How do psychologists use traits to describe personality?
|
Show Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: One is understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability. The other is understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole. Adapted from the Encyclopedia of Psychology Understanding Personality Disorders
Getting Help
Personality Traits
News
 Getty There are hundreds of traits psychologists use to describe someone’s personality. A person can be warm, anxious, modest, or competent. They can be authoritative, self-sufficient, vain, or fearless. Which traits are most likely to be found in psychologically “healthy” individuals? A team of researchers led by Weibke Bleidorn of the University of California, Davis attempted to answer this question in a new research paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They found that high levels of openness to feelings, positive emotions and straightforwardness, combined with low levels of neuroticism were most indicative of a healthy personality. “Scholars have been interested in characterizing a healthy personality prototype since the beginning of the scientific study of personality,” state Bleidorn and her team. “The father of modern personality trait theory, Gordon Allport, distinguished the ‘mature person’ based on their intentional pursuit of long-term goals. [...] Erik Erikson famously claimed that Sigmund Freud described the healthy person as someone who can love and work.” Bleidorn and her team added a modern twist to this age-old question. In their first experiment, they recruited 137 personality experts to rate which of 30 commonly used personality traits would appear in psychologically well-adjusted individuals. They found that experts rated openness to feelings, warmth, positivity, straightforwardness, and competence as the traits most likely to appear in well-adjusted individuals. Hostility, depressiveness, vulnerability, anxiousness, and impulsivity, on the other hand, were rated as least likely to be found in well-adjusted individuals. The researchers then repeated this exercise with a group of undergraduate students. They found a high degree of consistency between the ratings of the personality experts and the undergraduates, suggesting that the personality traits associated with psychological health can be identified by laypeople and experts alike. Next, the researchers put their profile of the psychologically “healthy” individual to the test. They did this by measuring how well their “healthy” profile lined up with other psychological dimensions such as well-being, self-esteem, aggression, and narcissism. Examining survey responses from over 3000 individuals, they found the data to match their predictions. Psychologically healthy individuals scored higher on psychological dimensions associated with superior psychological functioning (e.g., self-esteem, self-concept clarity, and optimism) and lower on dimensions associated with psychological dysfunction (e.g., exploitativeness, aggression, and antisocial behavior). The authors conclude, “Similar to Carl Rogers’ portrayal of the ‘fully functioning’ person, the psychologically healthy person can be characterized as being capable to experience and express emotions, straightforward, warm, friendly, genuine, confident in their own abilities, emotionally stable, and fairly resilient to stress. [...] This research integrates a number of historical threads in the literature on optimal human personality configurations and provides a practical means for future research on this important and interesting topic.” Full list of personality traits, ranked high to low on their likelihood of describing a psychologically “healthy” individual:
How does trait theory explain personality?Personality traits reflect people's characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Trait theory in psychology rests on the idea that people differ from one another based on the strength and intensity of basic trait dimensions.
How do psychologists observe personality?To study and measure personality, psychologists have developed personality tests, assessments, and inventories. The tests are widely used in a variety of settings. For example, the famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is frequently used as a pre-employment screening assessment.
How do you explain personality in psychology?Personality psychology is the scientific discipline that studies the personality system. The discipline seeks to understand a person's major psychological patterns and how those patterns are expressed in an individual's life.
|
