Overview of Personality and Traits Theories
A personality trait is what we usually call a characteristic way in which an individual perceives feels, believes, or acts. When we casually describe someone, we are likely to use trait terms: he is, for example, somewhat of an introvert, a pretty nervous person, strongly attached to his family, frequently depressed, and intelligent. He has a good sense of humor, fond of languages, very fond of good food, not at all fond of exercise, and a little obsessive. You see, we have just given you ten traits that actually go a long way towards describing him (subject).
Personality is a stable set of characteristics and tendencies that determine those commonalities and differences in the psychological behavior (thoughts, feelings and actions) of people that have continuity in time. An important aspect of our personality is that each theory of personality is based on the assumption that we are each unique. We each have a certain amount of aggression, malice, humor, virtue, happiness, poise, and so forth. However, the unique combination that defines you is identifiable. Despite the powers of prediction gained from knowledge of your heredity, your past experiences, and your current environment, there is still enough that is unique about your response capabilities as to warrant the study of your personality. Major contributing factors to personality are heredity and environment, which includes culture, family, social and situational conditions.
Psychologists, especially “Personologists”, are very interested in character and personality traits. They are especially interested in finding which traits are broad and possibly genetically based, as opposed to ones that are rather peculiar and can change easily. Over the years, we have had a number of theories that attempt to describe the key traits of human beings. We have selected several of them that are most credible, relevant to Kazakhstan, widely accepted and practical.
Carl Jung and the Myers-Briggs
Carl Jung – a colleague of Sigmund Freud, introduced one of the earliest trait theories that became one of the main concepts in personality studies. Jung was never completely sold on Freud's ideas, and soon left his side to develop his own theory. This is not the place to go into details, but one aspect of the theory concerned traits that Jung felt were inborn. These inborn, genetically determined traits are usually called temperaments.
Later on, two students of Jung's theory named Myers and Briggs - mother and daughter - developed a personality test based on Jung's temperaments called the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, or MBTI. It has gone on to become the most famous personality test of all time.
These traits are seen as opposites, and the first set is introversion and extraversion. Introversion refers to a tendency to prefer the world inside oneself. The more obvious aspects of introversion are shyness, distaste for social functions, and a love of privacy.
Extraversion is the tendency to look to the outside world, especially people, for one's pleasures. Extraverts are usually outgoing and they enjoy social activities, but they don't like to be alone.
The majority of people in the world are extraverts, so introverts often feel a bit out of it. A society like ours is very pro-extravert, even to the point of seeing introversion as abnormal and shy people in need of therapy. There are some cultures, however, that see extraverts as the oddballs. We should note that it was Jung who first used the terms introversion and extraversion.
Jung believed that introversion-extraversion was either-or. You are born one or the other and remain that way for the rest of your life. Now you could, as an introvert, learn to behave more like an extravert, or, as an extravert, learn to behave more like an introvert. But you can't really switch. If this is true, that would suggest that introversion-extraversion is determined by a single gene, something that is pretty unusual even for more physical differences. Nevertheless, it seems that introversion-extraversion is a very significant and fairly stable trait.
Next, there is a contrast between sensing people and intuiting people. Sensing types, as the name implies, get all their information about life from their senses. They tend to be realistic, down-to-earth people, but they tend to see everything in rather simplistic, concrete, black-or-white terms.
Intuiting people tend to get their information from intuition. This means that they tend to be a little out of touch with the more solid aspects of reality - a little "flakey", you might say - but may see "the big picture" behind the details better. Intuiting people are often artistic and can be rather philosophical.
Again, the majority of people are sensing, and that can make intuiting people feel rather lonely and under-appreciated. Our society tends to be distrustful of dreamers, artists, and intellectuals - but other societies may be more appreciative.
After that, we have another contrast, this time between thinkers and feelers. Thinking people make their decisions on the basis of thinking - reasoning, logic, step-by-step problem solving. This works very well for physical problems, but can leave something to be desired when dealing with something as complex as people.
Feeling people make their decisions based on their feelings. While this doesn't work so well when trying to fix your car or your computer; feelings are a kind of intuition that works very well when dealing with people.
Half of all people are thinking and half are feeling, but the proportions differ when we start looking at gender: The majority of men are thinkers and the majority of women are feelers. This goes along well with old stereotypes as well as recent research: men tend to do better with step-by-step problem solving, especially involving mechanical things; women tend to do better in social situations. Some people have criticized Jung for this apparent sexism, but we should note that a good third of men are feelers, and a good third of women are thinkers, so it is not a simple "men vs. women" kind of thing. Plus, Jung said that there is no reason to value thinking over feeling - each has its strengths and weaknesses. Note also that feeling men may feel odd, as may think women. Stereotypes do the greatest harm when they prevent individuals from being what they in fact are.
The last contrast is judging versus perceiving. Judging people tend to be more like Freud's anal retentive types - neat, orderly, hardworking, always on time, scheduling things very carefully. College professors tend to be judging.
Perceiving people are more spontaneous. They prefer to do things as the spirit moves them. They are probably more fun than the judging types but, as you can imagine, they tend not to get things done. It often seems to us college professors that college students are all perceiving.
In general, the distribution of judging and perceiving people is pretty even - 50-50.
Hans Eysenck
Hans Eysenck was the first psychologist to make this trait or temperament business into something more mathematical. He gave long lists of adjectives to hundreds of thousands of people and used a special statistics called factor analysis to figure out what factors - trait dimensions - carry the most weight. He took the results of this work and created a test called the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ).
Instead of making these traits either or, like Jung did, he saw them as dimensions. His first trait dimension was, like Jung, extraversion-introversion. But rather than say you were one or the other (an I or an E), he gave you a score on extraversion-introversion. A low score meant you were introverted, a high score was more extraverted. Of course, this meant you could be halfway in-between, as in fact most people are.
His second trait dimension he called neuroticism. If you scored high on this scale, that meant you tended to be a very nervous, emotional sort of person. While it doesn't mean you are necessarily a neurotic, it does mean you are more likely to develop neurotic problems such as phobias, obsessions, compulsions, and depression than someone who scores low. Low neuroticism is nowadays often called emotional stability.
The third dimension is called psychoticism. He added this later in his research, after he had gotten more data from people who were in mental institutions. As the name implies, these are people with tendencies to psychosis, meaning that they are more likely to have problems dealing with reality. Psychotic people sometimes have hallucinations and often have delusions such as odd beliefs about being watched, perhaps by the CIA or even by creatures from other planets. A middle score on psychoticism might mean that you are a bit eccentric or that you take risks that other people aren't as likely to take. A low score means that you are pretty normal in this regard.
Eysenck's research gets a great deal of respect, and most psychologists see his theory as on the right track.
The Big Five Personality Traits
More recently, a number of researchers have been using the latest in computer technology to redo the work that Eysenck and other earlier researchers did in far more laborious ways. This has led to what is known as the "big five" or the "five factors" theory.
The first dimension is, again, extraversion-introversion. Different jobs require different levels of extraversion. A high level of extraversion may be useful for jobs that require a great deal of interaction with other people, like public relations, teaching, and sales. Positions that are more focused on working independently and alone may be more suited to individuals with a lower level of extraversion.
The second is usually called emotional stability, and is simply the reverse of Eysenck's neuroticism. A person who has a high level of emotional stability is preferred in most professions because they have more control over their emotions at work. Employees with low emotional stability may be more easily distracted from their work, by deadlines, personal situations, and pressure.
The third is called agreeableness. A high score means that you tend to be friendly and accommodating being a nice person. If you score low, you are likely to be more idiosyncratic and have trouble getting along with people. This is not entirely negative: agreeable people often get their nice reputation by conforming and compromising on their principles, while non-agreeable people are more likely to stick to what they think is right even if it's unpopular. Then again, some are just plain disagreeable. Agreeableness is an obvious advantage for building teams and maintaining harmony on the work floor. It’s a fact that agreeable people are more likeable than disagreeable people. On the other hand, agreeableness may not be useful in some occupational situations that require difficult or objective decisions.
The fourth is conscientiousness. This parallels closely with Jung's judging-perceiving. Conscientiousness is about how a person controls, regulates, and directs their impulses. Individuals with a high level of conscientiousness on a career test are good at formulating long-range goals, organizing and planning routes to these goals, and working consistently to achieve them. Score low on conscientiousness and that probably means you tend to slack off on your work, rarely worry about deadlines or neatness, and are more interested in taking it easy.
The fifth has come with several different labels, such as culture, openness to experience, or just openness. Individuals with a high level of openness have a general appreciation for unusual ideas and art. They are usually imaginative, rather than practical. Being creative, curious, open to new and different ideas, and in touch with their feelings are all characteristics of these people. If you score high on openness, you are more likely to enjoy cultural pursuits such as art, music, and dance. You are more likely to go to museums, the symphony, and the ballet. You are more likely to want to travel to exotic countries and meet people different from yourself. Individuals who score lower in openness on a career test are generally more closed-off, resistant to change, and analytical. They are close-minded, literal and enjoy having a routine. If you score low, you are more likely to seek out the McDonalds, even when you are in Paris or Bangkok. Having a high level of openness is important in jobs that require creative thinking and a flexible attitude. Jobs such as advertising, research and other artistic occupations all benefit from high openness. A person who scores low in openness on a career test may excel in jobs that involve routine work and do not require creativity.
These five have stood up so well to research that I suspect most psychologists today accept them, at least until something even better comes along. It is also becoming clear that these are in fact strongly influenced by genetics. In other words, you are born with at least the general outline of your personality traits already laid out for you. That doesn't mean you can't change your abilities, it just means that it is less likely and more difficult.
All abovementioned personality traits theories are logically correlated to some extent. Each of them cover some part of the other theory, dividing them into psychological, or rather perceptual dimensions and complement the theory suggested by the rest. The thing is that newer ones, e.g. Big Five Personality Traits theory, are more complete and better structured. They explain and cover more dimensions of personality.
