What is personality theory?

Introduction

Psychologists who study personality are interested in explaining both the coherence of an individual’s behavior, attitudes, and emotions, and how that individual may change over time. To paraphrase Clyde Kluckhohn, personality theorists seek to describe and explain how each individual is unique, how groups of people meaningfully differ from one another, and how all people share some common attributes. In developing answers to these questions, theorists use widely varying definitions of personality that may differ greatly from the way the term “personality” is used in everyday language. Indeed, if there is a single overriding basic issue in personality theory, it is What is personality?

Personality and Essence

Theorists agree that people have an internal “essence” that determines who they are and that guides their behavior, but the nature of that essence differs from theory to theory. Psychoanalytic theories such as Sigmund Freud’s see the essence of personality as arising from conflict among internal psychic processes. In Freudian psychology, the conflict is viewed as occurring among the urges for instinctual gratification (called the id), the urges for perfection (the superego), and the demands of reality (the ego). Humanistic theories such as those of Carl R. Rogers and Abraham Maslow also see people as often engaged in conflict. For these theorists, however, the conflicts are between an internal self that is striving for positive expression and the constraints of a restrictive external social world. In general, humanistic psychology has a much more optimistic outlook on human nature than does psychoanalytic psychology.

Still other theorists are more neutral with respect to human nature. George Kelly’s cognitive personality theory, for example, views people as scientists, developing and testing hypotheses to understand themselves better and to predict events in their world. Social learning theorists such as Walter Mischel, Albert Bandura, and Julian Rotter see people as developing expectations and behavioral tendencies based on their histories of rewards and punishments and on their observations of others.

To some extent, the question of “essence” is also the question of motivation. Psychoanalytic theorists view people as trying to achieve a balance between instinctual urges and the demands of reality. In contrast, humanistic theorists view people as motivated toward personal growth rather than homeostatic balance. Social learning theory views people as motivated to avoid punishments and obtain rewards.

Related to the question of the “essence” of personality is the notion of whether part or all of the personality can be hidden from the person him- or herself. Psychoanalytic theorists believe that the driving forces of the personality are in the unconscious and thus are not directly accessible to the person except under exceptional circumstances such as those that arise in therapy. Humanists are much more optimistic about the possibility of people coming to know their inner selves. According to Rogers, parts of the self that were once hidden can, when the individual receives acceptance from others, become expressed and incorporated into self-awareness. Social learning theories do not place much weight on hidden personality dynamics. From the social learning perspective, people are viewed as unable to verbalize easily some of their expectations, but no special unconscious processes are hypothesized.

Noimetic psychology, promulgated by Eric R. Maisel, combines some of these elements: unlike the psychoanalytic and social learning theories, it posits that each person is born with an original personality, but as in psychoanalysis and humanism, this personality is unknowable. Rather, the individual's "formed personality" is a product or version of that unknowable personality plus experience, and it is the individual's "available personality" that enables changes in personality.

Personality Change

Theories also differ in the degree to which a person’s personality is seen as changing over time. Most personality theories address the development of personality in childhood and the possibility for change in adulthood. Psychoanalytic theorists believe that the most basic personality characteristics are established by the age of five or six, although there are some minor further developments in adolescence. While the person may change in adulthood in the course of psychotherapy and become better able to cope with the conflicts and traumas experienced during the early years, major personality transformations are not expected. Again, humanists are more optimistic than psychoanalytic theorists about personality change, although humanists, too, see the childhood years as important. For example, Rogers suggests that during childhood the parents may communicate their approval of some of the child’s feelings and their disapproval of others, leaving the child with a distorted self-concept. Yet, from the humanistic point of view, the person’s true inner self will constantly strive for expression. Thus, positive personality change is always seen as possible. Social learning theorists also see personality as changeable. Behaviors learned in childhood may later be changed by direct training, by altering the environment, or by revising one’s expectations.

A final issue is the relationship between personality and behavior. For social learning theorists, behaviors and related expectations are personality. A person’s behaviors are taken as a sample of a full behavioral repertoire that forms who the person is. Both psychoanalytic and humanistic theorists view behavior as a symptom or sign of underlying, internal personality dynamics rather than a sample of the personality itself. According to this viewpoint, a person’s behaviors reflect personality only when interpreted in the light of the underlying traits they reveal. Diverse behaviors may thus be related to a single internal characteristic.

Personality Measures

The study of personality is a scientific discipline, with roots in empirical research; a philosophical discipline, seeking to understand the nature of people; and the foundation for the applied discipline of psychological therapy. While these three aspects of personality often support and enrich one another, there are also tensions as the field accommodates specialists in each of these three areas.

The approach that focuses on personality as a scientific discipline has produced an array of methods to measure personality characteristics. They range from projective tests, such as having people tell stories inspired by ambiguous pictures, to more standardized paper-and-pencil personality tests in which people respond on bipolar numerical or multiple-choice scales to questions about their attitudes or behaviors. Methodologically, personality testing is quite sophisticated; however, people’s scores on personality tests often are rather poor predictors of behavior. The poor record of behavioral prediction based on personality traits, coupled with evidence that suggests that behavior does not have the cross-situational consistency that one might expect, has led Mischel and many other personality specialists to question the utility of most traditional personality theories. Social learning approaches, which emphasize the power of the situation in determining a person’s behavior, tend to fare better in these analyses.

Predicting Behavior

Yet research has found circumstances under which people’s behavior can be predicted from knowledge of their underlying personality characteristics. If one classifies personality characteristics and behaviors at a very general level, combining observations and predicting a group of behaviors, prediction improves. For example, predictions would be more accurate if several measures of a person’s conscientiousness were combined, and then used to predict an overall level of conscientious behavior in a variety of situations, than if one measured conscientiousness with a single scale and then attempted to predict behavior in one specific situation. Prediction on the basis of personality traits also improves when the situations in which one seeks to predict behaviors allow for individual variation as opposed to being highly constrained by social norms. Five basic personality traits often emerge in investigations: extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and culture (high scores on culture reflect characteristics such as intelligence and refinement). Some researchers view these trait terms as accurately describing consistent personality differences among people, while others view them as reflecting the “eye of the beholder” more than the core of personality.

Ultimately, people’s personality traits and situations interact to produce behavior. Situations may often determine behavior, but people choose to place themselves in specific situations that elicit their traits. A child with a predisposition to aggression may provoke others and thus set the stage for the expression of aggression; one who is highly sociable may seek out others in cooperative situations. The relation between personality and behavior is very complex, and it is difficult to describe fully using standard research methods.

Research is highly unlikely to answer philosophical questions concerning human nature; however, considering people from the different points of view offered by various theories can be an enriching experience in itself. For example, a Freudian perspective on a former US president, Lyndon B. Johnson, might see his leadership during the Vietnam conflict as guided by aggressive instincts or even sublimated sexual instincts. On the other hand, a humanist might look at Johnson’s presidency and find his decisions to be guided by the need for self-fulfillment, perhaps citing his vision of himself as the leader of the Great Society as an example of self-actualization. Social learning theorists would view Johnson’s actions as president as determined by the rewards, punishments, and observational learning of his personal learning history, including growing up relatively poor in Texas and accruing power and respect during his years in the US Senate, as well as by the reinforcements and punishments Johnson perceived to be available in the situations in which he found himself during his presidency. In the final analysis, none of these interpretations could be shown to be blatantly false or absolutely true. Historians, biographers, and others might find each to be an enriching viewpoint from which to consider this complex individual.

Therapy

Multiple points of view also characterize the therapies derived from theories of personality. Most therapists take an eclectic approach, sampling from the ideas of various theories to tailor their treatment to a specific client. Each therapist, however, also may have her or his own biases, based on a particular theoretical orientation. For example, a client who often feels anxious and seeks help from a psychoanalytic therapist may find that the therapist encourages the client to explore memories of childhood experiences to discover the unconscious roots of the anxiety. Slips of the tongue, dreams, and difficulty remembering or accepting therapeutic interpretations would be viewed as important clues to unconscious processes. The same client seeking treatment from a humanistic therapist would have a different experience. There, the emphasis would be on current experiences, with the therapist providing a warm and supportive atmosphere for the client to explore feelings. A behavioral therapist, from the social learning orientation, would help the client pinpoint situations in which anxiety occurs and teach the client alternative responses to those situations. Again, no one form of therapy is superior for all clients. Successes or failures in therapy depend on the combination of client, therapist, and mode of treatment.

Theories and Experimentation

While people have long speculated on the causes and types of individual differences in personality, the theory of Freud was the first and most influential psychological personality theory. All subsequent theories have directly or indirectly addressed the central concerns of motivation, development, and personality organization first proposed by Freud. Psychoanalytic theorists such as Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, while trained by Freud, disagreed with Freud’s emphasis on sexual instincts and developed their own theories, emphasizing different motivations. Similarly, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, and others developed theories placing greater emphasis on the ego and its interaction with society than did Freud’s.

Psychoanalytic theory has had somewhat less of an influence in the United States than it did in Europe. Personality psychology in the United States is relatively more research-oriented, practical, and optimistic. In the United States, Gordon Allport developed one of the first trait approaches to personality. The humanistic theories of Carl R. Rogers and Abraham Maslow, the social learning theories of Bandura and Rotter, and the cognitive theory of Kelly flourished in the 1950s and 1960s and continue to have their advocates. Modern personality psychologists, however, are much more likely to confine themselves to personality measurement and research than to propose broad theories of personality.

Many have questioned personality’s status as a scientific subdiscipline of psychology. In 1968, Mischel’s Personality and Assessment, arguing that the consistency and behavior-prediction assumptions inherent in all personality theories are unsupported by the evidence, was published. At the same time, attribution theories in social psychology were suggesting that personality traits are largely in the “eye of the beholder” rather than in the person being observed. For example, Edward Jones and Richard Nisbett argued that people are more inclined to see others as possessing personality traits than they are to attribute traits to themselves. The continued existence of personality as a subdiscipline of scientific psychology was debated.

The result has been a refined approach to measurement and personality analysis. Current research on personality does not boldly assert the influence of internal personality characteristics on behavior. Rather, attention is paid to careful assessment of personality and to the complex interactions of persons and situations. For example, research on loneliness has found that people who describe themselves as lonely often lack social skills and avoid interactions with others, thus perpetuating their feelings of loneliness. All personality characteristics, including loneliness, are most meaningfully seen as the product of a complex interrelationship between the person and the environment.

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