BLOCK 3 – THEORIES OF

PERSONALITY - II
• UNIT 1 - GORDON ALLPORT: A DISPOSITIONAL THEORY OF PERSONALITY

• UNIT 2 - RAYMOND CATTELL: A TRAIT THEORY OF PERSONALITY

• UNIT 3 - HANS EYSENCK: A TRAIT-TYPE THEORY OF PERSONALITY

• UNIT 4 - THE BIG FIVE FACTORS: THE BASIC DIMENSIONS OF

PERSONALITY
 GORDON ALLPORT: A DISPOSITIONAL THEORY OF
PERSONALITY

• According to Allport personality is the dynamic organisation

within the individual of those psychophysical systems that
determine his unique adjustment to his environment

• A trait is a predisposition to act in the same way in a wide

range of situations
Common Traits versus Individual Traits

• Allport distinguishes between common traits and individual traits. The former
(also called dimensional or nomothetic traits) includes any generalized disposition
to which most people within a given culture can be reasonably compared

• Those characteristics peculiar to the individual which do not permit comparisons

among individual are referred to as individual traits. These are also called as
personal dispositions or morphological traits and these traits always operate in
unique ways within each person
• Cardinal Trait: If a trait is extremely pervasive, that is, if almost all of a
person’s activities can be traced to its influence, it is a cardinal trait. Eg:
Mahatma Gandhi’s Non violence

• Central Trait: Less pervasive but still quite generalised disposition of the
individual. These are also called the building blocks of personality. Eg: A
person being outgoing, sociable etc

• Secondary Trait: Dispositions which are less conspicuous, less generalised,

less consistent and less relevant as compared to cardinal or central traits.
These are called secondary traits. Eg: food preferences of an individual
 THE PROPIUM: DEVELOPMENT OF
SELFHOOD

• Propriate comes from the word ‘proprium’, which is Allport’s name for that essential concept,
the self.

• He considered proprium from two basic view points, viz., phenomenological and functional.

• Phnomenological means the self is considered in terms of what it experiences. Allport

suggested that the self is composed of all the aspects of a person experiencing,

• Allport considered the self as having seven functions, as given below: 1) Sense of body 2) Self-
identity 3) Self-esteem 4) Self-extension 5) Self-image 6) Rational coping 7) Propriate striving
 FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY

• This concept states that the motives for a certain behaviour today are
independent (autonomous) of their origins.

• Allport thus did not believe in looking too much into a person’s past in order to
understand the present. This perhaps led to the term functional autonomy in
which a person’s motives today are independent (autonomous) of their origins.

• Allport suggested that much of adult behaviour is caused by functionally

autonomous motives.
 TYPES OF FUNCTIONAL
AUTONOMY

PRESERVATIVE FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY

• Refers to feedback mechanisms in the nervous system that are

governed by simple neurological principles. The main feature is
repetitious
PROPRIATE activity
FUNCTIONAL AUTONOMY

• Refers to acquired interests, values, attitudes and intentions of a person

 THE MATURE PERSONALITY

• Allport believed that the emergence of personal maturity is a continuous and lifelong process of

becoming.

• The behaviour of a mature person is functionally autonomous and is motivated by conscious processes.

• Allport concluded that the psychologically mature adult is characterised by six attributes, namely 1) Has

a widely extended sense of self 2) Has a capacity for warm social interactions 3) Demonstrates

emotional security and self acceptance 4) Demonstrates realistic perception, skills and assignments 5)

Demonstrates self insight and humour 6) Has a unifying philosophy of life

 RAYMOND CATTELL: A TRAIT
THEORY OF PERSONALITY
• According to Cattell [1965], personality is that which permits us to predict what a person will do in a
given situation

• The formula used by Cattell to predict behaviour with any degree of accuracy is : R = f (S ,P ) Where R
refers to the nature of a person’s specific response, f refers to the unspecified function, S refers to the
stimulus situation at a given moment in time and P refers to the Personality structure. Cattell also
accepts that it is difficult to predict a person’s behaviour in a given situation. In order to increase
predictive accuracy, the personality theorist must consider not only what traits a person possesses but
also the many non trait variables such as for example, the person’s moods and particular social roles
called for in the situation and related aspects.
 Cattell draws his data from three basic sources: life record
data(L-data),self-rating questionnaire data(Q-data), and
objective test data(OT data).
 ROLE OF HERDITY AND
ENVIRONMENT
• Cattell has tried to determine the relative contributions of heredity and environment to the
development of traits

• He devised a statistical technique for this purpose and called it multiple abstract variance
analysis(MAVA). This test estimates not only the presence or absence of genetic influence but
also the degree to which traits are due to genetic or to environmental influences.

• Results from MAVA technique (based on personality tests administered to assess a particular
trait) suggest that the importance of genetic and environmental influences varies widely from
trait to trait
 HANS EYSENCK: A TRAIT-TYPE
THEORY OF PERSONALITY

• TYPE THEORY OF PERSONALITY

• Personality type theory aims to classify people into distinct categories.
Types refer to categories that are distinct and discontinuous. In the
trait theory the traits are ciontinuous in that the trait concerned can be
placed in a continuum
 SOME POPULAR TYPE THEORIES

• The Four Humors

based personality
types by
Hippocrates
• William Sheldon identified three
main types of personality called
as somatotype in which he
called three types of personality
viz., endomorph, ectomorph
and mesomorph. No one person
is purely of a particular type.
There is always a combination
of the personality types. Hence
Sheldon further classified a
person’s somatotype and giving
a rating of 1 to 7 on each of the
three body types
AYURVEDIC BODY TYPES (DOSHAS): In Ayurvedic medicine there are
three main metabolic body types called as ‘doshas’ and these three

doshas are ‘Vata’, ‘Pita’ and ‘Kapha ’

 JUNGIAN PERSONALITY TYPES
(MYERSBRIGGS AND THE FOUR
TEMPERAMENTS)
• Jungian psychological types are probably the most widely used and amongst
the best-known in everyday life. Myers-Briggs developed the Myers-Briggs
Type Indicator, a commercially available questionnaire, which is widely used
in business, training, etc

• Underlying all these typologies are four personality functions:

• Extroversion (E) — Introversion (I)

• Intuition (N) — Sensing (S)

• Thinking (T) — Feeling (F)

 TYPE A AND TYPE B
PERSONALITIES
• Meyer Friedman,
gave this term
 BLOCK’S PERSONALITY TYPES
• J. Block (1971) identified 3 personality types based on his work
with adolescent boys. The three types were, for instance i) Well-
adjusted or Resilient person: adaptable, flexible, resourceful,
interpersonally successful. ii) Overcontrolling: this is a
maladjusted type, uptight, and difficult to deal with person. iii)
Undercontrolled: another maladjusted type, impulsive, risky,
delinquent or even criminal behaviour; unsafe sex etc.
 EYSENCK’S TRAIT-TYPE THEORY
• Eyesenck suggested that personality is biologically

determined and is arranged in a hierarchy consisting of types,

traits, habitual responses, and specific responses.

• The PEN (Psychoticism Extraversion and Neuroticism) model

proposes a hierarchical classification of personality containing

four levels.
• EYSENCK’S TRAIT-TYPE THEORY
At the very bottom level of the hierarchy are behaviours such as talking

with a friend on a single occasion. At the second level are habits such as

talking with friends on multiple occasions, which are comprised of

recurring behaviours. The third level of the hierarchy is that of traits or

factors such as sociability, which are comprised of intercorrelated sets of

habits. At the top of the hierarchy are superfactors or dimensions of

personality such as extraversion, which are intercorrelated sets of traits or

factors.

• Eysenck strongly advocates that there are only three major dimensions or

superfactors in the description of personality: extraversion-introversion;

emotional stability versus instability, or neuroticism; and psychoticism

THE BIG FIVE FACTORS: THE BASIC
DIMENSIONS OF PERSONALITY
• Cattell’s work gave impetus to
many research investigations
and many were involved in the
discovery and clarification of
the Big Five dimensions. The
“big five” are broad categories
of personality traits
BLOCK 4 : ASSESSMENT OF
PERSONALITY
 HISTORY OF PERSONALITY
ASSESSMENT
• In regard to personality tests, as one traces the history, one finds that the first name is of a
Greek physician Hippocrates

• It was actually Wilhelm Wundt (1879 A.D.) who founded the first psychology laboratory in
Leipzig Germany, was the first to make clear the distinction between human body and
personality

• Hugo Munsterberg, a professor of the Harvard University devised the first personality test

• In 1922, Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist, was the first person to theorise that people always
prefer certain identifiable behaviours if they are given a free choice.
 TESTING AND MEASUREMENT
CONCEPTS

• Assessment techniques must meet four technical criteria

before they can be considered scientifically acceptable
measures of individual differences in people’s enduring
qualities. These criteria are standardisation, norms, reliability,
and validity
 SELF REPORT PERSONALITY
TESTS (INVENTORY)
• Self-report inventories, also known as personality inventories are self rating questionnaires, where the individual describes own
feelings, environment, and reactions of others towards self. Self-report inventories are classified into five types,

• Inventories that attempt to measure social and certain other specifies traits such as self confidence, dominance, extroversion,
etc – Eg: Eysenck Personality Questionnaire

• Inventories that attempt to evaluate the adjustment of the person to different aspects of the environment such as school,
home, health. Eg: Bells Adjustment Inventory

• Inventories that attempt to evaluate pathological traits. Eg: MMPI (The Minnessota Multiphasic Personality Inventory)

• Inventories that attempt to screen individuals into two or three groups. Eg: The Cornell Index

• Inventories that attempt to measure attitudes, interests, and values of persons. Eg: Bogardus Social distance scale, Vocational
Interest Blank,
 SINGLE-TRAITS TESTS

• These are developed and used by researchers to measure

some specific aspects of personality.

• Eg: the Locus of Control Scale, the Sensation Seeking Scale

 MULTIDIMENSIONAL TESTS

• These multi-dimensional tests have the advantage of providing a

more comprehensive overview of the person being assessed and
are used extensively in clinical, counseling, and personnel settings.
For instance the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16-PF) is
a 187-item test which measures 16 source traits of the normal
personality identified by Raymond Cattell
 STRENGTH OF SELF REPORT
MEASURES

• The objectivity of scoring minimizes personal or theoretical bias

• Self-report measures can be administered easily by someone with relatively

little formal training.

• Self-report tests have greater reliability than do other assessment techniques.

• Multi-dimensional inventories allow for measurement of several different

personality traits at once.
 WEAKNESS OF SELF REPORT
MEASURES

• They are susceptible to deliberate deception

• There is considerable influence of social desirability

• There is the influence of the response set

• Deliberate deception is most likely to occur when the person

believes there is something to be gained from fraudulent responding
 PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

• The rationale for these tests is based on Freud’s theory that unconscious
processes are important for understanding psychopathology. All projective
techniques have a set of common important features. They are as follows:

• • They all use ambiguous or unstructured test stimuli.

• • The test taker is never told the purpose of the test or how responses
will be scored or interpreted.

• • Instructions emphasise that there is no correct or incorrect answers and

that the test taker is free to respond in any manner s\he sees fit

• . • Scoring and interpretation rely heavily on subjective clinical

judgements.
 CLASSIFICATION OF PROJECTIVE
TECHNIQUES

• The classification of projective techniques has been recently

provided by Lindzay (1959). Based upon the responses of the
examinees, he has divided projective techniques into the
following five categories
 ASSOCIATION TECHNIQUE

• This category includes all those situations where the

examinee is required to respond with the associations which
are evoked in mind after seeing or listening to stimulus
materials. E.g., the Rorschach test, the Holtzman Inkblot test
and the Word Association test.
Subjects look at 10 ambiguous inkblot images and describe what they see in each
one. Interpreters look for content, Location, determinants,
 In the Holtzman inkblot, the subject responds to each of a series of 45 ambiguous inkblots
consists of two parallel forms, A and B, each of which contains 45 inkblots constituting the test
series and two practice blots, X and Y, that are identical in both forms. Thus, standardized
responses can be obtained from a total of 92 different inkblots rather than just ten..
 CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUE

• This category includes all those situations where the

examinees are required to construct a story after seeing the
stimulus materials (usually the picture) within certain
specified time. Eg: Thematic Apperception test, Children’s
Apperception test. Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test. The
Blacky Pictures, The Object Relations test, etc
 TAT

• Developed by Henry Murray

• This evaluation instrument consists of 31 sheets with black and white images that
represent different scenarios. Some of them are common, while others are
specifically indicated according to the subject’s sex and age. Each individual is
presented with only 20 sheets, which are divided into two sessions.

• After observing each image, the evaluator asks the subject to tell a story with a
past, present, and future. When they do it, they must emphasize what each
character in the picture feels and thinks.
ROSENZWEIG PICTURE
FRUSTRATION TEST
 COMPLETION TECHNIQUE

• These techniques include those situations where the

examinee is presented with some incomplete sentences with
the construction to complete them in any way he desires.
E.g., Sack’s Sentence Completion test, Madeline Thomas
Completion Stories test
 EXPRESSIVE TECHNIQUE

• This technique includes those situations where the examinee expresses his personality
through some manipulative tasks, which usually involve some interaction with given
materials. For example, play, drawing role- playing painting finger painting, etc. An
important feature is that examiner pays much attention to the way or process by
which the examinee manipulates the given materials. Also, in such techniques,
significance is given to the process or way of handling the test materials rather than
upon the end product of the process (such as the content or theme of the stories,
etc.).
 CHOICE TECHNIQUE
• Choice technique, also known as ordering
technique, is not a projective in its true
sense; rather may be regarded as a step
towards objectifying the projective
techniques (Kerlinger, 1973). The
examinee is presented with some sets of
pictures or items (which convey the
different degrees of a trait) with the
instruction to choose the most relevant and
appropriate picture. Sometimes, he may be
asked to order or rank those pictures in
terms of his preferences, and thus, the
name ordering technique. Eg: The Szondi
test
 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

• There are two unique strengths of projective tests. First, the testing stimuli are
relatively ambiguous to people. As such, the person does not know how the test
provides information to the examiner. This indirect method helps in disguising the
real purpose of the test and it reduces the possibility that people will engage in
intentional deception.

• Second, the indirect method used in projective tests allows circumventing conscious
defenses, thus making them sensitive to aspects of personality that are hidden.
 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

• Some of the disadvantages include that projective tests are poorly standardised, in
large part because there are no established methods of administration, scoring, and
interpretation.

• In particular, the scoring of these tests often relies on the skill and clinical intuition
of the examiner, thus making their reliability quite low

• Projective tests should be considered in the context of other information

obtained through interviews, case histories, and self- report tests
 BEHAVIOURAL ASSESSMENTS

• Observation Technique: In direct observation, the psychologist observes the

client engaging in ordinary, everyday behaviour, preferably in the natural
setting of home, school, or workplace

• Situational Tests: Personality traits are measured on the basis of observations

of ratings of what a person thinks and does in a given situation, which
resembles a real situation of everyday life. The subject has usually no idea that
he is being studied.
 BEHAVIOURAL ASSESSMENTS

• Rating scale and frequency counts: In a rating scale, a

numerical rating is assigned, either by the assessor or the client,
for specific behaviours (Nadeau et al., 2001). In a frequency count,
the assessor literally counts the frequency of certain behaviours
within a specified time limit. Educators make use of both rating
scales and frequency counts to diagnose behavioural problems
 LIMITATIONS

• Extremely time consuming, costly, and laborious techniques

• Subjectivity and bias may operate
• Only limited behaviour can be observed
 CASE STUDY METHOD

• The detailed study of a single individual’s behaviour over an extended period of time is
called a case history or case study. This approach is used frequently in clinical and
medical settings in order to diagnose and treat people who have psychological problems.
The advantage of case study method is that it provides an account of the complexities
and idiosyncrasies of an individual’s personality that is not possible from other strategies.
The chief disadvantage of case studies is that the researcher can never be totally certain
about cause-and-effect relationships. Second, because a case study examines only one
person, its results have limited generalisability