Trait Theory and Understanding Individual Differences - Assignment Example

Theories of Personality Number Department Theories of Personality Question Advantages of Trait Theory Traits are continuous variables in human behaviour which can be analysed to tell one’s personality. Richards (2011) noted that personality traits are regarded as common aspects of human character that are manifested in a broad range of vital social and individual contexts. In light of this, people have particular characteristics which somewhat influences their behaviour. Therefore, trait theories of personality are concepts generated by psychologists to classify and elaborate character based on natural factors such as genes. Trait theory is advantageous because: first, it helps to classify observable behaviours. Engler (2013) noted that researchers have established that evaluating the collective behaviours of persons gives a powerful connection with their traits. This implies that observing the traits of a person over a long period of time and in different conditions provides invaluable pointers to the personality characters classified in trait theories. Second, trait theory employs rational criteria for classifying and evaluating human character. Additionally, trait perspectives of personality were mostly developed separately and witnessed the use of factor analysis to generate a clear set of personalities. Ryckman (2012) suggested that during the course of developing their independent perspectives, trait theorists often generated their results of traits based on the logical factor analysis method. Unlike most of other perspectives, the subjectivity or individual bias of the developers has very limited if no impact on trait theory. For instance, Freud and his mother shared a close relationship, Adlers poor health in his childhood and the huge role of myths in Jung’s life could have shaped these theories. In light of these factors, bias may have affected their ideas (Schultz, & Schultz, 2012). Trait perspective has no subjectivity. Lastly, trait theory is advantageous because of its easy use and interpretation. According to Schultz and Schultz (2012), the theory has been used for many decades in the development of several assessment tools. Trait provides a simple continuum with tremendous information about an individual’s personality and social influences being readily available to differentiate the self and the external influences of the world (Richards, 2011). Having sufficient knowledge of traits enables psychologists to relate the characters of people in a group and facilitate better learning processes, smooth social relationships and growth of certain careers. With this invaluable information, guiding people in the direction of an easier future by tailoring the environmental variables to meet the individual’s personality becomes a lot simpler to trainers. Question # 2 Personal construct theory The world is practically similar, but human experiences in it differ. According to Phillida Salmon, personality is made up of the different mental components through which each individual perceives reality. Salmon argued that each individual resembles a scientist. Like scientists, humans want to find out more about the world, make forecasts as to what will take place next, and come up with theories to clarify why events are the way they are. In achieving this link, the psychologist argued that humans begin by creating an array of individual constructs, which are basically mental symbols that are important to understanding events before other external social influences can follow. Ryckman (2012) indicated that these constructs are premised upon individual experiences and perceptions. Salmon developed her argument along the George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory (PCT), which generally challenges the concept that human traits are natural by positing. Instead the theorist argued that a person develops an inner capacity to understand the environment based on individual concepts which are in line with the phenomenological concept and which seeks to capitalize on the scale of a person’s experience with life (Ashcraft, 2014). Salmon expounded this concept in the education sector by challenging the theory that knowledge is transferred in a pre-packaged arrangement. She noted that human understanding of new issues is temporary and vulnerable to change, since learning involves altering of meanings of past knowledge. Salmon further explored the natural risks of seeking new skills and knowhow as threats to a respected identity (Schultz, & Schultz, 2012). For instance, some learners may evade new curriculum knowledge for fear of challenging an initially-held knowledge. While trait theory is concerned with the influence of norms, PCT focuses on obtaining the links and the importance of each person’s experience by acknowledging the manner in which each individual interprets the activities in their respective environment. Richards (2011) noted that both trait perspective and PCT recognize an interruption of the stimulus-response construct in the one’s existence; however, their major difference is based on the technical explanations given and their understanding. The gist of PCT lies in its practice (Ryckman, 2012). Despite Salmon’s fervent support of PCT, she goes further to recognize the fact that individuals should keep their respected identities, since failure to do so has the potential to create an individual with no stance. Each human being has a tremendous deal of natural constructions; however, they do not symbolize separate and idle logical exercises. This implies Salmon recognizes the need for black-and-white variables of an individual character and grey variable for other organisms and their surroundings. Engler (2013) noted that unlike the more scientific trait theory of personality which considers character as relatively fixed and unresponsive to the changes in the world, personal construct perspective applies a biased approach and presumes personality as ‘intensive.’ It is also based on human knowledge and the context the person is in. In light of these basic constructs, it is apparent that the two theories are on opposite ends of personality. Question # 3 Criticisms of Trait theory Trait theory is largely scientific in nature hence its high credibility in determining human personality (Schultz, & Schultz, 2012. Regardless, there are a number of pitfalls in its application: firstly, the theory is poor in terms of predicting behaviour. While an individual can be categorized in the low end or high end of a particular trait, trait theory does not provide any important explanations about the precise status of individual. For example, an individual may be quiet, composed, intelligent, and peaceful in the current or past situations, qualities that would inform a false positive identification of the person as a future introvert (Richards, 2011). Similarly, an individual who, in the company of close friends, seems quite approachable, fun-loving, and in high spirits may be false positively identified as one who will remain an extrovert. In practice, trait theory has no answers to the behaviour of an extrovert who before the process of a job interview develops fears that their behaviour might make them lose the job and switch their behaviour into an introverted, cautious, reserved, and logical.   Second, trait theory is unresponsive to personality development. While credible statistics serve to keep trait theory atop other consistent perspectives in history, figures are arguably its largest pitfall (Ashcraft, 2014). Unlike the theory, statistics provides no description of personality development; it takes psychologists through a technical process of interpreting the numbers and their meanings (Engler, 2013).  In addition, where a number of theories support past developments, present personality status and offer possible trajectories for change into the future, trait perspective observes only the current developments. Schultz and Schultz (2012) established that without the much-needed guidance in the alteration of negative constructs of a personality, changing a trait becomes extremely hard. In light of this, the application of the theory in real life situations is substantially limited. Third, trait theory is disadvantageous because it requires individual, subjective observations (Ashcraft, 2014). Self-report assessments require that a person be sufficiently introspective to comprehend their own personality. Individual assessments require that an assessor to spend adequate time analysing somebody else’s personality in several of conditions so as to arrive at accurate outcomes. The assessment process may be biased and inaccurate even where an assessor is professional since most people generally get absorbed in interesting activities. Others use their original knowledge to pre-empt the future. Lastly, trait theory does not provide explanations as to why a person behaves the way he or she does. Richards (2011) noted that trait theory fails psychologists with its scant information about components of behaviours causing personality and with no suggestion as to the reason behind the interaction of these traits, personality assessments are usually incomplete. For example, an introvert is usually less thrilled by meeting other people and would rather keep away from social interactions, but trait theory fails to offer any meaningful leads to the primary reason behind such behaviour. Question # 4 Measuring personality Measuring personality utilizes mathematical formulae to arrive at the most effective definition of a trait. The scientists use certain words and apportioned statistics in the factor analysis to arrive at trait dimensions for analysing personality (Ashcraft, 2014). Regardless of their credibility, firstly Graham Richards argues that if multivariate research based on factor analysis is in any way suitable to identify the primary personality structure, then all factor analyses and trait measurement methods bios analyses, questionnaires, and the objective assessment processes should generate comparable data. But in reality, the basic criterion for measurement is subject to replicate outcomes. That external assessment tool is imperative to a personality assessment system (Schultz & Schultz, 2012). However, any problems associated to it automatically seal that system from further evaluation. Richards noted the fact that with different processes producing different principal components the factor analysis cannot escape criticism. For example, the criterion used by Guttman-Kaiser demonstrates the possibility of hyper-factorization, in that too many basic components turn out to be vital; whereas the PB criterion creates hypo-factorization, in which case, too few basic components become important. If factor analysis is as accurate in its statistical form as its backers claim, then equivalent research should yield similar results. Ashcraft (2014) echoed the wide perception of personality psychology researchers who argue the five-factor criterion is the basic, moderate factors, which can be used to determine the traits of an individual (Engler, 2013). Other researchers maintain that fewer factors should be used to define personality. Yet others argue that five factors that produce clear personality structure are too insufficient to define personality. In spite of the consensus on the credibility of the Big-five model, its status continues to attract more controversy. According to Schultz and Schultz (2012) the degree of equivalence among the outcomes of different researches has been suspect. Richards has joined other critics in suggesting that the level of equivalence among the outcomes from different researches is too diverse. Aside from the variables, it is important to question whether factor analysis will generate the primary units of traits. While it is different from the prior approaches, for Richards, factor analysis is the only credible criterion for identifying basic or dormant traits. According to Engler (2013) the factor analysis model is the most effective mathematical concept for identifying the makeup of personality structure over the history. But, even among the psychologists who agree generally about the procedural approach, certain disagreements still exist in respect of the quantity of factors defining the personality structure. These weaknesses conspire to make the measurement more of the subjective PCT than the scientific trait theory. Question # 5 Superiority of Trait Theory to PCT Almost all personality theorists study traits in one way or another (Schultz & Schultz, 2012).  After all, personality traits are the basic component of human behaviour. They are the generally natural factors in each individual as evident in the consistency in human reactions to social forces and other external stimuli. Supporters of trait theory emphasize on the organic, genetic factors influencing personality, and consider any changes as stemming from the basic constructs of personality. Owing to the fact that human traits are mainly important to defining the individual’s response to various activities in their environment, the need to focus more on the person to locate universal findings does not arise. In education, for instance, regardless of psychometric measures showing that teachers are mainly focused on teaching learners to pass exams, getting high scores is what matters. In addition, despite Salmon’s argument that testing learners generalizes learning processes and makes evaluations of individual ability of students more fixed, grouping students depending on their natural traits such as level of intellect improves their overall performance. In contrast applying personal construct theory in such situation by considering the individual traits of each learner is time-consuming and largely impractical, especially among students who do not need special education. As Engler (2013) suggested, trait theory is superior to personal construct theory in the sense that whether children do learn by shifting the meanings of new knowledge within an individual’s system of understandings, the very basic determinant of the ability must be the constant, natural factors such as intellect. The manner in which trait theory perceives traits as constant, determined by genes and unchanging in the social environments also points to the fact that people have very limited actions that define their traits (Ryckman, 2012). As such, social constructs do lack the power to influence the organic aspects of human traits. In light of these arguments, the perceptions fronted by personal construct theorists, that the society influences individuals are somehow inaccurate. In cases where people use their familiarities to actively carve a niche for themselves Schultz and Schultz (2012) said trait theorists argue that the new personalities formed so far will be secondary to and developed in line with the basic constructs of the unchanging foundations of nature. For example, a naturally aggressive individual who commits a felony and is sent to a correction facility is expected to change into a polite person (based on PCT) when he or she completes the sentence. But in most cases, ex-convicts have been found to engage in repeat offenses or even more serious ones despite having gone through an extensive personality modification program. By employing trait theory of personality in assessing trait, it is important to consider forfeiting the much more comprehensive, holistic approach to personality study. However, unlike the generalized nature of trait theory findings, personal construct theory outcomes must be examined and implemented separately (Ryckman, 2012). So, even though both theories play imperative roles in expanding the human understandings of personal differences in terms of traits, trait theory has a higher level of practicality in various human interactions. This is especially true in the sense that generalizations of individuals based on their personality is the most practical way to achieve positive, result-oriented performance in learning processes. In contrast, the more detailed, holistic approach to personality as fronted by personal construct theorists is ineffective because it remains aloof to the seemingly silent, but highly important natural aspect of personality. References Ashcraft, D., 2014. Personality Theories Workbook. New York: Cengage Learning. Engler, B., 2013. Personality Theories. New York: Cengage Learning. Richards, G., 2011. Psychology, Religion, and the Nature of the Soul: A Historical Entanglement. New York: Springer Science & Business Media. Ryckman, R., 2012. Theories of Personality. London: Cengage Learning. Schultz, D., & Schultz, S., 2012. Theories of Personality. New York: Cengage Learning Read More