Dispositional, Biological and Evolutionary Theories - Article Example

Dispositional, Biological and Evolutionary Theory Judgments of personality are attempts to identify psychological properties of people (personality traits) that indicate what the person experienced in the past and what can be expected in the future (Funder, 1995). The debate about personality differences has been ongoing in personality psychology since the theories proposed by Freud, Jung, Kelly, Rogers, Maslow, Adler etc. Dispositional versus biological personality is the same debate as nature versus nurture. Modern debate about personality psychology has moved toward individual differences. Evolutionary psychology historically has focused entirely upon human nature or the biology of the brain. Modern evolutionary psychologists focus entirely on the most heritable individual differences (except frequency-dependent selection) as “genetic noise”, and call them by-products, that are largely independent of the working of species typical human nature. Evolutionary biology can give the answer to the crucial link between species-typical characteristics and individual differences (Buss, 1984). A healthy person has a different psychology than a psychopath, thus the approach to study the people should be different (Barkhuus, 1999). The grand theories that explained human characteristics based on biology or evolution are now seen as the relics of the past. The majority of work in evolutionary psychology has been focused on universal species-typical mechanisms that apparently characterize human nature (Tooby & Cosmides, 2009). The truth is that despite the presence of a huge possibility of combining the two schools of thoughts into one that can help explain much more than when the two are separate. For instance, an evolutionary perspective can lead to re-conceptualizing the fundamental building blocks in the field of personality. Human motives direct human behavior to achieve a certain goal (Buss & Penke, 2012). Motives as fundamental goal of human personality have been identified by the greats of psychology such as Sigmund Freud. In 1938, Murray identified 37 human motives that included the need for achievement, recognition, affiliation, dominance, rejection etc. (Buss & Penke, 2012). Achievement, power and affiliation have been endorsed by McClelland. Hence, motivations serve as the subset of adaptations that are designed to impel behavior towards a specific goal or to resolve evolutionary adaptive problems (Buss & Penke, 2012). On similar grounds situations and person-situation interactions can help explain the nexus between biological and personality theories. The reason why such a combination has not been successful so far is because of conceptualizing situations in a non-arbitrary manner (Buss & Penke, 2012). Dispositional personality theory is more acceptable in today’s times. It is based on individual personality differences that help researchers account for specific scenarios and backgrounds of an individual’s experience. The basis for the big five personality test (discussed later) is based on these individual differences. The limitation of this approach is it cannot be used to generalize on a broad level. Evolutionary theory is incomplete without accounting for individual differences. Hence it limits the scope of biological perspective of this theory. It is not only an individual’s experience that determines their personality, intelligence level and certain cognitive abilities can also determine one’s personality. Based on these differences a person forms opinions, mating strategy and even religious beliefs. Dispositional personality theory also offers another advantage; personality traits remain strong and persistent cross-time. On the other hand, biological theory has limitations when individuals also differ on psychological adaptations that are considered universal; the ability to detect cheaters in Wason selection task paradigm including romantic interests (Buss & Penke, 2012). In the past, many personality theorists ignored the evolutionary side of the human psychology. The downside of this approach is that they only view their domain of study in descriptive form. Their goal is to identify the structure of personality, without giving much thought to the evolution. The limitations of personality theory prevent their theorists from ignoring the evolution of psychology. The first reason is cogent meta theory for the whole psychology subject (Buss & Penke, 2012). Evolutionary psychology is among the greatest developments of the past 20 years. Personality theories should not only describe the traits, they should explain them. The fusion of evolutionary theories with personality can provide the missing link for comprehensively explaining the conceptual tools that can simply transform the field of psychology into an exploratory science (Buss & Penke, 2012). Personality is conceived as (McAdams & Jennifer, 2006); a) Individual’s unique variation on general evolutionary design b) Dispositional trait c) Characteristic adaptations d) Self-defining stories of life e) Cultural and social context Based on these characteristics academic psychologists use the Big Five personality test to assess and categorize a person’s traits. The subject is required to answer certain questions on a five point scale starting from ‘disagree’ to ‘agree’. The test is to judge the big five personality traits; conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, neuroticism and extraversion. These traits are related to fitness (Buss & Penke, 2012). Openness to experience reflects a person’s intellectual curiosity and the huger for a new experience. Learning comes through new experiences and it is an accurate measure of this side of a person’s traits. It also helps researches to know how creative and imaginative a person is. This helps determine the choice of activities in a person’s life. Conscientiousness determines how organized a person is. It is also a measure for self-discipline. Extraversion is a loaded term as it measures assertiveness and emotional appeal to one’s personality. Agreeableness determines the compassionate level of an individual. It determines how likely a person gets along with other people. Being antagonistic and cynical are the opposite traits of this measure. This can also reveal how kind a person is towards others. General temperament and attitude are measured through this personality gauge. Neuroticism is a person’s tolerance level. It is the emotional shock absorber for unwanted experiences and emotions. It determines how well a person can handle emotions like anxiety, depression, frustration etc. It shows how emotionally stable a person is. Openness can be translated into a person’s interest in imaginative world of arts and literature. The person who scores higher in the openness questions is more likely to experience new thoughts and sights. It is the curious nature of the person that reveals new pathways to the world of adventure and imagination. The test is used to study a person’s attitude, proclivities and historical experiences. The Big Five model was formed by combining conclusions of many researchers’ theories (Digman, 1990). Neuroticism is linked with social acceptance (Buss & Penke, 2012). Similarly conscientiousness is linked with negotiating status hierarchies. The way this model was formed included studying known personality traits and then factor-analyzing several measures of these traits to find the hidden factors of personality (Cattell et al., 1957). It is this model that helped understand the link between personality and academic behaviors. References Barkhuus, L. (1999) Allport’s theory of traits. Concordia University. Retrieved http://www.itu.dk/~barkhuus/allport.pdf Buss, D. M. (1984) Evolutionary biology and personality psychology: Towards a conception of human nature and individual differences. American Psychologist. Vol. 39(10). 1135-1147. Buss, D. M. & Penke, L. (2012) Evolutionary personality psychology. In Handbook of personality processes and individual differences. American Psychology Association. Cattel, R. B., Marshall, M. B. and Georgiades, S. (1957) Personality and motivation: Structure and measurement. Journal of Personality Disorders. Vol. 19 (1). 53–67. Digman, J. M. (1990) Personality structure: Emergence of the five factor model. Funder, D. C. (1995) On the accuracy of personality judgment: A realistic approach. Psychological Review. 102(4). 652-670. McAdams, D. P. Jennifer, L. P. A new big five: fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality. American Psychologist. Vol. 61(3). 204-217. Tooby, S. A. & Cosmides, L. (2009). Formidability and the logic of human anger. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 15073-15078. Read More