PERSONALITY
Personality
refers to a person’s general style of interacting with the world, especially
with other people whether one is withdrawn or outgoing, excitable or placid,
conscientious or careless, kind or stern. A basic assumption of the personality
concept is that people do differ from one another in their styles of behavior
in ways that are fairly consistent across time and place. This article
emphasizes the ways in which we are similar to one another, but in this segment
we turn explicitly to differences among us.
Most people are
fascinated by human differences. Such fascination is natural and useful. In
everyday life we take for granted those aspects of a person that are common to
all people, and we focus, instead, on aspects that distinguish one person from
another. Attention to differences helps us decide the different people that we
know. Personality psychologists make a scientific study of such differences.
Using questionnaires and other assessment tools, they conduct research to measure
personality differences and explain their origins. They try to relate
personality to the varying roles and habitats that people occupy in the social
world and they try to describe objectively the mental processes that underlie
the differences. Here we shall examine these endeavors.
This article is divided
into four main sections. The first section is concerned with the basic concept
of personality traits and with questions about their validity, stability, and
biological personality: How might individual differences prepare people for
life within different niches of the social environment? The third and fourth
sections are about the unconscious and conscious mental processes that may
underlie and help explain behavioral differences among individuals. In those
last two sections you will read of psychodynamic, humanistic, and
social-cognitive theories of personality.
PERSONALITY
TRAITS
What are the first
three adjectives that come to mind concerning your own personality? Do those
adjectives apply to you in all settings, or only in some? How clearly do they
distinguish you from other people you know? Do you have any idea why you have
those characteristics?
The most central
concept in personality psychology is the trait, which can be defined as a
relatively stable predisposition to behave in a certain way. Traits are
considered to be part of the person, not part of the environment. People carry
their traits with them from one environment to another, although the actual
manifestation of a trait in the form of behavior usually requires some
perceived cue or trigger in the environment. For example, the trait of
aggressiveness might be defined as an inner predisposition to argue or fight.
That predisposition is presumed to stay with the person in all environments, but
actual arguing or fighting is unlikely to occur unless the person perceives
provocations in the environment. Aggressiveness or kindness or any other
personality trait is, in that sense, analogous to the physical trait of melt
ability in margarine. Margarine melts only when subjected to heat (a
characteristic of the environment); but some brands need less heat to melt than
others do, and that difference lies in the margarine, not in the environment.
Why
Trait is considered a description rather than an explanation of behaviour.
Traits describe how
people differ from others in particular dimensions, but they are not themselves
explanations of those difference. To say that a person is high in
aggressiveness simply means that the person tends to argue or fight a lot, in
situations that would not provoke such behaviour in most people. The trait is
inferred from the behaviour. It would be meaningless, then, for me to say that
Harry argues and fights a lot because he is highly aggressive. That would be
essentially the same as saying, “Harry argues and fights a lot because he
argues and fights a lot.”
THE
FIVE-FACTOR MODEL OF PERSONALITY
The five factor model,
in its most commonly accepted form, is summarized in the table below. According
to the model, a person’s personality is most efficiently described in terms of
his or her score on each of five relatively independent global trait
dimensions: neuroticism
(vulnerability to emotional upset), extraversion
(tendency to be outgoing), openness
to experience, agreeableness, and
conscientiousness.
FACTOR MODEL
OF PERSONALITY
|
FACETS
|
Neuroticism –
stability (N)
|
Anxious-calm;
Angry-placid; Depressed-not depressed; Self-conscious – not self-conscious;
Impulsive-controlled; Vulnerable-secure.
|
Extraversion –
Introversion (E)
|
Warm-detached;
Gregarious-withdrawn; Assertive-unassertive; Active-contemplative;
Excitement-seeking – tranquility-seeking; Positive emotions-modulated
emotions.
|
Openness to
experience – Non Openness (O)
|
Here
the six facets refer to openness versus non-openness to experience in each of
six realms: Fantasy, Aesthetics, Feelings, Actions, Ideas, and Values.
|
Agreeableness-antagonism
(A)
|
Trusting-suspicious;
Straightforward-conniving; Altruistic-selfish; Compliant-noncompliant;
Modest-self aggrandizing; Tender minded-hard headed.
|
Conscientiousness-undirectedness
(C)
|
Competent-incompetent;
Ordered-disordered; Dutiful-neglectful; Achievement striving-not achievement
striving; Self disciplined-not self disciplined; Deliberative-careless.
|
Nearly all of the
thousands of adjectives commonly used to describe personalities correlate at
least to some degree with one or another of these five traits. The model also
posits that each global trait dimension encompasses six subordinate trait
dimensions referred to as facets of that trait (Costa and McCrae, 1992;
Paunonen and Ashton, 2001). The facets within any given trait dimension
correlate with one another, but the correlations are far from perfect. Thus, a
detailed description of someone’s personality would include not just a score
for each of the five global traits but also a score for each of the 30 facets.
The facet terms shown in the table above can help you identify the
characteristics that each of the five major trait dimensions includes.
CATTELL’S
16 SOURCE TRAITS, OR PERSONALITY FACTORS
1. Sociable
– unsociable
2. Intelligent
– unintelligent
3. Emotionally
stable - unstable
4. Dominant
– submissive
5. Cheerful
– brooding
6. Conscientious
– undependable
7. Bold
– timid
8. Sensitive
– insensitive
9. Suspicous
– trusting
10. Imaginative
– practical
11. Shrewd
– naïve
12. Guilt
proclivity – guilt rejection
13. Radicalism
– conservatism
14. Self
sufficiency – group adherence
15. Self
disciplined – uncontrolled will
16. Tense
– relaxed.