Personality
Speculation about human nature is as old
as human nature itself. Personality is a natural concept and the features that
capture its meaning can be specified. Usually, personality refers to those
psychological characteristics of an individual that are general, enduring,
distinctive, integrated, and functional. Most theories of personality develop
categories of the “types” of personalities.
Remember, any theory that uses categories oversimplifies
the concepts they are discussing. They take a lot of variation in people and
group them into categories, with little regard for differences.
Personality usually refers to how we meet
the demands of the world. Therefore, it is either functional or not. Why do
some people earn straight A’s while others go straight to jail? The answer
might be found in personality. Most of the major personality theorists have
also been clinicians working with troubled individuals who have adapted poorly
to the world. Their theories of psychopathology have become theories of
personality. Few of these theorists have conducted any scientific research into
personality; instead they substitute their personal philosophy about
personality.
In addition, all the theories of
personality, except Trait theory, make several assumptions: 1) all people are
the same and must react the same to the same situations; 2) you react to all
situations without using any cognitive process (memory, speech, etc); 3)
biology is not involved in any aspect of your personality; 4) humans were
evolved to live in modern (within the last 150 years) times; and 5) history is
irrelevant. All of these assumptions are certainly open to severe questioning
if not outright dismissal.
Some people suggest that such variables as
race, ethnicity, and gender are things that contribute to your personality. In
most cases, exactly what the contribution is remains undefined.
The Psychodynamic Approach: Emphasis on
Motivation and Emotion
The first of the modern personality
theories to take form grew out of Sigmund Freud’s attempts to understand the psychological
disorder known in his time as hysteria. Freud believed that sexual conflicts
from childhood caused this condition. When he proposed his theory at the turn
of the century, he attracted numerous followers as well as critics. Many of his
followers ended up as critics, disagreeing with aspects of Freud’s theory and
proposing new theories. These new theories nonetheless preserved many of
Freud’s major ideas. Therefore, the psychodynamic approach refers
to the whole family of theories by Freud and others. These theories make the
following assumptions about human nature: People possess psychological energy
called libido. Our behavior is driven by this energy. Drives
and instincts provide this energy and are thus part of people’s biological
inheritance. We are unconsciously motivated to satisfy instinctive needs.
Often conflict exists between the
individual and society because a person’s biological instincts do not always
conform to social rules. Unconscious motives, forcibly kept from awareness
because they offend and threaten the conscious mind, are among the most
important determinants of behavior. Past events shape subsequent behavior. In
particular, struggles and conflicts during childhood affect an adult’s
thoughts, feelings, and actions. Psychodynamic views of personality development
assume that people must pass satisfactorily through early stages in order to
negotiate later stages with success. Not every psychodynamic theory embraces
all of these positions, but together they represent a generic version of this approach
to human nature.
Sigmund Freud: Unconscious Conflicts
The best place to start our discussion of
the psychodynamic approach is with its creator, Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939). Freud
was a Viennese physician trained in neurology. While treating patients
suffering from hysteria, he began to develop his theory of psychoanalysis.
Freud first worked with another physician, Joseph Breuer, from whom he learned
the technique of catharsis, the
so-called talking cure. Hysterical patients were hypnotized and encouraged to
talk about earlier events; as they touched upon areas of conflict, they
sometimes experienced an outpouring of emotion and an end to their symptoms (Jackson,
1994; Straton, 1990). Breuer and Freud (1895) interpreted hysteria and
catharsis in terms of energy (libido). Hysterical symptoms represented a restraining
of this energy, and catharsis represented its freeing. Freud did not like
hypnosis, however, and soon abandoned it in favor of another means of achieving
catharsis: free association. Patients were encouraged to say anything and
everything that came into their minds, without censoring. Their train of
associations often led back to a hidden conflict, and catharsis followed. This
was the first of the traditional “talking therapies”.
At first, Freud believed that the
conflicts he discovered referred to his patients childhood experiences.
Accordingly, he suggested that childhood sexual abuse produced adult hysteria.
He later modified this belief, suggesting instead his patient’s memories
represented sexual wishes on their part. These wishes had undergone repression, or removal to the unconscious, but they continued to influence
the patients.
Freud was a prolific writer who frequently
revised his theories. His Collected Works occupy more than 20 volumes,
and it is difficult to present a brief overview. The following covers some of
Freud’s major ideas, notably the structure of personality, the role of
instincts, and the way in which personality develops.
The Structure of Personality
Freud proposed that the mind has three
parts: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The conscious is what we are aware of at a particular
moment ("My favorite television show is about to start"). The preconscious is whatever we can voluntarily call into
awareness, such as telephone numbers, birthdays, and definitions of
psychodynamic terms. The unconscious contains
thoughts, feelings, and desires of which we are not aware.
The psychodynamic unconscious is motivated,
meaning that its content is not the result of simple forgetfulness. Rather, ideas
become unconscious because they upset us. For instance, one of Freud’s (1918)
case histories concerns a troubled young man whose psychological difficulties
seemed to start when he witnessed his parents making love. Although this man did
not consciously remember what he had seen years before, Freud concluded that
the memory remained in his unconscious and affected his later behavior. The man
was specifically afraid of wolves and other animals, presumably because they
reminded him of how his father looked while making love to his mother long ago.
Later in Freud’s career, he revised his
view of the mind. He described mental functioning with a new set of
distinctions. The id is where our instincts
are located and where the so-called pleasure principle rules. Under the
influence of the id, our thinking is dominated by wishes and impulses. We see
the world as we would like it to be. The id alone is present at birth; the
newborn is just a bundle of instincts seeking immediate gratification.
As we develop, we gradually become aware
of external reality, and a second mental structure develops: the ego. The ego is practical; it allows us to adapt to the world and to
satisfy our needs and desires in socially acceptable ways. The ego operates
according to the reality principle, which makes our thinking rational and
logical.
Because the id is present prior to the
ego, the pleasure principle is more basic to our functioning than the reality
principle. Freud termed thinking dominated by wishes and impulses primary
process, whereas he called rational and logical thinking secondary process, to
emphasize its derived nature. Primary process is the language of dreams,
fevers, drunken stupors, and lust. According to Freud, children think
exclusively in terms of primary process. Only through socialization do logic
and order secondary process enter the mental scene.
The last mental structure to develop is a
person’s moral sense, which Freud called the superego. The
superego emerges at about age 3 or 4 and represents the child’s internalization
of parental and societal values. Freud regarded the id, ego, and superego as
constantly interacting in a given situation. How they blend together for an individual
explains his or her particular personality.
The ego mediates between the impulses of
the id and the prohibitions of the superego. Suppose your boss infuriates you. You
want to punch him out (id), but doing so would create trouble (superego). So,
you tell a joke at his expense to your fellow workers (Zelvys, 1990). It may
not give you the same satisfaction as hitting him, but it does not get you
fired. In general, the ego uses defense mechanisms to strike suitable
compromises between the id and superego.
Life and Death Instincts
Freud explained behavior with instincts,
although he used the idea of an instinct much more broadly than contemporary
ethnologists do. According to Freud, people are primarily motivated by
pleasure. He called this motive the life
instinct, or Eros (after
the Greek god of love), and proposed that it was behind much of what we do,
including but not limited sexual behavior. Toward the end of his life, however,
Freud became convinced that Eros did not explain the whole of human motivation.
He was struck by the tendency of some individuals to act out, again and again,
painful episodes from their past. This compulsion to repeat horrible
experiences cannot be explained if our only instinct is a desire for pleasure
(Himmelstein, 1979).
So,
Freud proposed a death instinct or Thanatos (after the Greek god
of death). The death instinct motivates violence and aggression, against others
as well as ourselves. It explains warfare and hatred, drug and alcohol abuse, murder
and suicide. Contemporary psychologists, however, usually do not explain human
aggression in terms of instincts. Not surprisingly, Freud’s death instinct has
been the least accepted aspect of his theory (Lind, 1991; Maratos, 1994).
The Development of Personality
One of Freud’s best-known assumptions is
that children are inherently sexual. Freud’s (1905) pronouncements on the universality
of childhood sexuality created controversy, as you might imagine. Let us
examine what he meant. When Freud said that children are sexual, he did not
mean in the same way that adults are sexual. Rather, he proposed that children
and adults possess the same sexual instinct, desiring and seeking out physical
pleasure as the id impels them to do. But the means by which their sexual
instincts are satisfied changes throughout development. One key to
understanding personality is therefore in terms of psychosexual stages, defined by the part of our body that gives us pleasure. .
During the oral stage, from birth to age 1, the child’s mouth is the source of
gratification: sucking, biting, chewing, and crying. With weaning, the child
enters the anal stage, from about
Next to develop is the phallic stage, from about
Freud believed that women do not resolve
the oedipal complex as fully as men do (Krausz, 1994). The fear of retaliation from
the opposite-sex parent takes a sexual form; specifically, the child fears
castration. Little girls, who obviously lack a penis, believe that they have
already been castrated, meaning that they have anxieties that little boys do
not. These are presumably carried into adulthood. For example, women who try to
compete with men in school or jobs, Freud believed, suffered from Penis Envoy. These women realize they
do not have a penis and are envious, that is why they are competing with men. Freud
regarded women as not only fundamentally different from men but also inferior (Temperley,
1993).
After the phallic stage, at about 6 years, children enter what Freud called a
latency period, where sexual impulses are curbed. Development in other domains cognitive,
moral, and social becomes more important.
The genital
stage, which coincides with the onset of puberty, is the last step in
psychosexual development. During this stage, sexual impulses again emerge, only
now pleasure is obtained through the genitals in the course of sexual activity
with others.
Like other stage theories of development,
Freud’s theory proposes that we must pass through the stages in a particular order.
If we do not pass successfully through a stage because we are either frustrated
by not enough satisfaction or indulged by too much, a fixation results. Psychic energy is left behind,
and the concerns of that particular stage continue to dominate in adult
personality.
The behavior of a person fixated at the
oral stage, for example, will center on oral gratification, through excessive
eating, drinking, smoking, or talking (Lewis, 1993). Such individuals are also
thought to be highly dependent on others, seeking nurturance from them. A
person fixated at the anal stage might symbolically express either the
retention of feces, by relentlessly pursuing neatness and order, or the
expulsion of them, by being unbelievably sloppy and wasteful. Finally, a person fixated at the phallic stage
shows an exaggerated concern with sexuality, a concern that may be expressed in
excessive vanity. The contemporary macho man, draped in gold chains and
drenched in cologne, presumably acquired his excess baggage while passing
through the phallic stage (Kalfus, 1994).
Many of Freud’s specific claims about
psychosexual development are not supported by research (Peterson, 1992). His theorizing
about women, in particular, does not square with the facts. Freud assumed the
ideological biases of his era, not appreciating the influence of cultural
practices that assigned to women an inferior status. Indeed, the validity of
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory for individuals in times and places other than
his own has been questioned (Littlewood, 1990; Slote, 1992). Nonetheless, his
ideas about psychosexual development have become theoretical cornerstones.
Psychodynamic Approaches After Freud
Psychodynamic theory began with a focus on
abnormality, but Freud went on to apply it broadly: to dreams, humor, creativity,
religion, and even the origin and function of society. Consequently,
psychodynamic theory became an influential approach to the study of normal
personality. As noted earlier, other theorists followed Freud’s lead and
proposed their own versions of psychodynamic theory. These theorists often
disagreed with Freud’s emphasis on sexuality; most preferred a more social
explanation.
Carl Jung: The Collective Unconscious
An early follower of Freud was Carl Jung
(1875 - 1961), a Swiss physician who first worked with schizophrenic patients.
Jung (1907) believed that the bizarre hallucinations and delusions marking
schizophrenia paralleled Freud’s descriptions of the dreams of less troubled
individuals. In both cases, primary process thinking dominates.
Jung broke with Freud over the importance
of sexual motivation. In going his own way, Jung became interested in symbols, studying
mythology and anthropology. He was struck by the degree to which the same
images appeared in different times and places. Jung called these presumably
universal symbols archetypes and
proposed that they are located in a collective
unconscious:
a repository of ancestral experiences and memories that all people share. For
example, Jung identified one archetype as the shadow, which represents evil and
malice. People fill in the details of an archetype in accordance with their time
and place the shadow might be Lucifer, Dracula, Mr. Hyde, Darth Vader, or
Hannibal Lechter but its meaning is universal (Blennerhassett, 1993).
Jung proposed that the collective unconscious
represents tried-and-true ways of thinking about life and that when people tap into
it, they receive the wisdom of the ages. He further believed the collective
unconscious to be a more important aspect of personality than Freud’s
unconscious, which includes only an individual’s personal history (Nyborg,
1992). Some have suggested that Jung
used the collective unconscious to explain Penis Envoy: during cave man days, a
man could urinate on a fire and extinguish it, while a woman could not and she
became envious of this feat.
Jung’s ideas are intriguing, but they are
virtually impossible to verify. He did not specify the mechanisms by which the
collective unconscious is passed across generations or the way in which
archetypes take form for an individual (Lewis, 1989).
Alfred Adler: Compensating for Inferiority
Also among Freud’s early followers was
another Viennese physician, Alfred Adler (1870 - 1937). At first enthusiastic
about Freud’s ideas, Adler came to disagree with the primacy Freud had assigned
to sexuality. The disagreement resulted in a complete break between them,
personally and professionally. Adler (1910) believed that conflict plays an
important role in shaping our personality but that its nature is social rather
than sexual. He introduced the concept of the inferiority complex,
suggesting that all people feel inadequate with respect to some aspect of their
being, physical or psychological. Our development can be understood as our
attempt to compensate for this perceived inferiority with respect to others.
For instance, Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly child who developed himself into
a robust adult.
Another example of Adler’s (1927) interest
in the social determinants of personality is his theorizing about the child’s
position in the family. He believed that birth
order dictates the way children are treated and how their personalities
develop (Leman, 1985). Thus, the eldest child is the original center of
attention in a family, acquiring a need for power and authority; the second
child continually strives to overcome the older rival; and the youngest may be
spoiled and pampered on the one hand or flexible on the other. Birth order is a
social phenomenon, not a biological one. Research bears out some of Adler’s ideas about birth order (Watkins,
1992). For instance, firstborn individuals are more likely to become famous
(Simonton, 1994). Among those who have run for president, firstborns have won
more frequently than those born later.
Neo-Freudians: Social Relationships
A second generation of psychodynamic
theorists followed Adler’s lead by stressing the social character of people
over their instinctive, sexually motivated nature. The theorists who adopted
this point of view became known as neo-Freudians. So, Karen Horney (1885
- 1952) discarded the Oedipus myth to argue that people are motivated by
feelings of isolation from other people (Olfman, 1994; Shafter, 1992).
According to Horney (1937, 1945), the primary human need is to feel safe and secure
with others. If people do not feel secure, they experience what Horney called
basic anxiety. Fellow neo-Freudians proposed similar theories that elevated
people’s social relationships to primary status in determining personality
(Fromm, 1947; Sullivan, 1947). Often these theories de-emphasized the conflict
between id and superego, instead regarding the ego as an active, not reactive, agent
that does much more than mediate between our instincts and our conscience
(Hartmann, 1939; White, 1959).
Erik Erikson: Psychosocial Development
Erik Erikson (1902 - 1994) is known for
his ideas about life-span development. Unlike many other psychodynamic
theorists, Erikson never formally broke with Freud. Erikson called himself a
post-Freudian, one who follows Freud and builds on his earlier ideas. But
Erikson could quite easily be classified with the neo-Freudians because his
developmental theory has an explicit social emphasis. Social dilemmas, such as
trust versus mistrust and intimacy versus isolation, define the stages of life
in Erikson’s psychosocial theory of development, and they are resolved with the
help of culturally provided institutions (
Erikson also contributed to psychohistory,
a field that uses psychological theories to shed light on historical figures
and events. Erikson published studies of Adolph Hitler, Martin Luther, George
Bernard Shaw, Gandhi, and Thomas Jefferson, among others. More recent examples
of psychohistory include analyses by other researchers of the personalities of
David Koresh (Adityanjee, 1994), Bill Clinton (Elovitz, 1994), Anne Sexton
(Long, 1993), Saddam Hussein (Mayer, 1993), and François Mitterand (Guiton, 1992).
For instance, Bill Clinton’s early childhood was marked by frequent fighting
between his mother and stepfather, and his lifelong attempt to be evenhanded
and pragmatic presumably resulted. An important goal of psychohistory is to
understand a person in the context of his or her particular era. To grasp
someone’s motives, we have to locate their meaning within a given time and
place. This principle underscores the neo-Freudian attempt to view personality
in social terms.
Object Relations: Mental Representations
Many contemporary psychodynamic theorists
are interested in the mental representations people have of themselves and others.
These representations are called object
relations (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983; Stricker & Healey,
1990). Object was Freud’s term for people or things, and relations refer
to the perceived link between these objects and the individual. For example,
one person may think of his relationships with others as friendly and
supportive, whereas a second person may see these as hostile. In one sense, this emphasis on object
relations reflects the trend in recent decades for psychologists to be more
interested in cognition (Westen, 1991). However, object relations theories
maintain the traditional psychodynamic emphases on unconscious, irrational, and
emotional processes (Ingram & Lerner, 1992).
Evaluating the Psychodynamic Approach
The psychodynamic approach represents the
earliest attempt by psychologists to explain the whole of personality. The accounts
of Freud, Adler, Jung, Horney, Erikson, and others continue to be influential,
although more recent personality theories challenge them. Many critics find
psychodynamic theories to be so complex that they cannot readily be tested by research.
These theories also completely disregard any aspect of biology having any
effect on our personality.
Nonetheless, two aspects of the
psychodynamic approach have strongly shaped modern thinking about personality.
First is the idea that many of our important motives are unconscious. Second is
the idea that early childhood events can affect our characteristic behavior as
adults. In fact, the psychodynamic perspective, allows a great amount of
creativity in many different art forms that it is doubtful that it will ever be
abandoned by the general public or artists.
The Phenomenological Approach: Emphasis on
Cognition
The phenomenological
(or cognitive) approach to personality defines
personality by what and how we think. Although other personality theories
discussed so far acknowledge the importance of a person’s mental life,
phenomenological theories see conscious thoughts and beliefs as the primary
aspect of personality. How we feel and how we act is determined by how we
think, not vice versa.
Phenomenological theories share the
following assumptions:
Ø Behavior can be understood only in
terms of how an individual perceives the world. This psychological reality may overlap
perfectly, somewhat, or not at all with physical reality.
Ø People are like scientists in that
they entertain theories about themselves and the world and then try to test
those theories.
Ø People attempt to make their
thoughts more accurate, precise, and/or consistent.
Ø What people say about their own
thoughts and beliefs is taken seriously. To study personality, a researcher can
start by asking research subjects what they think.
The phenomenological approach applies
ideas from Gestalt psychology to complex behavior (Lewin, 1951). The two are united
by a concern with how people structure their experiences. One influential
phenomenological theory today is Carl Rogers’s self-theory.
Carl Rogers: Self-Actualization
Carl Rogers (1902 - 1987) was a clinical
psychologist whose personality theory grew out of his experiences in working
with clients.
Central to
But not all individuals actualize
themselves.
When a discrepancy occurs between
awareness and experience, self-actualization is thwarted, and problems follow. According
to
Evaluating the Phenomenological Approach
The phenomenological approach to
personality has grown in popularity during recent years, in part because it
makes clear contact with the influential cognitive revolution that has swept
through psychology as a whole. Phenomenological theories allow personality
psychologists and cognitive psychologists to speak readily to one another
(Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987).
Some have criticized the phenomenological
approach because it fails to underemphasize the emotional side of humans. These
critics suggest that emotion influence thoughts as much as thoughts influence
emotions (Frey & Adams-Webber, 1992). Again these theories fail to include
any aspect of biology.
The Social Learning Approach: Emphasis on
the Social Environment
The last perspective on personality is the
social learning approach: a group of related theories that explain
our complex behavior using principles of learning. The roots of this approach
are in behaviorism. Social learning theorists believe that the environment
determines behavior and that the most important aspect of the environment is
other people. Hence, the term social is used for emphasis. The following
assumptions are common to these theories:
Ø Learning is the most important
psychological process.
Ø The most basic explanations of
personality are phrased in terms of the social environment.
Ø Behavioral change is possible
through interventions that are guided by learning theory.
Most social learning theories introduce
unobservable factors in their explanations, including drives and expectations.
Modern social learning theories are similar to the theories of Kelly and
Rogers; however, in contrast to the phenomenological approach, the social
learning approach ties cognitions to particular settings, thereby preserving a
learning emphasis.
John Dollard and Neal Miller: Drive
Reduction
The first social learning theorists were
John Dollard (1900 - 1980) and Neal Miller (1909 - ). Their influential book, Personality
and Psychotherapy, published in 1950, assumed people learn behaviors that
reduce their physiological drives. They noted the similarity between the drive
reduction concept and the psychodynamic hypothesis that people strive to
satisfy their instincts. They therefore attempted to integrate learning theory
and psychoanalysis, discussing in detail how Freudian phenomena could be
explained in terms of learning.
Dollard and Miller suggested that
repression results from reinforcement for not thinking about particular topics.
Suppose a sexual encounter has left you feeling anxious. If and when you stop
thinking about it, the anxiety stops. That is reinforcing, and so you are
likely to continue not thinking about it. The difference between the
psychodynamic unconscious and the social learning unconscious is that the
former is a place to which thoughts are banished, whereas the latter is a
"behavior" (thinking) you are not performing.
Also like Freud, Dollard and Miller viewed
development in terms of the interplay between biological drives and the social environment.
Conflicts surface when parents punish their children for attempting to satisfy
drives like hunger, elimination, sex, and aggression. Dollard and Miller
introduced the idea of an approach-avoidance
conflict to describe a
course of activity both attractive (because it reduces drives) and unattractive
(because it produces punishment). By this view, the issue at the center of each
of Freud’s psychosexual stages is an approach-avoidance conflict. For example,
it is pleasurable for a child to masturbate, but it is not pleasurable to be
punished for doing so. Approach-avoidance conflicts are difficult to resolve,
and they can become part of our personality. When the goal is distant, in time
or space, it looks attractive and so we pursue it. When the goal becomes
closer, it looks unattractive and so we avoid it. What results is oscillation,
a back-and-forth movement in the vicinity of the goal. Think of goals like
cleaning out your closet, organizing your desk, or starting your term paper.
These all seem attractive until you begin to do something about them. Then
their unattractive features become evident and you stop. Approach-avoidance
conflicts may figure prominently in procrastination.
Albert Bandura: Modeling
Bandura believed that people acquire
complex behavior through modeling. We watch other people behave, and then we act
accordingly. If we see people act aggressively and get exactly what they want,
then we are likely to act the same way. Bandura used modeling as the
cornerstone of his version of social learning theory.
Another key concept in Bandura’s (1977)
view of personality is self-efficacy, an individual’s belief that a given
behavior can be enacted. According to Bandura, self-efficacy is the immediate
mechanism by which any and all behavior changes. Only if people believe they
can perform a behavior will they do so. Modeling is effective because it
strengthens self-efficacy, showing an individual that a behavior can be
performed.
Bandura (1986) stressed that behavior,
cognition, and the environment mutually influence each other. This mutual
influence, called reciprocal
determinism, is one more
key concept for understanding personality in social learning terms (Baranowski,
1989-1990; Kihlstrom & Harackiewicz, 1990).
Consider the example of watching
television. Your interests (cognition) determine the channel you select
(behavior). If your television set is hooked to a Nielsen box, then your
channel selection influences subsequent programming (environment). What is
available on television shapes your interests. All possible directions of
influence can occur.
Evaluating the Social Learning Approach
The social learning approach to
personality explicitly incorporates processes of learning and an emphasis on
the social environment. Social learning theories direct our attention away from
factors within the person (motives, traits, and thoughts) to the context in
which he/she behaves (Cantor, 1990).
However, a focus solely on the social
environment yields an incomplete view of personality. Even if the environment
is of critical importance, the social learning approach often fails to address
central issues. How do people decide which of several simultaneous drives to
reduce by their actions? How do people decide which of several simultaneous
models to emulate in their behavior? Why are most people some of the time and
some people all of the time unresponsive to social influence?
This difficulty with validating
personality testing is another example of the familiar refrain that no measure
is foolproof. All operational definitions, including those of individual
differences in personality, are subject to being confounded. The best a
researcher can do is be on the lookout for these threats and then try to
eliminate the most obvious ones.
Evaluation
of the Theories
All of the above theories suffer because
we see no examples of anything close to them in other species. It is doubtful
that any of these theories would be of any survival value for the species; in
fact it might hinder survival.
These theories are certainly not
parsimonious. The concepts are so complex that one could spend years discussing
the single behavior.
From the historical perspective, these
theories would not hold true in history or in current third world countries.
For example, Freud suggested that the source of one person’s conflict was
seeing his parents making love. Until the mid 19th century, sex was
a very open event as was nudity. It is highly likely that many children in the
middle ages saw their parents make love and suffered no deleterious effects.
Trait
theories
Like the psychodynamic approach, the trait approach consists of a group of related theories
united by common emphases. Most trait theories concern themselves with the
following questions:
Ø What are the fundamental ways in
which people differ?
Ø How can these differences best be
measured?
Ø How do individual differences
relate to adaptation?
Ø What is the origin of a particular
individual difference?
Trait theories sometimes describe
personalities as falling into a few separate categories, or types; you saw an
example in the character sketches that began this section. More commonly, trait
theories describe personality in terms of a few quantitative (more vs. less)
dimensions, or traits. For example, people can be placed along a dimension
reflecting the degree to which they are emotional versus unemotional.
The trait approach can be traced to
Gordon Allport: Setting the Trait Agenda
The Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport
(1897 - 1967) set the agenda for contemporary trait strategies. His importance
within the trait approach corresponds to that of Freud within the psychodynamic
tradition. Allport taught the first personality psychology course in the
Allport’s approach can be contrasted with
the psychodynamic approach. Whereas psychoanalysts began with an emphasis on
abnormality and then generalized to normality, Allport focused on normal
individuals. He felt that Freud’s theories applied only to troubled
individuals. Instead of understanding people in terms of unconscious conflicts
from their past, Allport believed the key to personality lay in the
individual’s conscious and rational striving toward future goals (DeCarvalho,
1991). Allport regarded traits as the
most appropriate units with which to understand personality. He defined a trait
as: a neuropsychic structure having the capacity to render many stimuli
functionally equivalent, and to initiate and guide equivalent (meaningfully
consistent) forms of adaptive and expressive behavior. (1961, p. 347)
In calling a trait neuropsychic, Allport
meant that it has a biological as well as a psychological basis. By saying that
a trait renders different stimuli functionally equivalent, he meant that traits
are associated with a consistent pattern of response across different
situations. In proposing that a trait initiates and guides behavior, he meant
that traits cause us to think, feel, and act in certain ways.
Finally, in defining traits as adaptive
(meaning they aid survival) and expressive (meaning they show up in a person’s
style of behaving), Allport came very close to the modern definition of an
evolved psychological mechanism. In one of Allport’s well-known endeavors, he
and a colleague read an entire dictionary and located 17,953 words describing
personality traits, everything from abashed to zestful (Allport & Odbert,
1936). Not all of these traits sensibly apply to everyone, and Allport (1961)
believed each of us possesses only seven to ten traits. These particular qualities,
termed personal traits, differ from person to person. So, for
example, my personality might be described as cautious and humorous because I
consistently act in these ways. However, your personality might be poorly
described with these traits. Perhaps sometimes you are cautious and sometimes
you are bold. You might occasionally crack a joke but otherwise be somber.
In contrast to personal traits are common traits, so named by Allport because they can be used to describe
everyone. Allport believed that common traits have limited usefulness in
capturing individuality, and so he urged a focus on personal traits.
Body Build and Personality
One strategy for distinguishing nature and
nurture with respect to personality is to find an actual biological basis for
individual differences. An early example of this approach is William Sheldon’s
(1899 - 1977) investigations of a person’s physique (or body build) and how
physique corresponds to personality. Sheldon (1940, 1942) started with the
observation that physiques could be described along three dimensions:
Ø Endomorphy--degree of roundness
Ø Mesomorphy--degree of muscularity
Ø Ectomorphy--degree of linearity
He devised ways of rating each of these
dimensions with 7-point scales, from low (1) to high (7). An individual’s
profile of scores is called a somatotype. A chubby person would be rated
Sheldon’s theory became an account of
personality when he hypothesized that different physiques are associated with
different styles of behaving. Endomorphs are easygoing and affectionate,
mesomorphs are action-oriented, and ectomorphs are sensitive and inhibited.
Sheldon’s original investigations have been criticized because he rated both
the somatotypes and the personality characteristics of research subjects;
unintended bias due to his expectations may have confounded the results.
However, more recent research in which ratings of physique are made
independently of ratings of traits tends to support Sheldon’s hypothesized
links between physique and personality (Quinn & Wilson, 1989). The reasons
for these links are unclear. Whereas Sheldon believed that the links are
directly biological, other psychologists have pointed to social stereotyping.
Heritability of Personality
A more contemporary approach in the spirit
of Sheldon’s biological theorizing investigates the genetic basis of individual
differences. The twin method is used for separating nature and nurture to show that
many personality traits are heritable. Tellegen, Lykken, Bouchard, Wilcox,
Segal, and Rich (1988) studied identical twins and fraternal twins, those
raised together and raised apart. On average, over 50 percent of the variation
in personality test scores was due to genetic variation. However, later studies
have shown that genetics/heritability play a much larger role than 50 percent
(Eysenck, 1990a; Plomin & Nesselroade, 1990). This does not mean that
specific behaviors are inherited, but general tendencies or personality.
Basic Traits: The Big Five
A particularly popular suggestion is the
so-called Big Five, originally described by psychologist Warren Norman
(1963). According to
Ø Neuroticism
(worried, nervous, emotional)
Ø Extraversion
(sociable, fun loving, active)
Ø Openness
(imaginative, creative, artistic)
Ø Agreeableness
(good-natured, softhearted, sympathetic)
Ø Conscientiousness
(reliable, hardworking, neat, punctual)
These are presumably dimensions of
personality along which all people fall.
At first glance, the Big Five seems
limited, but
Evaluating the Trait Approach
The trait approach to personality has made
its greatest contribution to the field by identifying the ways in which people
differ and by creating research procedures for assessing those differences. All
personality researchers use the tests and measures devised by trait
psychologists. The trait approach can also be praised for drawing attention to
the biological and genetic basis of personality.
Many of the important individual
differences among people are heritable, but why should they be? Several answers
are possible (Tooby & Cosmides, 1990a). One is that the well-being of a
group as a whole is served by variation in traits across individuals. Variation
guarantees maximum flexibility in adapting to different environments and
promotes the fitness of our entire species (Buss, 1991). Another possible
explanation is that personality traits at least within normal ranges are
irrelevant for survival and so have never been selected against. A third
possibility is that variation in personality is a consequence of other
biological characteristics of people, such as the structure or function of the
nervous system; natural selection produced these other characteristics, and
what we mean by personality merely came along for the evolutionary ride (Gould,
1991).