Traits can be discrete individual characteristics or continuous dimensions. The first theories of personality were trait theories. In ancient cultures, people were described by their names. Parents took great care in name selection, and tended to be aspirational. They preferred names of leaders, heroes and positive characteristics. Children were names Faith, Hope, Mighty, Calm and Brave. It is not until cognitive psychology became popular that people thought of constructing their own personality.
Trait theory is among the oldest approaches to explaining personality. According to this approach, your personality is the result of some external force.
The advantage to trait theory is that discovering who you are is relatively simple. You take a test, read a book, check your horoscopes or hire someone to analyze your star charts. The assumption is that there is an answer to who you are, and that the answer is knowable. It might take effort but someone will tell you who you are.
The disadvantage to trait theory is that you are locked into whatever traits someone else says you have. If you are labeled an introvert, you can never change. Outgoing people can never be shy. Trustworthy people can never cheat. Cowards can never become a hero. Trait theory is a closed system. There is no way out.
Ancient Trait Theories
Chinese Zodiac
For the ancient Chinese, who you are is determined by the year in which you are born. If you are born in the year of the rat, your personality and fortune will be different from someone born in the year of the ox. About 3500 years ago, the Chinese developed a system of personality based on when you were born. This zodiac incorporated the planets (5 elements), the months (12 animals), and (later on) the tide: yin and yang. This 60-year cycle explained what you were like, who to marry, and what would happen in the future. Many ancients believed that your name determines your personality. The power of names was so great, parents carefully chose a name lest they temp the fates. Consequently, naming a baby “sloth” would be unacceptable, while naming a child “brave” or “mercy” would produce a person held that trait.
Hippocrates
The ancient Greeks explained personality by four elements of life. About the time of Confucius, Hippocrates was explaining to the Greeks that personality types (humors) were based on four essential body fluids. A balance of the four fluids (yellow bile, phlegm, black bile and blood) kept one in “good humor.” A bit too much blood (sanguine) makes one confident and brave; too much makes someone arrogant, impulsive and unpredictable. A bit phlegmatic makes one easy going; too much makes on sluggish and lazy. A bit of yellow bile (choleric) gives one energy and passion; too much makes one aggressive and bad-tempered. Being a bit melancholic makes one sensitive and poetic; too much drowns you in depression. You might be born sanguine (happy) or melancholic (sad) but your temperament was predetermined by these elements.
Ancient approaches often emphasized temperament over character. Temperament was thought to be the built-in characteristics a person has. You might have a generally sad personality (melancholy) or happy (sanguine). This temperament doesn’t mean you can’t be honest (character) but describes your general bent. If you’re a morning person, it’s the result of temperament. If you go to an early morning class even though you are a late-night person, it’s a reflection of your character.
Modern Trait Theories
Allport
The first modern personality trait theorist was Gordon Allport. In the 1930’s, Allport and his students searched through dictionaries to find words that described personality. They started with 17,953 adjectives but settled on 4504 of them. Allport suggested that most of these traits were “common traits” (traits we all hold in common). Some might have a lot of a common trait but others might have only a smidge. But Allport also proposed that people can have individual traits unique to them. His morphogenic approach combined individual uniqueness (idiographic traits) and group comparison traits (nomothetic traits). You can compare yourself to others on “agreeable,” “friendly,” and “caring.” Plus, you can have your own special nobody-in-the-world-is-like-me traits. Allport bridged the “lots of traits” and the “only a few traits” debate by combining them.
Cattell
Following Allport’s lead, Raymond Cattell reduced Allport’s list further. Cattell removed uncommon words and those he thought redundant. He whittled it down to 171 traits. Still following Allport’s lexical approach (personality can be described by dictionary words), Cattell added a statistical technique: factor analysis. He believed that a limited number of traits were underlying the thousands of words used to describe people. Cattell was among the first to use factor analysis to determine which words went together and which described a different trait. He ended up with 16 factors (traits). His personality test, the 16 PF (sixteen personality factors) is still in use today. Cattell’s factors included: affectia (outgoing vs. reserved), ego strength (emotional volatility), parmia (adventurousness), and surgency (a sort of happy-sad distinction).
Cattell wasn’t the only one using factor analysis. Hans Eysenck used the statistical technique to reduce personality to two dimensions: neuroticism and introversion-extroversion. For Eysenck, personality was more a matter of temperament than character. He revived the humors of Hipprocates but reformulated the four humors into two dimensions: extroversion and neuroticism. Extraversion is a reflection of your physiological make up. He believed that your shy personality is the result of your brain is easily startled. Specifically, Eysenck targeted the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) and the reticular formation of the lower brain stem. Introverts, according to this view, don’t have the safety mechanism that extroverts do. When trouble comes, an extroverts brain becomes numb or zones out. This inhibition process protects the brain from trauma. In contrast, introverts feel all of the impact of the traumatic event and are overwhelmed by it.
Eysenck
Although nervous people aren’t always neurotic, Eysenck believed that they were more susceptible to problems, hence the tendency for people to have “nervous disorders,” “nervous breakdowns,” and “nervous ticks.” This nervousness is the result of temperament: built in physiologically. Since the sympatric nervous system causes arousal and emotional responsiveness, he hypothesized that people who scored high on his test of neuroticism had an underlying physiology that made them more likely to be excited by danger and stress. People who remain calm under stress have a sympathetic nervous system that is less responsive.
Sheldon
The tendency to believe personality is biologically based is not limited to the brain physiology. In the 1940’s, William Sheldon proposed that personality and body types were linked. He categorized people as being endomorphic (soft and round), mesomorphic (muscular and rectangular) and ectomorphic (fragile and tall). According to this approach, soft and round folk were friendly and cuddly. But muscular mesomorphs were assertive and energetic. Ectomorphs might be thin and shy but they were smart. Sheldon’s theory was more phrenology than psychology, but you’ll still encounter people following his line of reasoning.
Murray
Henry Murray added to trait theory by hypothesizing two influences on people: needs and presses. Needs can be both processes and internal states (achievement, power, intimacy). Your need for intimacy pushes you toward people. Your need for achievement determines how hard to try. Just as hunger is a physiological need that pushes you to get food, psychological needs are internal pressures that compel action. Your behavior is not solely the result of your needs. The environment also impacts you. These environmental presses pressure you from the outside. You can be pressured by a press of danger, or deprivation. Your environment might press you to be friendly or compliant. You can be impacted by a rejecting environment, or one of loss or duty. Both a loss in your life and the birth of a child are presses. In some sense, you are trapped between internal drives and external presses.
Murray’s other main contribution to personality theory was the creation of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Although today it is widely used as a test of creativity, the TAT was designed to reveal latent needs (unexpressed needs). Composed of a series of magazine-sized cards, the test is a collection of abstract images on which a person can “project” their personality. You would be given a card and asked to describe what is going on now, what went on before, and what is going to happen in the future. Your stories would be written down verbatim, and later analyzed for themes. Murray, who was psychoanalyzed by Carl Jung, believed that these latent themes were the key to understanding how people really felt; the TAT was a key to understanding one’s personality.
Big Five
The most recent trait theory is a multidimensional theory called the Big Five. This is a consensus theory, not the work of a single person. It is the culmination of work over three decades using factor analysis. The Big Five are summarized as OCEAN or CANOE: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
In the 19060’s, the Air Force routinely gave Cattell’s 16PF to its incoming officers. Two researchers (Tupes & Christal, 1962) analyzed these tests, looking for underlying factors. From their eight samples (they didn’t look at all of the scores), they concluded that the number of personality factors could be reduced substantially from Cattell’s sixteen. In six of the samples, they could reduce the number of factors to eight. In another sample, they found 5 factors. In the last sample, they identified 12 factors.
Using undergraduates instead of Air Force personnel, another researcher (Norman, 1963) found five factors. Norman had students rate their peers on 20 of the variables Tupes and Christal used (four from each of the five factors). Through factor analysis, he found five factors (which critics suggest is not surprising since he started with 4 examples of each of the five factors). In another study (Norman, 1967), 1431 words were rated on the original five dimensions, resulting in 75 semantic clusters. These clusters were later used with others words but again five factors were found (Goldberg, 1980); again not a surprise to the critics: start with clusters based on five dimensions and end with five dimensions.
Another research team (McCrae & Costa, 1976) began with a two-trait model (neuroticism and extraversion) but later added “openness to experience.” Still later, they added agreeableness and conscientiousness (Costa & McCrae, 1985). In their personality test (NEO, each of the five factors are composed of six subscales (facets). So extroversion is really a combination of gregariousness, activity, assertiveness, warmth, positive emotions, and seeking excitement. And agreeableness is subdivided into trust, modesty, compliance, altruism, tendermindedness and straightforwardness.
Mind Map
Notes
Ancient Trait Theory
Chinese
Modern Trait Theory
- Intro
- Allport, Gordon
- Paths
- Ancient Trait Theory
Chinese Zodiac
Shun Dynasty (1766-1050 BC)
Year of birth determines personality
60-year cycle based on lunar calendar - Hippocrates (460-370 BC)
“Good humor” is the balance of:
yellow bile (air)
phlegm (water)
black bile (earth)
blood (fire)
Balancing the fluids is essential to good health
Belief that lasted well into the Middle Ages
Galen (130-220)
4 temperaments
Sanguine
blood is dominant
warm, optimistic and confident
Melancholic
black bile is dominant
sad and depressed
cause by eating too many cold foods
Phlegmatic
phlegm is dominant
sluggish, apathetic
Choleric
yellow bile is dominant
angry, aggressive, violent
caused by eating too many warm foods
Impact = the authority on medicine until 16th century
Hans Eysenck (1916-1997)
Emphasized physiology and genetics
Used factor analysis
Trait theorist
Emphasized temperament
Temperament = genetic component of personality
Character = learned component of personality
Merged biological determinism & behaviorism
Introversion-Extroversion
The degree to which a person
Directs energies outward toward environment
Direct energies inward toward self-focused life
Neuroticism-Emotional Stability
Neuroticism = predisposition to become emotionally upset
Stability = predisposition to be emotionally even
Psychoticism
Added later
A person high on this trait is antisocial, cold, hostile, and unconcerned about others
A person low on psychoticism is warm and caring toward other
3-dimensional model
Factors are biological determined
P – Psychoticism
linked to endocrine gland especially
controls sex drive
E – Extraversion
linked to ascending reticular activating system (ARAS)
reticular formation of brain stem
N – Neuroticism
linked to limbic system
brains emotional center
regulates sex, fear & aggression
Franz Gall (1758-1828)
One of the first comparative anatomists
Brain localization
Founder of “cranioscopy” = phrenology
William Sheldon (1898-1977)
Antrhopometric method = things that don’t change with age
Studied4,000 men; photos (front, side and back)
Contribution of 3fundamental elements
Atlas of Men
Pure forms (somatotypes)
Endomorph = 7-1-1
Mesomorph = 1-7-1
Ectomorph = 1-1-7
Criminals
high in endomorphy
intermediate in mesomorphy
Suicidal
high in ectomorphy
Insanity
ectomorphs
Gordon Allport (1897-1967)
50 definitions of personality
Personality is a real entity
Functional autonomy
Proprium
rational coper
proprium striving
Mature Personality (6 criteria)
Extension of sense of self
Warm relations with others
Emotional security
Realistic perception of skills
Self-objectification
Unifying philosophy of life & religion
8 Characteristics
1. Exist in people
2. More generalized than habits
3. May determine behavior
4. Can be discovered with systematic observation
5. Only relatively independent of each other
6. Not the same as moral character
7. Inconsistencies don’t mean traits don’t exist
8. Some traits are unique to you
2 types of traits
Common = adjectives
Personal
Cardinal disposition
Central disposition
Secondary disposition
Raymond Cattell (1905-)
Reduced Allport’s 4,000 traits to 171
Used Factor Analysis
Personality consisted of 46 surface traits
Condensed to 16 source traits
1950, published the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)
Other Accomplishments
2-factor theory of intelligence
Fluid (innate)
Crystallized (culturally constituted)
Allport’s adjectives using Q, T, and L data
Q-data = from self-reports & questionnaires (questionnaire data)
T-data = from controlled test situations-observational ratings & notes (test data)
L-data = from person’s life, school, work, community etc. (life data)
Henry Murray
Psychological hedonism
Ultimate goal of behavior is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain
Needs can be unconscious processes;
implicit motives (inhibited, conflicts)
Needs can be explicit motives; aware of competitiveness
2 kinds of needs
Viscerogenic needs
hunger, thirst; needed for survival
important for everyone
Psychogenic needs = achievement; individual differences
20 needs
4 major needs identified
Achievement
Power
Affiliation
Intimacy
Press = external events that influence motives
Seeing someone eat dessert
Environmental influence on motives;
as opposed to biological or internal influences of needs
Can bring on a motivational state through environmental exposure
Both objective and subjective press exists
Alpha Press (objective environment)
Beta Press (perceived environment)
Motives that influence behavior in some circumstances
Motives = drives to meet needs and reduce dissatisfaction;
internal states that arouse & direct toward goal (hunger)
Cognitions with affective overtones
organized around preferred experiences and goals
emotionally-charged goals
Appear in thoughts about either desired or undesired goals
Lead to behavior directly
Subjective overtones
Influenced by needs
Theory
Idiographically oriented = individual differences
Developed wide-ranging theory of personality
Organized by needs, motives, and presses
Manifest needs (observable)
Latent needs (underlying)
Process
Underlying need and the external press are combined into motives
Motives influence what behaviors are expressed
Hierarchy of Needs
Needs exist at different levels of strength
Each need interacts with other needs
resulting in interactions, or dynamics within the person
Varies from person to person
unique patterning of needs, motives, behaviors (individualized)
Measuring Needs
Manifest Needs (aka Motives) = behavior, self-report
Latent Needs (True definition of Needs)
Murray was most interested in latent needs
Indirect methods
Applied the term “Apperception”
the process of projecting needs onto a stimulus
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Christiana Morgan (1897-1967)
Born in Boston; moved to NY; studied art
She & William became friends with Henry and Josephine Murray
1925, analyzed by Jung
Had little feeling for her son; felt most alive with men
She had a series of semi-hypnotic “visions”
Jung thought she was burying her feminine spirituality;
hiding under masculine rationality
Jung recommended she have an affair to unlock her unconscious
suggested she be a muse for Murray
instead of creating children, she could create a man;
serve a man, serve the world
1934, her husband died
1938, co-created the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).
First known as the Morgan-Murray Thematic Apperception Test
Later it was Murray and the “staff of the Harvard Psychological clinic”
She was in poor health
High blood pressure
Had a radical sympathectomy = sever sympathetic nerves spinal cord
She was in poor mental health
Sexual experimentation
Stormy relationships
Difficult marriage
Alcoholic
1965, Murray found younger woman
1967, she & Murray took trip to Virgin Islands
She drowned herself at age 69
Thematic Apperception Test
Ambiguous pictures
Originally taken from magazine photos; probably US Camera-1942
Cardsnot specifically created to elicit unconscious (not theory based)
Assumed any ambiguous stimuli could be used
Interpretation of interpersonal situations
Today 31 pictures available; usually use 10 cards per person
Select different ones for men, women or children
Not a standardized set of stimuli
Used to discover hidden emotions, inner needs
Often used to complement info from Rorschach ink-blot test
Can be used as a test of imagination
Card 1
Boy and his violin
Drawn by Christiana Morgan
Based on a photo of a Yehudi Menuhin
Card 13-B
Little boy is sitting on the doorstep of a log cabin
Based on Marion Post Wolcott’s photo of a Kentucky log cabin
Subjects create a story
What’s going on
What is being thought & by whom
What went on before
What will happen next
Big Five
1980s-1990s
Research-driven model
Data-driven theory
Inductive
Described somewhat differently, but
5 basic personality dimensions
Found in a variety of cultures
Evolutionary perspective
5 Dimensions
Extraversion = energetic, sociable vs shy, reserved, introverted
Neuroticism = high-strung, emotional vs calm, emotionally stable
Openness = imaginative, open-minded vs traditional thinking
Agreeableness = friendly, trusting vs cold, unkind
Conscientiousness = dependable, organized vs impulsive, careless
Evaluating Trait Theories
Behavior is result of interaction between traits and situations
Critics say it generally fails to explain:
Personality; label general predispositions
How or why individual differences develop
Motives that drive personality
Role of unconscious mental processes
How belief about self influence personality
How psychological growth and change occur
Terms
- 5 paths to truth
- 5 virtues
- 12 animals
- agreeableness
- air
- Allport, Gordon
- Big Five
- black bile
- blood
- body type
- Cattell, Raymond
- Chinese zodiac
- choleric
- comparative anatomy
- Confucianism
- Confucius
- conscientious
- cranioscopy
- earth
- ectomorphic
- endomorphic
- extroversion
- Eysenck, Hans
- factor analysis
- fire
- Galen
- Gall, Franz
- Hippocrates
- humors
- introversion
- melancholic
- mesomorphic
- neuroticism
- openness
- phlegm
- phlegmatic
- phrenology
- psychoticism
- sanguine
- Shelfon, William
- temperaments
- traits
- water
- yellow bile
Quiz
Who is associated with the four humors:
- Hippocrates
- Descartes
- Allport
- Freud
2. Who created the 16PF personality test:
- Raymond Cattell
- Psyche Cattell
- Gordon Allport
- BF Skinner
3. Which is the P in Eysenck’s PEN:
- psychoticism
- personality
- philosophy
- proprium
4. For Allport, traits which become independent of their childhood origins have:
- fundamental attribution
- functional autonomy
- flimsy footing
- flow
5. According to Allport, each person has a large number of:
- secondary dispositions
- vicarious dispositions
- extrinsic dispositions
- cardinal dispositions
1. Who is associated with the four humors:
- Hippocrates
- Descartes
- Allport
- Freud
2. Who created the 16PF personality test:
- Raymond Cattell
- Psyche Cattell
- Gordon Allport
- BF Skinner
3. Which is the P in Eysenck’s PEN:
- psychoticism
- personality
- philosophy
- proprium
4. For Allport, traits which become independent of their childhood origins have:
- fundamental attribution
- functional autonomy
- flimsy footing
- flow
5. According to Allport, each person has a large number of:
- secondary dispositions
- vicarious dispositions
- extrinsic dispositions
- cardinal dispositions
Summary
Bonus
Photo by Denis Degioanni on Unsplash
