Personality

Defining Personality

Personality is the unique combination of patterns that influence behavior, thought,

motivation, and emotion in a human being.

An individual’s personality is the combination of traits and patterns that influence their
behavior, thought, motivation, and emotion. It drives individuals to consistently think,
feel, and behave in specific ways; in essence, it is what makes each individual unique.
Over time, these patterns strongly influence personal expectations, perceptions, values,
and attitudes.

Personality psychology is the study of human personality and how it varies among
individuals and populations. Personality has been studied for over 2000 years,
beginning with Hippocrates in 370 BCE and spanning through modern theories such as
the psychodynamic perspective and trait theory.

Early Philosophical Roots

The word “personality” originates from the Latin word persona, which means “mask.”
Personality as a field of study began with Hippocrates, a physician in ancient Greece,
who theorized that personality traits and human behaviors are based on four separate
temperaments associated with four fluids of the body known as “humors”. This theory,
known as humorism, proposed that an individual’s personality was the result of the
balance of these humors (yellow bile, black bile, phlegm, and blood), which
corresponded to four dispositions (grumpy, melancholy, calm, and cheer, respectively).
While this theory is no longer held to be true, it paved the way for further discoveries
and insight into human personality.

Interestingly, several words in the English language that describe personality traits are
rooted in humorism: “bilious” means bad-tempered, which is rooted in humorists’
thought that yellow bile was associated with grumpiness; “melancholic” is from the
Greek words for “black bile,” again rooted in humorists’ thought that black bile was
associated with depression. Similarly, “phlegmatic” describes a calm personality and
“sanguine” (from the Latin for “blood”) a cheerful or playful one.

A great deal of modern personality psychology is influenced by, and attempts to answer,
the following five philosophical questions about what really determines personality:

1. Freedom versus determinism: How much, if any, of an individual’s personality is under

their conscious control?
2. Heredity versus environment: Do internal (biological) or external (environmental)
influences play a larger role in determining personality?
 3. Uniqueness versus universality: Are individuals generally more alike (similar to each
other) or different (unique) in nature?
4. Active versus reactive: Is human behavior passively shaped by environmental factors, or
are humans more active in this role?
5. Optimistic versus pessimistic: Are humans integral in the changing of their own
personalities (for instance, can they learn and change through human interaction and
intervention)?

Approaches to Studying Personality

Research into these five philosophical questions has branched into several different
approaches to studying personality. The major theories include the psychodynamic,
neo-Freudian, learning (or behaviorist), humanistic, biological, trait (or dispositional),
and cultural perspectives.

 Psychodynamic theory, the psychological drives and forces within individuals that explain
human behavior and personality. ... Freud's drive theory, involving the three states of
being (id, ego, and superego), are seen as important in understanding the role of the
unconscious.
Sigmund Freud: Sigmund Freud advanced a psychodynamic view of human personality that implicated the id,
ego, and superego as the main determinants of individual differences in personality.
 Neo-Freudian theorists, such as Adler, Erikson, Jung, expanded on Freud’s theories but
focused more on the social environment and on the effects of culture on personality.
 Learning theories, such as behaviorism, regard an individuals’ actions as ultimately being
responses to external stimuli. Social learning theory believes that personality and
behavior are determined by an individual’s cognition about the world around them.
 Humanistic theory argues that an individual’s subjective free will is the most important
determinant of behavior. Humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl
Rogers believed that people strive to become self-actualized—the “best version” of
themselves.
 Biological approaches focus on the role of genetics and the brain in shaping personality.
Related to this, evolutionary theories explore how variation in individual personalities
variance may be rooted in natural selection.
 Trait theorists believe personality can be conceptualized as a set of common traits, or
characteristic ways of behaving, that every individual exhibits to some degree. In this
view, such personality traits are different from person to person but within an individual
are stable over time and place.
With any of these theories, it is important to keep in mind that the culture in which we
live is one of the most important environmental factors that shapes our personalities.
Western ideas about personality are not necessarily applicable to other cultures, and
there is evidence that the strength of personality traits varies across cultures.

Genetics, the Brain, and Personality

The biological perspective on personality emphasizes the influence of the brain and
genetic factors on personality.

The Biological Perspective on Personality

The biological perspective on personality emphasizes the internal physiological and

genetic factors that influence personality. It focuses on why or how personality traits
manifest through biology and investigates the links between personality, DNA, and
processes in the brain. This research can include the investigation of anatomical,
chemical, or genetic influences and is primarily accomplished through correlating
personality traits with scientific data from experimental methods such as brain imaging
and molecular genetics.

Temperament

In psychology, “temperament” refers to the personality tendencies that we show at birth

(and that are therefore biologically determined). For example, Thomas and Chess
(1977) found that babies could be categorized into one of three temperaments: easy,
difficult, or slow to warm up. After birth, environmental factors (such as family
interactions) and maturation interact with a child’s temperament to shape their
personality (Carter et al., 2008).

Research suggests that there are two dimensions of our temperament that are
important parts of our adult personality: reactivity and self-regulation (Rothbart, Ahadi, &
Evans, 2000). Reactivity refers to how we respond to new or challenging environmental
stimuli; self-regulation refers to our ability to control that response (Rothbart &
Derryberry, 1981; Rothbart, Sheese, Rueda, & Posner, 2011). For example, one person
may immediately respond to a new stimulus with a high level of anxiety while another
barely notices it.

Genetics and Personality

The field of behavioral genetics focuses on the relationship between genes and
behavior and has given psychologists a glimpse of the link between genetics and
personality. A large part of the evidence collected linking genetics and the environment
to personality comes from twin studies, which compare levels of similarity in personality
between genetically identical twins.
Genetics: The expression of inherited genes plays a role in determining personality.

In the field of behavioral genetics, the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart—a well-
known study of the genetic basis for personality—conducted research with twins from
1979 to 1999. In studying 350 pairs of twins, including pairs of identical and fraternal
twins reared together and apart, researchers found that identical twins, whether raised
together or apart, have very similar personalities (Bouchard, 1994; Bouchard, Lykken,
McGue, Segal, & Tellegen, 1990; Segal, 2012).

These findings suggest the heritability of some personality traits, implying that some
aspects of our personalities are largely controlled by genetics. Multiple twin studies
have found that identical twins do have higher correlations in personality traits than
fraternal twins. While identical twins may have some similar personality traits, however,
they still have distinct personalities, suggesting that genetics are not the only factor in
determining personality. One study measuring genetic influence on twins in five different
countries found that correlations for traits between identical twins were 0.50 (i.e., they
had 50% of traits in common), while for fraternal twins were about 0.20 (i.e., they had
20% of traits in common). These findings suggest that heredity and environment interact
to determine an individual’s personality.

It’s important to point out that traits are determined not by a single gene, but by a
combination of many genes, and also by environmental factors that control whether
certain genes are expressed. Many personality studies today investigate the activation
and expression of genes and how they relate to personality. How DNA interacts with the
environment determines what part of the DNA code is actually activated within an
individual—in other words, which genes will be expressed. These small changes in
individuals’ DNA help determine each person’s uniqueness—their distinct looks,
abilities, brain functioning, and other characteristics that all work together to form a
cohesive personality.

The Brain and Personality

The biological approach to personality has also identified areas and pathways within the
brain that are associated with the development of personality. A number of theorists,
such as Hans Eysenck, Gordon Allport, and Raymond Cattell, believe that personality
traits can be traced back to brain structures and neural mechanisms, such as dopamine
and seratonin pathways. Researchers using a biological perspective will seek to
understand how hormones, neurotransmitters, and different areas of the brain all
interact to affect personality.

Phineas Gage: A Case Study

One of the first documented cases that demonstrated the link between personality and
the brain was that of Phineas Gage. In 1858, Gage was working as a blasting foreman
for a railroad company. Due to a faulty blast, a railroad spike was blown through his
head; miraculously, he survived the accident.

Phineas Gage’s skull: The case of Phineas Gage was one of the first indicators of a biological basis for
personality.

The spike pierced Gage’s frontal lobe, and Gage experienced many subsequent
changes in aspects of personality that we now know are associated with this area of the
brain. The changes in Gage’s personality after his brain injury spurred interest in the
biological factors involved in personality and implicated the frontal lobe as an important
area associated with higher-order personality functions.
Strengths of the Biological Perspective

One strength of the biological perspective is its strict adherence to scientific

methodology. All factors are reduced to quantifiable variables that can be reliably
measured by personality trait models and questionnaires. The personality measures are
standardized across measurements, and these measures of personality are very
compatible with statistical analyses, providing an easily administered and measurable
definition of personality.

This method can also be deterministic, meaning that some factors are identified as
causal—i.e., certain brain structures or patterns may be identified as causing certain
psychological outcomes. Because of this, the biological perspective can be useful in
identifying causes of and effective treatments for personality and mood disorders. For
example, identifying seratonin imbalance as a cause of depression led to the
development of selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which have been found
to be an effective treatment for depression.

Limitations of the Biological Perspective

A limitation of this perspective is that it focuses almost exclusively on the nature side of
the nature vs. nurture debate (the debate about whether genetics or environment are
more influential in human development). Because of this exclusive focus, other factors
that are integral to personality are not included. Hormones, neurotransmitters, and
genetics are the key factors in this focus; the effects of environmental and social factors,
however, are often overlooked. Twin studies have shown that heritable factors are not
the only predictor of personality or even diseases such as schizophrenia; the biological
perspective does not fully address non-heritable factors.

In addition, the correlational studies used for measuring normal personality traits are
subjected to the same rules as normal correlational research: they cannot be used
alone to establish causation. Just because two factors are shown to be related does not
mean that one causes the other. For example, if you have data that show that as ice
cream sales increase, the rate of drowning deaths also increases, you should not
necessarily conclude that ice cream consumption causes drowning. In this case, more
ice cream is sold during the hot summer months—the same time that people are more
likely to go swimming. Therefore, the cause of the increases in both ice cream sales
and drowning deaths is most likely the hot summer weather.

That said, properly designed experimental studies can help scientists determine cause-
and-effect relationships in order to develop treatment options for people with personality
disorders.
Influences of Culture and Gender on Personality

Both culture and gender are important factors that influence the development of
personality.

Key Points

 Personality is influenced by both biological and environmental factors; culture is one of

the most important environmental factors that shapes personality.
 Considering cultural influences on personality is important because Western ideas and
theories are not necessarily applicable to other cultures. Research shows that the
strength of personality traits varies greatly across cultures.
 People who live in individualist cultures tend to value independence, competition, and
personal achievement, while people from collectivist cultures tend to value social
harmony, respectfulness, and group needs.
 In much the same manner that cultural norms can influence personality and behavior,
gender norms also emphasize different traits between different genders and thereby
influence the development of personality.
 Generally, aggression and assertiveness are emphasized as positive traits for males,
while submissiveness and caretaking are emphasized for females.
 There are three approaches that can be used to study personality in a cultural context: the
cultural-comparative approach, the indigenous approach, and the combined approach,
which incorporates elements of the first two approaches.

A person’s culture is one of the most important environmental factors shaping their
personality (Triandis & Suh, 2002). Personality psychologists are interested in
understanding the role that culture plays in the development of personality. Research
investigating the variations of personality traits across cultures suggests that there are
both universal and culture-specific aspects that account for these variations.

Culture and Personality

The term culture refers to all of the beliefs, customs, ideas, behaviors, and traditions of
a particular society that are passed through generations. Culture is transmitted to
people through language as well as through the modeling of behavior, and it defines
which traits and behaviors are considered important, desirable, or undesirable.

Within a culture there are norms and behavioral expectations. These cultural norms can
dictate which personality traits are considered important. The researcher Gordon Allport
considered culture to be an important influence on traits and defined common traits as
those that are recognized within a culture. These traits may vary from culture to culture
based on differing values, needs, and beliefs. Positive and negative traits can be
determined by cultural expectations: what is considered a positive trait in one culture
may be considered negative in another, thus resulting in different expressions of
personality across cultures.

Considering cultural influences on personality is important because Western ideas and

theories are not necessarily applicable to other cultures (Benet-Martinez & Oishi, 2008).
There is a great deal of evidence that the strength of personality traits varies across
cultures, and this is especially true when comparing individualist cultures (such as
European, North American, and Australian cultures) and collectivist cultures (such as
Asian, African, and South American cultures). People who live in individualist
cultures tend to believe that independence, competition, and personal achievement are
important. In contrast, people who live in collectivist cultures tend to value social
harmony, respectfulness, and group needs over individual needs. These values
influence personality in different but substantial ways; for example, Yang (2006) found
that people in individualist cultures displayed more personally-oriented personality traits,
whereas people in collectivist cultures displayed more socially-oriented personality
traits.

Gender and Personality

In much the same manner that cultural norms can influence personality and behavior,
gender norms (the behaviors that males and females are expected to conform to in a
given society) can also influence personality by emphasizing different traits between
different genders.

Ideas of appropriate behavior for each gender (masculine and feminine) vary among
cultures and tend to change over time. For example, aggression and assertiveness
have historically been emphasized as positive masculine personality traits in the United
States. Meanwhile, submissiveness and caretaking have historically been held as ideal
feminine traits. While many gender roles remain the same, others change over time. In
1938, for example, only 1 out of 5 Americans agreed that a married woman should earn
money in industry and business. By 1996, however, 4 out of 5 Americans approved of
women working in these fields. This type of attitude change has been accompanied by
behavioral shifts that coincide with changes in trait expectations and shifts in personal
identity for men and women.

Approaches to Studying Personality in a Cultural Context

There are three approaches that can be used to study personality in a cultural context:
the cultural-comparative approach, the indigenous approach, and the combined
approach, which incorporates elements of the first two approaches.

 The cultural-comparative approach seeks to test Western ideas about personality

in other cultures to determine whether they can be generalized and if they have
cultural validity (Cheung van de Vijver, & Leong, 2011). For example, researchers
used the cultural-comparative approach to test the universality of McCrae and
 Costa’s Five Factor Model. They found applicability in numerous cultures around
the world, with the Big Five traits being stable in many cultures (McCrae & Costa,
1997; McCrae et al., 2005).
 The indigenous approach came about in reaction to the dominance of Western
approaches to the study of personality in non-Western settings (Cheung et al.,
2011). Because Western-based personality assessments cannot fully capture the
personality constructs of other cultures, the indigenous model has led to the
development of personality assessment instruments that are based on constructs
relevant to the culture being studied (Cheung et al., 2011).
 The third approach to cross-cultural studies of personality is the combined
approach, which serves as a bridge between Western and indigenous psychology
as a way of understanding both universal and cultural variations in personality
(Cheung et al., 2011).

Trait Perspectives on Personality

Allport’s, Cattell’s, and Eysenck’s Trait Theories of Personality

Allport’s, Cattell’s, and Eysenck’s trait theories propose that individuals possess certain
personality traits that partially determine their behavior.

Trait Theories of Personalities

Trait theorists believe personality can be understood by positing that all people have
certain traits, or characteristic ways of behaving.

An example of a trait is extraversion–introversion. Extraversion tends to be manifested

in outgoing, talkative, energetic behavior, whereas introversion is manifested in more
reserved and solitary behavior. An individual may fall along any point in the continuum,
and the location where the individual falls will determine how he or she responds to
various situations.

The idea of categorizing people by traits can be traced back as far as Hippocrates;
however more modern theories have come from Gordon Allport, Raymond Cattell, and
Hans Eysenck.

Gordon Allport (1897–1967)

Gordon Allport was one of the first modern trait theorists. Allport and Henry Odbert
worked through two of the most comprehensive dictionaries of the English language
available and extracted around 18,000 personality-describing words. From this list they
reduced the number of words to approximately 4,500 personality-describing adjectives
which they considered to describe observable and relatively permanent personality
traits.

Allport organized these traits into a hierarchy of three levels:

 Cardinal traits dominate and shape an individual’s behavior, such as Ebenezer Scrooge’s
greed or Mother Theresa’s altruism. They stand at the top of the hierarchy and are
collectively known as the individual’s master control. They are considered to be an
individual’s ruling passions. Cardinal traits are powerful, but few people have personalities
dominated by a single trait. Instead, our personalities are typically composed of multiple
traits.
 Central traits come next in the hierarchy. These are general characteristics found in
varying degrees in every person (such as loyalty, kindness, agreeableness, friendliness,
sneakiness, wildness, or grouchiness). They are the basic building blocks that shape
most of our behavior.
 Secondary traits exist at the bottom of the hierarchy and are not quite as obvious or
consistent as central traits. They are plentiful but are only present under specific
circumstances; they include things like preferences and attitudes. These secondary traits
explain why a person may at times exhibit behaviors that seem incongruent with their
usual behaviors. For example, a friendly person gets angry when people try to tickle him;
another is not an anxious person but always feels nervous speaking publicly.
Allport hypothesized that internal and external forces influence an individual’s behavior
and personality, and he referred to these forces as genotypes and
phenotypes. Genotypes are internal forces that relate to how a person retains
information and uses it to interact with the world. Phenotypes are external forces that
relate to the way an individual accepts his or her surroundings and how others influence
his or her behavior.

Raymond Cattell (1905–1998)

In an effort to make Allport’s list of 4,500 traits more manageable, Raymond Cattell took
the list and removed all the synonyms, reducing the number down to 171. However,
saying that a trait is either present or absent does not accurately reflect a person’s
uniqueness, because (according to trait theorists) all of our personalities are actually
made up of the same traits; we differ only in the degree to which each trait is expressed.

Cattell believed it necessary to sample a wide range of variables to capture a full

understanding of personality. The first type of data was life data, which involves
collecting information from an individual’s natural everyday life behaviors. Experimental
data involves measuring reactions to standardized experimental situations,
and questionnaire data involves gathering responses based on introspection by an
individual about his or her own behavior and feelings. Using this data, Cattell performed
factor analysis to generated sixteen dimensions of human personality
traits: abstractedness, warmth, apprehension, emotional stability, liveliness, openness
to change, perfectionism, privateness, intelligence , rule consciousness , tension,
sensitivity, social boldness, self-reliance, vigilance, and dominance.
Based on these 16 factors, he developed a personality assessment called the 16PF.
Instead of a trait being present or absent, each dimension is scored over a continuum,
from high to low. For example, your level of warmth describes how warm, caring, and
nice to others you are. If you score low on this index, you tend to be more distant and
cold. A high score on this index signifies you are supportive and comforting. Despite
cutting down significantly on Allport’s list of traits, Cattell’s 16PF theory has still been
criticized for being too broad.

Hans Eysenck (1916–1997)

Hans Eysenck was a personality theorist who focused on temperament—innate,

genetically based personality differences. He believed personality is largely governed by
biology, and he viewed people as having two specific personality dimensions:
extroversion vs. introversion and neuroticism vs. stability. After collaborating with his
wife and fellow personality theorist Sybil Eysenck, he added a third dimension to this
model: psychoticism vs. socialization.

 According to their theory, people high on the trait of extroversion are sociable and
outgoing and readily connect with others, whereas people high on the trait
of introversion have a higher need to be alone, engage in solitary behaviors, and
limit their interactions with others.
 In the neuroticism/stability dimension, people high on neuroticism tend to be
anxious; they tend to have an overactive sympathetic nervous system and even
with low stress, their bodies and emotional state tend to go into a flight-or-fight
reaction. In contrast, people high on stability tend to need more stimulation to
activate their flight-or-fight reaction and are therefore considered more emotionally
stable.
 In the psychoticism/socialization dimension, people who are high
on psychoticism tend to be independent thinkers, cold, nonconformist, impulsive,
antisocial, and hostile. People who are high on socialization (often referred to as
superego control) tend to have high impulse control—they are more altruistic,
empathetic, cooperative, and conventional.

The major strength of Eysenck’s model is that he was one of the first to make his
approach more quantifiable; it was therefore perceived to be more “legitimate”, as a
common criticism of psychological theories is that they are not empirically verifiable. He
also hypothesized that neuroticism was determined by individual differences in the
limbic system, the part of the human brain involved in emotion, motivation, and
emotional association with memory. Unlike Allport’s and Cattell’s models, however,
Eysenck’s has been criticized for being too narrow.