Free Trait Theories Essay Example

Rather than placing focus on thwarted growth opportunities and the unconscious forces, various researchers try to define the term "personality" in the terms of enduring and stable patterns, which are viewed in Sam Gamgee's description in "Loyalty and Optimism". The description of psychoanalysis attempts to explain how psychologists use the feature of trait to explain and describe personality. According to philosopher Allport, he describes personality to arise from fundamental traits. A trait is defined as a characteristic pattern that indulges behavior or certain dispositions to act and feel as assessed and analyzed self-report peer reports and inventories. Allport came to provide a definition of personality in the terms of various identifiable behavioral patterns. The philosopher attempted to give description vital differences in personality. The philosopher manipulates the Carl Jung personality type that was based on the responses provided to 126 questions, with questions such as, "do you normally value sentiment to logic or logic to sentiment?" With the result, conclusion statements can be made indicating individuals as either "thinking type" or "feeling type". For example, "feeling types" are described as more sensitive towards values, bearing the value of tact, appreciative and sympathy.
On the other hand, the "thinking type" is characterized by their preference to having an objective standard and measure of truth, with good skills in analysis. The characterization of individuals as one or as another distinct type of personality fails to obtain the individual's broad individuality, because it is in literal sense that every human being is a distinct complex of various and multiple traits. A mechanism to achieve personality is the factor analysis, which denotes a statistical procedure that is used in the identification of clusters of test items that manipulate the basic components regarding intelligence.

Biology and Personality

Various brain activity scans on extraverted individuals topple up to the list of mental states and traits that have gained studies and exploration within brain-imaging procedures. These traits include; impulsivity, intelligence, lying, sexual attraction, empathy, racial and political attitudes, addictive cravings and aggressiveness. Various studies state that extraverts look for stimulation because they usually have a low brain arousal, reason as to why tends to be high in extroverts. In an attempt to evaluate and assess traits, psychologists and philosophers implement the strategy of using personality inventories. It is believed that of enduring and stable traits guide indirect personality inventories are viewed as longer questionnaires that serve the purposes covering a broader space of behavior and feelings. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality inventory (MMPI) is used as a classical personality inventory. Despite the fact that it assesses abnormalities in personality tendencies to the normal traits of personality, the MMPI shows proper ways of developing personality inventories.
There are various factors that give efficient and sufficient information regarding personality variations. The psychoanalyst's, Eysenck's, extrovert, introvert and unstable-stable dimensions are vital. However, they do not provide an in-depth description of trait and personality. Psychologist, Robert McCrae, amongst various psychologists, explains that human beings fall under five dimensions of personality and trait, also recognized as the big five. The big five has been used as a currency in personality psychology, which is considered as the best determinant of the fundamental dimensions of the trait. These dimensions include; neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, extraversion and conscientiousness, which provide a wide scope of explanation when it comes to speaking about personality. Conscientiousness characterized by the subject's traits to an organization, caution and discipline (20%). Agreeableness is characterized by traits of soft-heartedness, trustworthiness, and aid on the subject of evaluations (15%). Neuroticism is featured by anxiety, insecurity and self-pity (5%). Openness is characterized by imaginativeness, preference to variety and independence. Finally, extraversion, as highly seen in the subject, is characterized by sociability, affection, and fun-loving traits (60%). The subject, being in the mid-adulthood stage, portrays larger signs of extraversion and least signs of neuroticism, with more likelihoods of being truthful in their statements.

Evaluating Trait Theories

The common question in personality evaluation is whether individuals' personalities are enduring and stable or whether the location and interacting partner determine an individual’s demeanor and behavior the individual presents. Using the "Person-Situation controversy, individuals strive to look for genuine characters and traits that are able to persist across situations and over time. It is believed that individual behavior is largely influenced by the constant interactions of individuals' disposition to the presented environment. However, most people view their traits as self-owned, which is regarded as the culminating wisdom that is achieved in a lifetime. More to say, traits among human being are described as socially significant. These traits bear a great influence on individuals' thinking, health and job performance, amongst other segments of livelihood.

Conclusion

Inconsistency in behavior makes it difficult to obtain and achieve definite test scores, therefore, making personality test scores to be presumably weak forms of predicting behavior. It is viewed that in unfamiliar and formal settings, individuals tend to hide the traits as they carefully monitor social cues. Therefore, as seen in both human and animal interactions, the immediate situation at any moment bears a strong influence upon an individual's or animal's behavior.