Personality Types Flashcards
What is Personality
‘reasonably stable patterns of behaviour, including thought and emotions, that distinguish people from one another’ (Mischel, 1986)
Behaviourist Approach
Environmental influences on personality development.
Associations made from past experience
Biological Approach
nature/genetic factors
Humanistic Approach
emphasises subjective experiences, self determination and human potential for growth. Self concept, ideal self, and self esteem.
Psychoanalytic Approach
childhood experiences, life stages, and repression
Cognitive Approach
the ways in which we process information based on our past experiences to make sense of the world. Schemas filter information
Allports Structure of Personality
cardinal traits - underpin all others, e.g. being helpful, disliking people, etc
• central traits - major characteristics, e.g. honesty, unpleasant, etc
• secondary traits - more peripheral, e.g. musical tastes
Cattell’s ‘Structure-based systems theory’ (1980)
‘that which a person will do when placed in a given situation’
• surface traits - readily observed in a person
• source traits - lie behind surface traits, e.g. dominant underlies assertive.
16PF (16 Personality Factor Questionnaire)
) to identify personality profile of source traits. Note that these are continuous - not one or the other. For example, you will be somewhere on a continuum from reserved to outgoing, and on the other 15, enabling a profile of you to be constructed.
Criticised because not all traits uncorrelated (or ‘orthogonal’).
. Eysenck’s Personality Types (1967)
‘a more or less stable and enduring organisation of a person’s character, temperament, intellect and physique which determines his/her unique adjustment to the environment’
Types (‘superfactors’):- Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ).
- extraversion versus introversion (E)
- neuroticism versus stability (N)
- psychotism (solitary, troublesome, cruel, insensitive, sensation seeking, aggressive, likes odd things, foolhardy, upsets others, does not accept social customs, little personal interaction) versus impulse control (P). Tough-minded v tender-minded.
Jung (1923)
Spoke of extraversion/introversion and sensing/thinking (rational) and intuition/feeling (irrational) types.
His typology was later developed in the 4 dichotomies of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI):-
Introvert – Extravert approach to others
Sensing – iNtuition how one gathers information
Thinking – Feeling how one judges or makes decisions
Judging – Perceiving whether one appears to the world more as a Judger (T or F) or as a Perceiver (S or N).
‘The Big Five’ (McCrae and Costa (1985) Personality Questionnaire
From a meta-analysis of factors previously isolated by others:-
extraversion – introversion
• agreeable - disagreeable
• conscientious - irresponsible
• neurotic – stable (emotional instability - emotional stability)
• open to experience - closed to experience
Evaluation of Trait/Type Theories
Where do they come from? How do they develop? Can they change?
They describe rather than explain personality. Later lectures on personality are all seeking to explain - from their different perspectives.
