Personality

Personality

Psy/211

July 8, 2014

Robert Brooks

Personality

There are many theories of personality they have been grouped into four basic perspectives: humanistic, psychoanalytic, social cognitive, and traits. The humanistic perspective “represents an optimistic look at human nature”. (Hockenbury, 2014) Human nature is viewed as primarily good and humanistic theorists, like Maslow, focus on methods that allow fulfillment of the potential. The humanistic perspective of personality attributes human characteristics for self-actualization and action to free will.

Psychoanalytic perspective focus on importance of the unconscious process and the influence of the early childhood experience. The psychoanalytic perspective suggests that there is a structure mind which includes ego, superego, and id. Id is completely unconscious, irrational component of personality. Which is not affected by values, logic, danger, the demands of the external world, or morality. Part of the personality that has the semi conscious is the ego and the superego is the semi conscious, moralistic part of the personality. This structure is a very distinct psychological process (Hockenbury, 2014).

Social cognitive perspectives of personality “emphasizes learning and conscious cognitive processes, including the importance of beliefs about self, self regulation, and goal setting” (Hockenbury, 2014). Albert Bandura was one of the major theorist of this prospective. Bandura emphasized the role of conscious thoughts including self efficacy.

Another perspective is the trait perspective of personality. The trait perspective “ emphasizes the description and measurements of specific personality differences among individuals” (Hockenbury, 2014). In this perspective, there are two representative trait theories. Hans Eysenck suggested that there are three dimensions of personality: extraversion- introversion, psychoticism, and emotional stability- neuroticism. Raymond Cattrell identified sixteen...