Essential Personality

Donald Pennington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781134665983
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

'Essential Personality' provides a clear, accessible and systematic introduction to the major theoretical approaches for the understanding of human personality. This introductory book assumes no prior knowledge of this core area in psychology and is written for students studying personality for the first time, whether at `A' level, first year undergraduates on psychology degree programmes or students on other courses (for example, nursing, social work or criminology). Each chapter considers one or more of the major approaches to personality. For each approach, a brief biographical outline of the originating theorist is given. This is followed by clear and straightforward descriptions of the major aspects of each theory together with clear definitions of key concepts, and concludes with an evaluation section that addresses the 'model' of humans underlying the approach, research evidence in support of the theory and questioning the theory. Discussion is also given to personality assessment and therapeutic applications of the theory or approach. The individual chapters provide figures, diagrams and tables to give a clear understanding of theory and research. and at the end of each chapter, a summary and suggestions for further reading is provided. A glossary at the end of the book provides definitions and explanations of key items, concepts etc.

1	Introduction to Personality

■ What is personality?

■ Biological and environmental perspectives

■ Debates in personality psychology

■ Science and theory in personality psychology

■ Cross-cultural perspectives on personality

■ About this book

■ Summary

■ Further reading

1.1 WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

Imagine that you are watching a television programme about film stars and that awards are being given for the best male and female film star personalities of the year. What do you understand by the use of the word ‘personality’ in this context. Is it to do with a role the film star played in an Oscar-winning film? Or is it to do with work they do off-stage, such as helping various charities or raising money to feed starving people in developing countries? The context of the television programme would no doubt answer the above questions. Nevertheless, in this context we tend to think that the word ‘personality’ refers to some larger-than-life characteristics of the film stars.

Imagine another, quite different situation, where your best friend has introduced you to someone you have not met before. You spend half an hour talking to this person. Afterwards you say to your best friend something along the lines that you feel you ‘hit it off’ well with this new person and that this was probably because you thought you have similar personality characteristics.

Finally, imagine that you are reading a popular magazine and there is a special feature on personality. The feature contains a short personality questionnaire, which you complete. You score your answers to the questions and find that you come out as thoughtful, emotional and extrovert. This does not accord with how you believe yourself to be, so you reject the questionnaire as a load of rubbish.

The above imaginary scenarios have a number of things in common, and ones that are of interest to personality psychologists. First, the word ‘personality’ is very general, and one that may be used in many, diverse and different ways. Second, our everyday use of the word does usually tend to focus on specific aspects of personality – particularly characteristics such as extrovert, thoughtful, conscientious, intelligent and many more that I am sure you can think of. Third, personality in some way and as used in everyday language attempts to capture the essence or key important characteristics when applied to a specific person. Fourth, nearly everybody is interested in, even fascinated with, other people and wishes to find shorthand ways to describe their personality. This is also true in relation to ourselves: each of us is interested in understanding ourselves better and having a clearer picture of how others see us and what personality characteristics others think we possess. Fifth and finally, personality is an area of psychology that is of central importance and has been since the development of psychology as a scientific discipline over a hundred years ago.

In this book I will consider a range of approaches to the psychological study and measurement of personality that have been and still are important in personality psychology. In introducing personality psychology this chapter seeks to introduce you to the ways in which psychologists have approached the conceptualisation of personality, the debates that exist and that it is important to understand, and what it means to adopt a scientific approach to the study of personality.

1.1.1 Defining personality

Getting you to think about how we use the word ‘personality’ in everyday life has probably led you, correctly, to regard the idea of a definition of personality as rather difficult to achieve. Certainly, any definition, to be of use to psychologists, will have to be at a general, abstract level to encompass such a high degree of diversity. Let us consider a number of definitions offered by highly influential personality psychologists.

• Personality is that which predicts what a person will do in a given situation … it is concerned with all the behaviour of the individual, both overt and under the skin (Raymond Cattell).

• Personality is the more or less stable and enduring organisation of a person’s character, temperament, intellect and physique, which determines his unique adjustment to his (or her) environment (Hans Eysenck).

• Personality is the dynamic organisation within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his (or her) environment (Gordon Allport).

These three definitions have five aspects in common and have been taken from an article that appeared over 40 years ago (Sanford, 1963). First, there is an emphasis on the idea that each person has a unique personality. Even identical twins, who have exactly the same genetic make-up, have different personalities – although they probably also have more in common than unrelated people (Plomin, 1994). Second, there is an assumption that accurate knowledge of a person’s personality will allow prediction of their future behaviour to be made. Third, personality is concerned with the whole person in terms of behaviour, thought and feelings. Fourth, the personality of an individual helps them, to a greater or lesser extent, to adjust to their environment. Different people may adjust well and be successful in their work and personal lives. Others may adjust less well and experience mental problems, such as anxiety and stress, as a result. Finally, personality is said to be ‘dynamic’, by which is meant that whilst stable and enduring it is also subject to change over the life of a person. For example, research has shown that as people get older they become more conservative and less socialist in their political outlook (Eysenck and Eysenck, 1985).

1.1.2 Approaches to personality

One of the problems of producing a useful definition of psychology is that different psychologists adopt quite different approaches in their attempts to understand and research human personality. There are four main approaches, each of which is covered by one or more chapters in this book. These are: the psychoanalytic approach, the dispositional approach; the behavioural and cognitive approach; the humanistic approach.

The psychoanalytic approach, developed by Sigmund Freud (see Chapter 3), is based on the key assumptions that much of mental life takes place at an unconscious level and that unconscious motives explain human behaviour. The psychoanalytic approach generally characterises people as having internal, unconscious conflicts, the most important of which result from early childhood, and may require considerable mental energy to deal with. In extreme cases these internal, mental conflicts may dominate the individual and prevent him or her adjusting to life well enough to sustain an intimate relationship or develop a successful career. The psychoanalytic approach assumes that people attempt to free themselves of these conflicts and, in consequence, reduce the tension and anxiety that may be felt.

The dispositional approach is based on the idea that individuals have relatively stable characteristics or traits that are shown in how they behave in a range of different situations. Within the dispositional approach (see Chapter 6) each person is assumed to be unique, and to possess a unique configuration of personality characteristics and traits. One of the most popular and heavily researched theories of dispositions highlights the ‘big five’ factors of personality (Costa and McCrae, 1985). The big five dispositional factors are neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Each person is regarded as possessing each of these dispositions, but in varying degrees, thus making each person unique.

The behavioural and cognitive approach (see Chapter 7) is concerned with understanding personality in terms of how a person acquires and learns a set of behaviours. The approach has its foundations in the learning theories of Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner. These are based on the idea that behaviour is either reinforced or punished. When reinforced, behaviour is likely to be repeated on future occasions; when punished, it is not likely to be repeated. The behavioural approach takes an environmental perspective, which will be considered later in this chapter. At one extreme, learning theorists claim only the environmental experiences of a person are an important consideration. However, cognitive learning theorists argue that mental processes and thought have to be taken into account to explain personality (Bandura, 1989; Rotter, 1966).

Table 1.1 Four approaches to personality psychology, key assumptions and an example of each

Approach	Key assumptions	Example
Psychoanalytic approach	Mental life at an unconscious level. Unconscious motives explain human behaviour. Unconscious conflicts affect how a person adjusts to life.	Unpleasant and traumatic childhood experiences may be ‘buried’ in the unconscious but may affect negatively how an adult relates to people.
Dispositional approach	Individuals possess relatively enduring and stable traits that affect how they behave in different situations.	The ‘big five’ factors of personality: neuroticism, extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Behavioural and cognitive approach	Based on learning theory and the idea that the reinforcement and punishment of behaviour establishes a unique set of behaviours then called personality.	Rewards in the environment given to a child will establish a set of behaviours that follow the the person into adulthood.
Humanistic approach	Conscious, subjective experience of the world is important. Each person’s subjective experience is unique. People thrive for fulfilment in life and to understand themselves better.	Success in a person’s work career may give them a sense of fulfilment, happiness, reward and satisfaction with their life.

The humanistic approach places greater emphasis and importance on a person’s conscious, subjective experience of the world. Humanistic psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow (see Chapter 8) regard each person’s subjective experience as unique, meaningful and part of the defining characteristic of what it is to be human. Humanistic psychologists also regard each person as attempting to understand themselves, and to realise as fully as possible their potentials and aspirations in life. A summary of these four approaches and their different assumptions is given in Table 1.1.

1.2 BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERSPECTIVES

These four main approaches to personality each sit within two overarching perspectives. The biological perspective is to do with understanding the extent to which personality – whether traits, unconscious motives or how you experience the world – is determined by genetics or what you biologically inherit from your parents. The environmental perspective, by contrast, attempts to understand personality and its development from the point of view of environmental forces and the experiences of the individual from the time he or she was born.

These two overarching perspectives, because they occupy quite different positions with respect to the origins of personality, result in the nature–nurture debate in psychology.

1.2.1 The biological perspective

The Human Genome Project may throw light on how genes affect behaviour and psychological characteristics. However, personality psychologists have a long-standing interest in discovering the extent to which biology determines personality. One of the most commonly used research methods has been that of twin studies (see Chapter 2). Identical twins have exactly the same genetic make-up, whilst fraternal twins share just 50 per cent of genes, the same as ordinary brothers and sisters. A large-scale study by Loehlin and Nichols (1976) gave 514 pairs of monozygotic (identical) twins and 336 pairs of dizygotic (fraternal) twins a large number of personality questionnaires to complete. Generally, it was found that monozygotic twins were more alike on numerous personality characteristics than fraternal twins. This evidence has been used to support the view that many aspects of personality are biologically determined.

Other psychological research has looked at more general and complex aspects of personality, called temperaments, which include sociability, emotionality and general activity level (Endler, 1989). Endler (1989) has argued and attempted to demonstrate that these aspects of temperament are present in early infancy and follow the individual through the teenage years into adulthood. This has been supported by other recent research (for example, Buss and Plomin, 1984; Royce and Powell, 1983), which has shown that sociability, emotionality and activity level are present at birth, stable across time and influence many aspects of a person’s behaviour.

Sociability, for example, has been conceptualised into three broad categories – difficult, easy, and slow to warm up. Evidence that a child categorised as ‘difficult’ or ‘easy’ was likely to show the same temperament 30 years later came from a longitudinal study (see Chapter 2) conducted by Caspi et al. (1988). Buss et al. (1973) produced evidence that monozygotic twins were more alike with respect to sociability than dizygotic twins.

In relation to the four approaches mentioned earlier, the psychoanalytic has a strong biological basis as doe...