Outline
Personality is a word that originates from persona, a Latin word referring to a mask. Therefore personality’s study is related to the study that analyses masks worn by human beings. These masks are characters displayed and projected by human beings including their psychological experiences otherwise known as self. Personality is analyzed by the use of several different perspectives that include trait perspective, behavioral, psychological perspectives as well as humanistic perspective. These perspectives have areas in which they are strong as well as weaknesses.
Introduction
According to (Hjelle, 1992), personality is defined as the realization of one’s idiosyncrasy which affirms the constituents of an individual. It is also a very successful way of adapting to the condition of universal existence as well as the freedom to determine one’s self. Personality is highly influenced by intelligence which makes intelligence to be considered as a part and parcel of personality though they are very different. Personality constitutes various perspectives that include trait perspective, psychodynamic perspective, behavioral perspective, and learning perspective.
Trait Perspective
According to (Abend,1983), this is the classic view of the psychology of personality as its study concludes that since Greek civilization, people have been found to possess different physical as well as psychological characters. This perspective forms systems that describe and classify psychological characteristics showing differences existing between people in various situations. Trait’s approach emphasizes the perspective of dispositional but it also studies different types and /or dispositions of people considering their characteristics. However, traits, types, and dispositional terms are interchanged in this particular perspective, though personality types and traits are just constituents of personality’s dispositional perspective. Personality’s dispositional perspective emphasizes people’s qualities that describe them, qualities of their character as well as mind. Personality traits describe consistent dimensions of how different people think, feel, and behave over time. Traits on personality also allow classification of individuals according to their different character which may include extraversion, introversion, and emotional stability among others. Personality types describe categories of an individual’s behavior, thoughts, as well as feelings’ patterns which include personalities of type A while others are classified in type B. (Hogan, 1998)
Strengths and Weaknesses
(Leary, 1983), argues that, personality’s dispositional perspective has several strengths as well as weaknesses. Its strengths include the provision of practical tools that are used in the process of assessing as well as describing personality. Traits perspective is of great importance in research and several scholars who have carried out researches on this perspective have come up with similar views. Traits perspective enables comparison of differences among individuals as well as provision of a scientific approach through which personality is objectively studied.
Weaknesses of trait perspective are that it fails to explain ways in which personality works but only names the phenomenon. This perspective does not give a full explanation of traits’ origins but goes straight to giving their descriptions as well as categorizing them. Behavior’s inconsistence nature has been a great challenge to those theorists studying this perspective as they view traits as being consistent which fails to coincide with behavior that form part of its study. Factor analysis has been used to make arbitrary decisions on the existence of traits resulting to different theories that show different ways of similar results and there is therefore no clear definition of traits’ constituents. Another of its weaknesses is that its ability to predict is limited and does not explain reasons as to why people portray different behaviors in various situations. (Buss, 1984)
Learning Perspective
The perspective of learning has been involved in a debate between nature and nurture where it sides with nurture. In another debate between situation and person, the perspective of learning sides with the situation. In this case, personality is seen as learned tendencies that have been accumulated over a long period. This perspective of learning portrays a relationship with the aspects of social psychology and behaviorism. However, it has its group of concepts on which it operates which includes reinforcement, modeling, and social norms, among others. According to this perspective, personality can be molded, polished, and ground by aspects forming one’s history and uniqueness. The perspective of learning is based on an assumption that human beings learn behavior through interaction and experiences with one’s surrounding environment. It views human beings as a blank slate but agrees with the existence of stimuli responses, instincts, and avoidance of painful instances. (Parsons, 1964)
Strengths and Weaknesses
The perspective of learning has several strengths including its possession of impressive evidence based on experiments that are testable, scientific, and backed by findings of the research. It recognizes the environment’s importance, where it explains the different situations of behavior with complex patterns being explained through the building of blocks. It’s also important in the understanding of tendencies of actions and emotional reactions which can be applied in therapeutic situations of behavior. There are also some weaknesses associated with the perspective of learning which includes its tendency to give explanations of behavior and its changes, instead of focusing on personality. Personhood is found to be missing in this particular perspective, and it also ignores biology’s role by not taking into account the differences existing in an individual. There are no case studies in arguments of learning perspective due to lack of comprehensive assessments of personality. (Direnzo, 1974)
Psychodynamic Perspective
(Endleman, 1967) states that, psychodynamic perspective focuses on the effects of one’s early life in a family on his/her sexual drives as well as how those drives are unconsciously influenced and their impact on an individual’s nonsexual aspects of development. Neoanalytic perspective was developed from a psychoanalytic perspective and it concerns itself with ego which is taken to be the core of one’s uniqueness in personality. It focuses on ways in which ego copes with external as well as internal drives of an individual.
Strengths and Weaknesses
This perspective’s strengths include that, it’s very complete in its explanation of behavior emphasizing the unconscious mind’s role as well as that of experiences in early childhood. Ego’s defense mechanisms are also emphasized on as well as how behavior is susceptible to change. The study of this particular perspective resulted in interests where psychology is applied in mental disorder treatment. However, there exist weaknesses that are related to the psychoanalytic perspective which include the fact that concepts applied in its study are poorly designed. For example, there is no clear description of the concept of psychic energy as well as units that measure it. This perspective does not give scientific proof of its study and overlooks the environment’s role in human behavior. Another of its weaknesses is that it puts a lot of emphasis on how an individual’s sexual drive affects his/her behavior. (Crowne, 1979)
Humanistic Perspective
This perspective and especially the humanistic part of it refer to human beings as self-perfecting as well as intrinsically good. It relates human beings with health, growth, maturity, and self-sufficiency. The humanistic perspective also portrays optimism in its focus on human beings’ potential to evolve as well as grow naturally towards completeness and beauty. There are various assumptions on which this perspective is based, including that there exists a self with a very unique as well as beautiful form. This self is susceptible to growth as well as change, making each person’s self unique. (Benet, 2005)
Strengths and Weaknesses
(Ozer, 1986), argues that, this perspective emphasizes validity as well as the uniqueness of each individual’s experiences. As a result of its optimistic nature, this perspective gives positive suggestions for handling problems that occur to human beings. The humanistic approach can be applied widely and exceeds therapy when it refers to how one can live with authenticity as well as meaning. It also helps human beings to appreciate their reality and to be closely connected with their feelings. However, it has several weaknesses including failure to take into account other aspects that determine the behavior, thoughts, and feelings of individuals, like dispositions, genetics, unconsciousness, and learning among others. This approach does not have scientific precision which makes its study a nonscientific one, giving the difference between a person’s mind and atoms as well as molecules.
Comparisons and Differences
The learning perspective arguments contrast with that of trait perspective, psychodynamic and biological perspectives on the possession of a personality structure. These other perspectives argue that human beings possess personality structure from birth where is referred to as dispositions in trait perspective, instincts in psychodynamic, drives in humanistic, and temperament in biological perspective. The psychodynamic perspective has a close connection with the evolutionary approach as Freud accepts that the evolution of human beings consisted of instincts that are very useful in their survival.
Conclusion
Personality perspectives are related to each other as they all base their studies on the same subject that is perspective. However, their different approaches, arguments as well as justifications bring differences among them, which results in their various theories. In most of their studies, room for more research is left as portrayed by their weaknesses. Some scholars carry out researches on the various perspectives separately while others combine those that are related to come up with four to five different perspectives which have developed into theories. For example, dispositional perspective is related to traits perspective as the latter is part and parcel of the broad perspective of disposition. (Bouchard, 2001)
References
ABEND S. (1983): Psychoanalytic perspectives: Intl Universities Press Inc pp3-8.
Benet V. (2005): Personality and the prediction of consequential outcomes: Annual Reviews pp30-34.
Bouchard T. (2001): Genes, evolution, and personality: Springer pp 20-26.
Buss A. (1984): Early developing personality traits: Lawrence Erlbaum pp 16-18.
Crowne D. (1979): The experimental study of personality: Halsted Press pp25-29.
Direnzo G. (1974): Personality and politics: Anchor pp 19-24.
Endleman R. (1967): Personality and Social Life: Random House pp10-16.
Hjelle L. (1992): Personality Theories: Mc Graw-Hill Humanities pp23-26.
Hogan J. (1998): Relations between contextual performance and personality: Lawrence Erlbaum pp17-22.
Leary M. (1983): social, personality and clinical perspectives: Sage Publications pp 33-36.
Ozer D. (1986): Consistency in personality: Springer pp18-25.
Parsons T. (1964): Social Structure and Personality: Free Press pp15-20.