Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that examines personality and its variation among individuals. It aims to show how people are individually different due to psychological forces. Its areas of focus include: Describing what personality is. Documenting how personalities develop. Explaining the mental processes of personality and how they affect functioning. Providing a framework for understanding individuals.
"Personality" is a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by an individual that uniquely influences their environment, cognition, emotions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations. The word personality originates from the Latin , which means "mask".
Personality also pertains to the pattern of thoughts, feelings, social adjustments, and behaviors persistently exhibited over time that strongly influence one's expectations, self-conceptions, values, and attitudes. Environmental and situational effects on behaviour are influenced by psychological mechanisms within a person. Personality also predicts human reactions to other people and their behavior, problems, and stress.Winnie, J.F. & Gittinger, J.W. (1973) An introduction to the personality assessment system. Journal of Clinical Psychology, Monograph Supplement, 38,1=68Krauskopf, C.J. & Saunders, D.R., (1994) Personality and Ability: The Personality Assessment System. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland Gordon Allport, in 1937, described two major ways to study personality: the nomothetic and the idiographic.Nomothetic psychology seeks general laws that can be applied to many different people, such as the principle of self-actualization or the traits of extraversion and introversion. Idiographic psychology is an attempt to understand the unique aspects of a particular individual.
The study of personality has a broad and varied history in psychology, with an abundance of theoretical traditions. The major theories include dispositional (trait) perspective, psychodynamic, humanistic, biological, behaviorist, evolutionary, and social learning perspective. Many researchers and psychologists do not explicitly identify themselves with only one perspective and instead take an eclectic approach. Research in this area is empirically driven—such as dimensional models based on multivariate statistics like factor analysis—or emphasizes theory development, such as psychodynamic theory. There is also a substantial emphasis on the applied field of personality testing.
Philosophical assumptions Many of the ideas conceptualized by historical and modern personality theorists stem from their basic philosophical assumptions. The study of personality is not a purely empirical discipline, as it brings in elements of art, science, and philosophy to draw general conclusions. The following five categories are some of the most fundamental philosophical assumptions on which theorists disagree:
Freedom versus determinism: This is the question of whether humans have control over their own behavior and understand the motives behind it, or if forces beyond their control causally determine their behavior. Behavior is categorized as being either unconscious, environmental, or biological by various theories. Heredity (nature) versus environment (nurture): Personality is thought to be determined largely either by genetics and biology, or by environment and experiences. Contemporary research suggests that most personality traits are based on the joint influence of genetics and environment. One of the forerunners in this arena is C. Robert Cloninger, who pioneered the Temperament and Character model. Uniqueness versus universality: This question discusses the extent of each human's individuality (uniqueness) or similarity in nature (universality). Gordon Allport, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Rogers were all advocates of the uniqueness of individuals. Behaviorists and cognitive theorists, in contrast, emphasize the importance of universal principles, such as reinforcement and self-efficacy. Active versus reactive: This question explores whether humans primarily act through individual initiative (active) or through outside stimuli. Traditional behavioral theorists typically believed that humans are passively shaped by their environments, whereas humanistic and cognitive theorists believe that humans play a more active role. Most modern theorists agree that both are important, with aggregate behavior being primarily determined by traits and situational factors being the primary predictor of behavior in the short term. Optimistic versus pessimistic: Personality theories differ concerning whether humans are integral in changing their own personalities. Theories that place a great deal of emphasis on learning are often more optimistic than those that do not.
Personality theories
Type and trait theories
Personality type refers to the psychological classification of people into different classes. Personality types are distinguished from personality traits, which vary in degree. For example, in type theory, there are two types of people: introverts and extroverts. According to trait theories, introversion and extroversion lie on a continuous dimension, with many people falling in the middle. Personality is complex; a typical theory of personality contains several propositions or sub-theories, often evolving as more psychologists explore it.
The most widely accepted empirical model of durable, universal personality descriptors is the Big Five personality traits model, which includes conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion and introversion. It is based on cluster analysis of verbal descriptions in self-reporting surveys. These traits demonstrate considerable genetic heritability. Buddhist: Perhaps the most ancient attempt at personality psychology is the personality typology outlined by the Indian Buddhist Abhidharma schools. The Abhidharma typology primarily focuses on negative personal traits (e.g., greed, hatred, and delusion) and the corresponding Buddhist meditation practices used to counter them. Jung and Marston: An influential European tradition of psychological types originated in the theoretical work of Carl Jung, specifically, in his 1921 book (Psychological Types), as well the work of William Moulton Marston. In the former Soviet Union, Lithuanian Aušra Augustinavičiūtė independently developed a model of personality type based on Jung's socionics. Later, many other tests were developed based on this model, including, for example, Golden, PTI-Pro, and JTI. Myers and Briggs: Building on the writings and observations of Jung during World War II, Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs, delineated personality types by constructing the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which has since been characterized as pseudoscientific. This model was later used by David Keirsey with a different understanding from Jung, Briggs, and Myers.
Theories could also be considered an "approach" to personality or psychology and are generally referred to as models. The "model" is an older and more theoretical approach to personality, accepting extroversion and introversion as basic psychological orientations in connection with two pairs of psychological functions: Perceiving functions: sensing and intuition (i.e., trust in concrete, sensory-oriented facts vs. trust in abstract concepts and imagined possibilities). Judging functions: thinking and feeling (i.e., basing decisions primarily on logic vs. deciding based on emotion).
Briggs and Myers also added another personality dimension to the MBTI to measure whether a person prefers to use a judging or perceiving function when interacting with the external world. Therefore, they included questions designed to indicate whether someone wishes to come to conclusions (judgement) or to keep options open (perception).
The MBTI personality typology has some aspects of trait theory: it explains people's behavior in terms of fixed, opposite characteristics. In these more traditional models, the sensing/intuition preference is considered the most basic, dividing people into "N" (intuitive) or "S" (sensing) personality types. An "N" is further assumed to be guided either by thinking or feeling and divided into the "NT" (scientist, engineer) or "NF" (author, humanitarian) temperament. An "S", in contrast, is assumed to be guided more by the judgment/perception axis and thus divided into the "SJ" (guardian, traditionalist) or "SP" (performer, artisan) temperament. These four are considered basic, with the other two factors in each case (including "always extraversion/introversion") less important. Critics of this traditional view have observed that the types can be quite strongly stereotyped by professions (although neither Myers nor Keirsey engaged in such stereotyping in their type descriptions), and may, therefore, arise more from the need to categorize people for purposes of guiding their career choice. This among other objections led to the emergence of the five-factor (i.e., Big Five) view, which is less concerned with behavior under work conditions and more concerned with behavior in personal and emotional circumstances. (The MBTI is not designed to measure the "work self", but rather what Myers and McCaulley called the "shoes-off self.")
Type A and Type B personality theory: During the 1950s, Meyer Friedman and his co-workers defined what they called Type A and Type B behavior patterns. They theorized that intense, hard-driving Type A personalities had a higher risk of coronary disease because they are "stress junkies." Type B people, on the other hand, tended to be relaxed, less competitive, and lower-risk. There was also a Type AB mixed profile.
Health psychology, which studies how individuals engage with and self-conceptualize their health, has been influenced by the Type A and Type B personality theories, which reveal how personality traits can impact cardiovascular health. Type A individuals, known for their competitiveness and urgency, may have an elevated risk for cardiovascular conditions like high blood pressure and coronary heart disease relative to the general population.
Day and Jreige, in a 2002 study, investigated the Type A behavior pattern as a mediator in the relationship between job stressors and psychosocial outcomes. Their study, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, demonstrated that individuals exhibiting Type A characteristics were more susceptible to adverse psychosocial effects, such as increased stress and lower job satisfaction, when exposed to workplace stressors. Their research, therefore, highlighted the importance of considering personality traits in managing occupational health.
Eduard Spranger's personality model, consisting of six (or, in some revisions, 6+1) basic types of value attitudes, as described in his book Types of Men.Spranger E. Types of men: the psychology and ethics of personality. Authorized translation of the 5th German ed. by Pigors PJW. Halle (Saale): M. Niemeyer; 1928 The Enneagram of Personality is a model of human personality that is principally used as a typology of nine interconnected personality types. It has been criticized as being subject to interpretation, making it difficult to test or validate scientifically. The Enneagram was taught by former Fulbright scholar Claudio Naranjo stuying at Harvard under Gordon Allport. The pioneering model was designed for use by Psychotherapists but has been popularized by many. See "Taking with the Left Hand". Recent studies of the model are shared by International Psychotherapy Network. Distinguished Professor Daniel Siegel and faculty of National Institute of Health have published study integrating biology and Enneagram.