Personality Paper

Personality Paper

PSY 211

October 9, 2015

Joseph

Personality Paper

Personality refers to an individuals’ unique psychological makeup and how it consistently influences the way a person responds to his or her environment. Both personality and situational factors play a role in determining each individuals’ behavior. Personality is incorporated in many activities such as: A persons choices of leisure activities, political perspectives, aesthetic tastes, and Lifestyles. Scientists are unsure whether personality is a learned trait or whether it can be genetically passed on from family member to family member; there may be a possibility that both are true. Today, psychologists have identified four perspectives of personality. (Holmes)

Understanding Trait perspective, researchers believe they can better comprehend the differences between individuals. Trait personality is determined by a number of set, relatively unchanging traits. Some theorists believe that there are thousands of different traits that make up human personality. Raymond Cattell’s theory identified 16 personality traits that he believed could be utilized to understand and measure individual differences in personality. Where as Robert McCrae and Paul Costa: Introduced the big five theory, which identifies five key dimensions of personality: 1) extraversion, 2) neuroticism, 3) openness to experience, 4) conscientiousness and 5) agreeableness.

Socio-cognitive theorists argue that personalities are direct results of personal histories and interpretations. Because these can only be experienced individually, persons have entirely unique personalities and no two are the same. Concepts like self-efficacy are common within the socio-cognitive theory, and Julian Rotter's theory of the "locus of control" holds that a person’s focus on external or internal occurrences largely determines that person's personality.

Humanistic theorist Carl Rogers believed that human beings are inherently good with a strong...