Personality psychology

Personality psychology is the study of human personality, the development of patterns and behaviors that make up an individual’s outward personality as well as the underlying psychological processes that influence an individual’s inner personality. Other areas of investigation include the relative mutability or immutability of different personality traits over time or according to circumstance and the commonality of certain traits. Like developmental psychology, personality psychology is an area of study rather than a school of thought, and there are many different theories of personality within the field, some of which overlap with one another and others that are distinct and separate.

Background

There is no universally accepted definition of "personality" and no single, accepted theory of personality. The earliest, pre-psychological descriptions of personality were physiologically based: Greek physicians Hippocrates (460–370 BCE) and Galen of Pergamum (129–ca. 216 CE) believed that all emotion, including an individual’s personality, was influenced by and a result of an imbalance in the body of the "humors": yellow and black bile, phlegm, and blood. Furthermore, the English word "sanguine," which was derived from the Latin, via Old French, for "blood," reflects the belief that excess blood in a body resulted in a cheerful disposition.

Modern personality psychology, like most of the social sciences, began around the nineteenth century. Lexical hypothesis or lexical approach, which is still invoked by multiple theories of personality, was first proposed by Francis Galton (1822–1911) in 1884 and postulates that a person’s most prominent personality characteristics are reflected in language and word choice. In the 1930s, Gordon Allport (1897–1967), a trailblazer in formal personality psychology, developed a list of "central traits" that he believed governed individual personalities. Over the next several decades, various psychologists developed models that were grounded in Galton’s work and expanded on Allport’s theory, the most recognized of which is the "big five" model in which personality descriptors are grouped into five broad areas of character and traits.

Models built on the lexical hypothesis use specific descriptors for personality: attitude, preference, cognitive ability, behavior, and pattern of emotions. Some theories link personality with affect (a person’s emotions, feelings, or mood) as well as affect display (the outward expression of affect). Affect display can be conscious or unconscious, voluntary or uncontrollable, and includes facial expressions or tics, gestures or postures, tone of voice, changes in skin tone, laughing, and crying.

Overview

The big-five, or five-factor, model of personality theory was first proposed by Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal in 1961. It is an example of trait theory of personality psychology and maintains that five core personality traits (extroversion/introversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness) make up individual personalities. (The acronym OCEAN or CANOE is sometimes used when referring to these five areas.) Although the five-factor model is the most prominent and widely used trait-theory method, some researchers prefer to utilize two- or three-factor models. The personality traits of extroversion and neuroticism are included in each of these models. Trait theorists believe that personality traits are generally unchanging over time. Different trait theories use other groups of traits to describe personality, not all of which build on the lexical hypothesis.

Type theories of personality are familiar to many people. Horoscopes are examples of type theory because they sort personality types according to specific time frames. Psychological type theories originated in the 1920s with the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875–1961). Several decades later, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaire was developed based on Jung’s work. It is used extensively in research on personality and in practical applications to shed light on individual thoughts and feelings as determinants of personality type. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter (KTS) is also questionnaire-based. It is used to assess an individual’s observable traits, including patterns in communication, in order to determine specific trait types that then define an individual’s temperament. As with the MBTI, the KTS is used in researching personality. It is also used by corporations and businesses to gain insight into potential and existing behavior patterns as they relate to temperament.

Biological theories of personality are grounded in science. Neurologists have contributed to the understanding of the role that brain structures play in emotions and affect. The Human Genome Project has led to new studies on the heredity of personality traits or tendencies. Studies of twins have found that identical twins have substantially more personality traits in common than same-sex fraternal twins, though critics point out the potential for environmental effects on personality as well.

Psychoanalytic theories of personality, beginning with Sigmund Freud’s personality development theories in the early 1900s, are based on three components of personality. The id seeks immediate gratification; the ego tries to meet the needs of the id while contending with the reality of the outside world; and the superego (or conscience) imposes moral judgment and absorbs rules like laws and etiquette on the choices the ego makes. The components develop in the order listed, which is why babies and young children seem irrationally needy and why children can seem amorally selfish as compared to adults who are able to rationalize the need for moral behavior.

Behaviorist theories of personality, first proposed in the 1910s by psychologist John B. Watson (1878–1958), focus on observed behaviors, learning, and the ways in which an individual’s environment and upbringing influence behavior. A common term in behaviorist theories of personality is "operant conditioning," first proposed by B. F. Skinner (1904–90), which purports that individual behaviors are dependent on learned response techniques: if a behavior has a positive response or reward, the behavior is repeated. Similarly, if a behavior has a negative consequence, it is less likely to be repeated. Behaviorists believe that personality develops over the course of a lifetime and is not grounded in an individual’s childhood experiences.

Bibliography

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Larsen, Randy, David Buss, and Andreas Wismeijer. Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge about Human Nature. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2013. Print.

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