality. As an added feature I have included myself as a theorist because my views are also different from the previous mentioned theorists. This paper will also look briefly into the background of each theorist because their views on life began in their childhood. Amazingly you will notice the all had similar backgrounds, but came up with completely different ways of looking at life.

Although the early part of the personality era is important this was a building block that needed expansion, so personality traits were incorporated to expand on the great man theory.

In describing what personalities are like, Kelly abandons the classical threefold division of psychological phenomena: cognition, affection and conation (Kelly, 1955, p.130). Instead, he formulates his own personality theory with a single structure named "Construct". In this section, let's review the concept of construct and some of its features.

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).

Personality is the dynamic organization of characteristics that blend or make a person unique and though in his or her appearance or reasoning. (Weinberg & Gould, 1999). According to Eysenck 1966, when he was working in a hospital based in London he was exposed to many different patients. Eysenck’s work led him to develop a very important and well known model of personality in the psychology world. His model on personality theory was the result of culmination of answers to questionnaires on personality styles and statistics that he identified specific parameters to measure them and use in the theory. He used three categories of personality traits and these were; extraversion, psychoticism, and neuroticism. In 1940 Eysenck was doing work at the Audley psychiatric hospital in London while developing his theory. His job at the hospital was to make an initial assessment of each person admitted to the facility prior to being diagnosed by a psychiatrist. This position at the hospital led him to track and write many questions pertaining to behavior and personality. The questions were later applied to more than 700 soldiers who were being treated for neurotic disorders at Maudsley hospital (Eysenck, 1966).

Cardinal traits were rare and included traits that dominated a person, central traits were more general and descriptive of the individual, secondary traits were situational and related to an individual’s attitude and preference (Srivastava, 2005, p. 231). According to Buchanan (2010), German born psychologist Hans Eysenck devoted much of his career to both personality and intelligence research with much of this time spent in British universities. According to Haggbloom (2002), Eysenck’s research was thoroughly respected with him being the most regularly cited psychologist in science journals at the time of his passing. In 1947 Eysenck’s first book outlined what Eysenck viewed as the two central factors of personality; neuroticism and introversion/extraversion. Five years later Eysenck added another factor; psychoticism (Buchanan, 2010, p. 73). According to Carnivez & Allen (2005), British born psychologist Raymond Cattell centred his studies on factor analysis. His work observed him meticulously reduce Allport’s list of traits to less than two hundred. Applying his factor analysis knowledge, Cattell developed the 16PF questionnaire in 1949. Now in its fifth edition, it is still in wide use to this day (Boyle, Matthews & Saklofske, 2008). According to Tucker (2009), Cattell argued that while Eysenck’s three factor approach to personality was simpler, his own method was more thorough.