Personality Trait and Factor Theories:

Personality trait and factor theories have been developed as a means of identifying common elements within the personality of different people, indeed the entire populace. Within any given group of people there are common threads of experiences, similar nurturing, and even shared genetic, yet the personality of each member is a unique construction individual elements which work together. Among those who have produced work in this area are Raymond Cattell and Hans Eysenck. Each used scientific factor analysis to identify common traits or permanent dispositions of people. Cattell has identified a large number of personality traits, whereas Eysenck's research extracted only three general factors.(mcgraw-hill.com, online) Like Freud who identifies the id, ego and superego as the measurements of the personal mind, will and emotion, the categories identified by these researchers give men the ability to understand the unique functions of the person, emotions and desires.

Allport's Dispositional Theory

Allport distinguished between common traits held within the group and personal dispositions, which are individual. He believed that individuals have overlapping levels of personally, which included:

He identifies three motivations which drove people to act according to their individual dispositions.
Reactive and Proactive Theories of Motivation: people responded to their environment, or proactively sought to influence their surroundings.

Functional Autonomy: that people were motivated at different levels of their psyche which are not specifically interdependent.

Conscious and Unconscious Motivation: that people are motivated by deliberate conscious actions and subconscious desires (McGraw-Hill.com, online)

Albert Bandura's Social Cognitave theory

Bandura was unhappy with what he called simplistic perspectives on personality, and developed a construct based on the assumption that a personal personality and their environment determine and influence each other. His work started with adolescents,…