Personality Development

 

Theories of Personality

Research in personality development is conducted by psychologists to study how our personality develops and how our personality influences our thoughts and behaviour. Personality psychology is one of the major branches of psychology. These professionals analyse the reasons why and how the personality of people varies and why certain people look similar. According to them, factors like genetics, life experiences, exposure to external environment, and the way of nurturing a child by the parents shape the personality of an individual. Psychologists have introduced many theories of personality that explain the different aspects of personality, how personality has developed, and why people are unique in nature. Some of the theories are as follows:

·       Type Theory

·       Trait Theory

·       Social Learning Theory

·       Humanistic Theory

·       Psychoanalytic Theory

1.Type Theory

Type theory is based on two factors, biological factors and psychological factors. The ancient Greeks were the first to classify personality on the basis of certain types. Hypocrates and then Galen divide personality into four categories called Humours and these categories are as follows:

• Sanguine which means the optimistic personality
• Choleric refers to anger, moody and irritable type of personality
• Melancholic meaning depressed personality
• Phlegmatic denotes a calm personality

Modern Type Theories:

The following are the modern theories of personality that are still existing and these theories are:

• Body Type theory
• Type A & Type B theories
• Carl Jung Theory

 

Body type theory:

This theory was introduced by Kretschmer and Sheldon which classifies personality on the basis of a person’ appearance and body type. They coined the categories of personality as:

• Endomorph meaning fat and lethargic
• Mesomorph or athletic refers to person having fit and aggressive personality
•  Ectomorph or asthenic means thin and creative personality

According to these two psychologists, a short and plumb person would be sociable, calm, and relaxed. A tall and thin person would be reserved, self-conscious and remain isolated. Whereas, a heavy and muscular person will be talkative, callous and prefer physical activities.

Type A and Type B Personality:

This type of personality studies how people respond to stress. Cardiologists, Friedman and Rosenman discovered Type A behaviour by observing the behaviour of patients waiting in their clinic. After conducting research, they revealed the fact that people with Type A personality are prone to a higher risk of heart disease and high blood pressure than people with Type B personality.

Type A personality

People with Type A personality are more competitive, self-critical, self-actualised, perfectionist, aggressive, hostile and work round the clock. They prefer doing multiple tasks at the same time, don’t enjoy achievements, hate failures and hence they become depressed and stressful.  

Type A Personality

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  Type B Personality

People having Type B personality are calm, relaxed, easy-going, flexible, adaptable, care free and casual in their approach. They are creative and have more patience, less stress, time management, stress management skills and critical thinking skills. They are open-minded persons and accept challenges, new ideas and new suggestions. They are broad minded people and set a specific goal which could be easily achieved. The enjoy success and are comfortable with failures. These people have lower risk of health issues like hyper tension and heart diseases.

 

                                                       Type B Personality

                                 

 

Carl Jung Theory

 

Carl Jung introduced this theory in his book “Psychological Types” where he described the four psychological functions, namely, thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Thinking and feeling come under rational functions and sensation and intuition are described by Jung as irrational functions. Karl Jung also says that every person has a dominant life attitude and a primary function and has given 8 personality types by combining various life functions and attitudes. These eight personality types are:

• The extraverted thinking type
• The introverted thinking type
• The extraverted feeling type
• The introverted feeling type
• The extraverted sensation type
• The introverted sensation types
• The extraverted intuitive type
• The introverted intuitive type

Introverted personality focus on their own mental world. Whereas, extraverted personality gives importance to outside world. The thinking type personality take decision based on reasons. But a feeling type personality take decision based on emotions. The sensation type persons are more influenced by external sensory stimuli like smell, sound, vision and even temperature. The intuitive type persons are influenced by undefinble internal feelings.

According to Jung, one life attitude is dominant in a person in addition to primary functions, secondary functions, lower and lesser developed functions. For example, in case of introversion type, the dominant life attitude is introversion, the primary function being thinking, sensation and intuition the secondary functions and feelings come under lower and lesser developed functions.

Karl Jung introduced this theory only for the purpose of psychotherapy and did not develop this theory to label the people under different types of personality. Based Jung’s theory, researchers and psychologists have developed many personality tests like:

• Myer’s Brigs Indicator
• Management Team Roles Indicator
• Type Dynamics Indicator
• Jungian Type Indicator
• Insights Discovery
• Golden Personality Type Profiler
• Big Five Personality Test

 

2.Trait Theory

    Trait is a specific characteristic of a person which distinguishes him/her from others. Genes, environmental factors or combination of both determine the traits of a person. Traits can be either qualitative, quantitative or both. Eye colour is an example of qualitative factor and height and blood pressure are examples of quantitative factors.  Trait theory also known as Dispositional Theory is an approach to study human personality by measuring traits like habits, thoughts and emotions. Trait theory differs from other theories and business people rely on trait theory to see person who the characteristics to be a good team leader.  Trait theory is in many ways similar to Type Theory and has given two ways to assess personality traits. They are:

• Assessing a person’s quality by making him describe himself to answer certain questions related to his attitudes, feelings, habits and behaviour.
• A person’s trait is assessed by someone else by means of observation method or collecting information about his behaviour.

A personality inventory, which is a questionnaire is generally used to measure the personality traits. This inventory consists of same set of questions with multiple options to answer and is given to all the persons whose personality are to be assessed. A personality inventory may be designed to measure as= single dimension of personality or it may several personality traits simultaneously. There are different contributors to trait theory and they are:

a ) Gordon Allport: Allport introduced a hierarchy of traits after extracting 18,000 words describing personality and reduced them into 4,000 words and these three levels of traits are;

• Cardinal traits: These traits dominate a person throughout his own life. Such traits are intrinsically tied to an individual’s personality that the person almost becomes synonymous with these qualities.  Cardinal traits develop in the later part of a person’s life and determine and shape almost all aspects of human behaviour and attitudes. Only few people have such traits that shapes the course of their entire life. Examples: Mother Theresa is known for kindness and for being charitable, Albert Einstein for brilliance.
• Central Personality Traits: Central traits are more common among the people but in varying degrees. Traits like honesty, loyalty, kindness, friendliness, intelligence, anxiousness are some of the central traits These traits serve as the basic building blocks that shape the behaviour of a person.
• Secondary Traits: These traits tend to appear in certain situations. Example, a calm person may become short tempered when he is overloaded with work and a person who speaks well at home may feel nervous at a public speech.

According to Allport, two forces, namely, internal and external influence an individual’s behaviour and personality. These forces are referred to as genotypes and phenotypes. Genotypes are internal persons that explains how an individual retains information and uses it to interact with others. Phenotypes are external forces that explains how an individual accepts his/her surroundings and how others influence a person’s behaviour.

b) Raymond Cattell:

In 1965, Raymond Cattell reduced the 4,000 words listed by Allport to 171 words by eliminating uncommon traits and grouping similar characteristics. He reduced these 171 words to 16 word describing personality by using the statistical technique, Factor Analysis.  According to Cattell, a large number of traits are required to judge a person’s personality. He collected data from different groups of people through three different sources. These sources are:

• L-data – Life record data such ad school grades, occupation, etc.,
• Q-data – Questionnaire designed to rate an individual’s personality
• T-data – Data collected from objective tests designed to apt a personality construct.

Cattell analysed the T-data and Q-data using a mathematical technique and identified 16 personality traits present in all the people. He presented these 16 traits with low and high scores by indicating the character of low and high scores. These 16 traits are:

·       Warmth

·       Intellect

·       Emotional stability

·       Aggressiveness

·       Liveliness

·       Dutifulness

·       Social Assertiveness

·       Sensitivity

·       Paranoia

·       Abstractness

·       Introversion

·       Anxiety

·       Open-mindedness

·       Independence

·       Perfectionism

·       Tension

Cattell developed a personality test based on the above 16 factors or traits and named it as 16PF.

c) Hans Eysenck:

Hans Eysenck, a personality theorist believe that a personality is largely influenced by biological factors. He categorised people into three personality dimensions, namely, extroversion / introversion, neuroticism / emotional stability and psychoticism / socialization.

• Introversion relies on inner experiences whereas extroversion focus on others.
• Neuroticism reveals anxiety and people with emotional stability feel cool, calm and relaxed.
• Psychoticism trait will find it difficult to accept reality and may become antisocial and hostile. People with socialisation trait are empathetic, cooperative and conventional.

Eysenck’s theory was considered to be more quantifiable and justifiable when compared to other trait theories.

3)Social Learning Theory:

Social Learning theory was proposed by Albert Bandura who emphasised the importance of observing, modelling and imitating the behaviour, attitudes and emotions of others in shaping one’s personality. According to this theory, both environmental and cognitive factors influence human learning and his behaviour. Albert introduced two ideas in his theory and they are:

• Observational Learning
• Mediating processes

a)     Observational Learning: Children observe the behaviour of the people around them such as parents, and other family members, friends and teachers at school and cartoon characters in television channels. Individuals who are observed are called models. First, the children encode the behaviour of their model and later on imitate the behaviour they have observed and encoded.

b)    Mediating Processes: People do not immediately imitate the behaviour of others. Some thought process, that is mediating process, take place before imitation. This process occurs between observing the behaviour (stimulus) and imitating it or not (response). Bandura proposed the following four mediational processes:

·       Attention – Paying attention to the behaviour of a person (stimulus)

·       Retention – Remembering the behaviour of that particular person.

·       Reproduction – Imitating the behaviour of the model

·       Motivation – The will to perform the behaviour of the model.

The social learning theory gives importance to thought processes and acknowledges the role played by the process in deciding whether to imitate a person’s behaviour or not. This theory provides a comprehensive explanation of human learning by recognising the role of mediational process and some quite complex behaviour.

4)Psychoanalytic Theory:

Sigmund Freud, known as the “Father of Modern Psychology” was an Austrian Neurologist, who revolutionised how people think about and treat mental conditions. Freud founded Psychoanalysis to listen to his patients and to understand how their mind works. Sigmund Freud came out with this theory stating that human personality is complex and has more than one component. According to Freud, three elements make up the personality and these elements are the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego.

a)     The Id: The id is the source of all psychic energy and is the primary component present from birth. It is the main source of basic biological needs and is related to desires and impulses. It is driven by pleasure principle. The id strives for immediate satisfaction of needs, desires and wants. Dissatisfaction of needs leads to anxiety and tension. For example, to satisfy hunger or thirst, a person needs to eat or drink water. If not, he may become weak and tired.

b)    The Ego: The ego is related to reasoning and functions in the conscious mind of a person.  The ego operates on reality principle which satisfies id’s desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways. This principle considers the pros and cons of an action before implementing it or reacting towards that action.

c)     The Superego: This is the last component of personality and it begins at the age of five. This superego holds the moral values and ideals that we acquire from our parents and society. It provides certain guidelines for making judgements.  The superego has two parts, conscience and ego ideal.

·       The conscience includes information that are considered as bad habits and practices by our parents and society and these are forbidden.

·       The ego ideal includes the rules and standards for behaviours that ego aspires to.

The super ego tries to make a person’s behaviour perfect and make him behave in a civilised manner. It supresses the unwanted and unacceptable urges of the Id and makes the ego act upon idealistic standards. There must be a proper balance between id, ego, and super ego to achieve a healthy personality.

 

Type A and Type B Personality Theory:

 

Type A Personality:

     Type A individuals can be described as impatient, time-conscious, perfectionist, concerned about their status, highly competitive ambitious, business-like, aggressive, having difficulty in relaxing and are unhappy about delays.  They have strong entrepreneurial spirits (risk takes).  As such, they embrace changes and are always looking for practical solution for solving problems.

     The term Type A personality was coined in the 1950s by cardiologists, Dr. Meyer Friedman and Dr. Ray Rosenman.  They theorized that people who were labeled Type A were more likely to suffer heart attacks.  The term quickly came into public use, and became even more commonly known as a result of a book published in 1974 by the 2 doctors “Type A Behaviour and Your Heart”.

Type B personality: (lower stress, relaxed and easy going)

·         The type B personality generally lives at a lower stress level.

·         They work steadily and enjoy achievement but not becoming stressed when they are not achieved.

·         When faced with competition, they do not mind losing and they enjoy the game.

·         They may be creative.

·         They have more patience.

·         They like to travel, be part of groups and are centre of attraction.

·         They are supportive and direct in their approach.

·         They are relaxed and easy going.

·         They want others to like them and can be easily hurt if theory they think someone doesn’t care for them.

·         They do very well in sales, advertisement, marketing and public speak.

Type A personality: (generally lives at a higher stress level)

·         They enjoy achievement of goals, with greater enjoyment in achieving of more difficult goals.

·         They work hard to achieve the goals.

·         They find it difficult to stop, even when they have achieved goals.

·         They are conscious.

·          They are highly competitive and will, if necessary, create competition

·         They hate failure and will work to avoid it.

·         They are impatient.

·         Perfectionist and more concerned about their statement.

·         They are often well-educated.

·         Type ‘A’ personalities are often found as business owners, managers and sales people.

 

Introverts:

      Introverts are more concerned with the inner would of the mind.  They enjoy thinking, exploring their thoughts and feelings.  They want to be alone.  An introvert may not be shy at all but may not prefer social activities.  They often have taken pleasure in solitary activities such as reading, writing, drawing, and using computers.  The artist, writer, sculptor, composer and inventor are all highly introverted.  They like to work independently.  They appear reserved, quiet and thoughtful.  They do not have many friends.  They do not like unexpected visits.  They think before acting.  They are absent mind and day –dreamers.

Extroverts:

     Enjoy human interactions, and are enthusiastic, talkative, assertive and gregarious.  They take pleasure in social activities such as parties, community activities, business or political groups.  Polities, teaching, sales, managing, brokering and acting are fields that favour extroversion.  As extroverted person do not want to be alone but like to enjoy time spent with people.  Extroverts make new friends easily.  They are interested in what is happening around them.  They compare their own opinions with the opinion so others.  They are initiative and easily break unwanted relations.