Personality traits and psychological characteristics

¶ … personality- trait psychoanalytic/psychodynamic, humanistic, social-cognitive and biological theories, and how personality is measured. One of the common definitions for personality is "an individual's unique and relatively stable pattern of thoughts, feelings and actions."

Trait Theory- is interested in how and to what extent people differ. Trait theorists came up with a 5-factor model of personality which includes openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism or emotional stability. The Theory was criticized for not explaining the reasons for personality, for not identifying which characteristics last a lifetime and for not taking into account situational and environmental effects.

Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic Theory- attempts to explain individual differences by looking at the interplay between unconscious mental forces and emotions, thoughts and actions. Sigmund Freud was the father of this theory and he presented four key concepts -- the level of consciousness, personality structure, defence mechanisms and the psychosexual stages of development. He called the mind the psyche and believed that the mind functioned on three levels the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious and that most psychological disorders originate from repressed memories in the unconscious. He also described the three interacting mental structures the id, the ego and the superego. His five stages of psychosexual development included the oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. At each stage particular kinds of pleasure must be gratified for the personality to develop and proceed normally. Some of his followers, including Alfred Adler, Carl Jung and Karen Horney, rebelled and formed their own theories. Adler saw behaviour as more purposeful and not directed only by unconscious forces. Jung believed that the unconscious contains positive and spiritual motives. Horney did not agree with biology as the differentiating factor for gender, but social and cultural factors.

The major criticisms of Freud's Theory thought that it was difficult to test and there was too much emphasis on Biology.

Humanistic Theory- was developed by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow and emphasizes the internal experiences such as feelings and thoughts and the individual's feelings of worth. It believes that humans are naturally good and have a positive drive towards their own self-fulfilment. Rogers was most interested in the interaction between mental health, self-concept and self-esteem. Maslow believed that every person has an in-born drive to develop all their talents and capacities and calls this self-actualization. The critics of this theory felt that it is naive to assume that all people are good and think it takes a narrow view of personality.

Social-Cognitive Theory- by Albert Bandura believes that personality comes from the person's history of interaction with the environment. He believes that self-efficacy comes from having a strong belief that you can succeed despite past failures. Criticisms for this theory include that it ignores the unconscious and emotional aspects of personality.