How does the trait perspective differ from the other perspectives of personality?

PERSPECTIVES OF PERSONALITY:

The study of personality is one of the favorite and major topics of psychologists in psychology. Many personality theories are present, and most of the major ones divided into the four major perspectives. Each of these perspectives of personality is trying to describing the different patterns of personality, including

. How these patterns are forms

. How people are differ from one another at individual level

The four perspectives of personality theory are:

1- Humanistic perspective

2- Social cognitive perspective

3- Trait perspective

4- Psychoanalytical perspective

• Humanistic Perspective:

  The humanistic perspective of personality tells about the “psychological growth, free will, and personal awareness”. It takes a more positive effect on nature of human and, it is also focused on how every person can achieve his/her individual potential.

  Major Theorists of this perspective:The following are the major theorists of humanistic perspective:

  CARL ROGERS:

  Rogers believed on the “inherent goodness of individuals and explained the importance of free will and psychological growth”. He suggested that the self-realization is the motivation behind behavior of humans.

  Abraham Maslow:

  Maslow Suggested that people are motivated by a hierarchy of needs. The most basic needs are centered on things necessary for life such as “food and water, but as people move up the hierarchy these needs become centered on things such as esteem and self-actualization.”

Trait Perspective:

This perspective of personality is mainly focused on “identifying, describing, and measuring the basic traits” that plays an important role in the formation of human personality. By understanding these traits, psychologists believed that, they can better understand the individual’s differences.

Major Theorists:

Below are the main theorists of trait perspective:

• Hans Eysenck:

Hans divided personality into the three dimensions

i- Extraversion-introversion

ii- Emotional stability-neuroticism

iii- Psychoticism.

• Raymond Cattell:

Raymond spotted 16 traits of personality, and he believed that traits can be used to acknowledge and measure individual differences in personality. And these 16 traits are ‘’warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule-consciousness, social boldness, sensitivity, vigilance, abstractedness, privacy, apprehension, openness to change, self-reliance, perfectionism, and tension.’’

• Robert McCrae and Paul Costa:

They introduced the big five theory, which plays an important role in identification of five key dimensions of personality:

i- Extraversion

ii- Neuroticism

iii- Openness to experience

iv- Conscientiousness

v- Agreeableness

Social Cognitive Perspective:

The social cognitive perspective of personality explains significantly the ‘’importance of observational learning, self-efficacy, situational influences, and cognitive processes.’’

Major Theorists:

The theorist who plays important role in the social cognitive perspective is:

Albert Bandura:

Bandura emphasized the importance of social learning, and observational learning. His theory emphasized the role of conscious thoughts including ‘’self-efficiency, or our own beliefs’’ in our abilities.

Psychoanalytic Perspective:

The psychoanalytic perspective of personality tells the importance of ‘’early childhood experiences and the unconscious mind’’.This perspective of personality was emerged by ‘’psychiatrist Sigmund Freud’’ who believed that things hidden in the unconscious could be revealed in a number of different ways, including through ‘’dreams, free association, and slips of the tongue.’’

Neo-Freudian theorists, including Erik Erikson, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney, believed in the importance of the unconscious but disagreed with other aspects of Freud’s theories.

Major Theorists:

Below are the most prominent psychoanalytic perspective theorists are:

Sigmund Freud:

Freud explains the importance of early childhood events, the influence of the unconscious, and sexual instincts on the personality development and formation.

Erik Erikson:

Erickson emphasized the social elementsof personality development, the identity crisis, and how personality is shaped over the lifetime span.

Carl Jung:

Jung focused on concepts like the collective unconsciousness, archetypes, and psychological types.

Alfred Adler:

He believed on the core motive behind the personality involves the striving for superiority, or the desire to overcome the challenges and move closer toward self-realization. This desire to achieve superiority arrived from underlying feelings of inferiority that Adler believed were universal.

Karen Horney:

Horney focused on the need to overcome thebasic anxiety, the sense of being loneliness and solo in the world. She emphasized the societal and cultural factors that also play a major role in personality, including the importance of the parent-child relationship.