Hans Eysenck believes that genetics is the main reason of personality, although he thinks training also plays a role. According to Eysenck, personality traits are hierarchical, with a few basic traits giving rise to a large array of more superficial traits. Genetically determined differences in physiological functioning make some people more vulnerable to behavioural conditioning. Eysenck suggests that introverted people have higher levels of physiological arousal, which allows them to be conditioned by environmental stimuli more easily. Because of this, such people develop more inhibitions, which make them more shy and uneasy in social situations. Eysenck was a theorist who focused on personality traits. Traits are broad behavioural elements
A layman would define personality as an individual’s characteristics in terms of how they think and behave. Many theorists, however, interprets personality differently resulting in various personality theories. Personality is determined by traits which are behaviours displayed by a person in most given situations. How a person reacts to common circumstances may also be used to foresee future behaviours. Traits are then categorized into types that allow easier comparisons to be made between each individual’s attributes. The focus of this paper would be on the biological aspects of personality whereby traits are thought to be inheritable through genetics and associated with the central nervous system. Behavioural genetics are research that makes use of results from studies done on family, twins and adoptions. The findings of how both genes and environment influences personality from the studies will be discussed. Some researchers found possible issues with the representativeness of such studies. The outline of Eysenck’s biological model of personality and arousal, Gray’s BAS/BIS theory and Cloninger’s biological model of personality will further explain the biological effect on personality.
Eysenck believe there are three different dimensions of personality. They are extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. He believed that extraversion was inherited from our parents and extroverts had a low levels of cortical arousal and high sensory thresholds. The sensory thresholds that they inherit from their parent s are what causes them to take more risks and not hold back in certain situations. Eysenck also believed that neuroticism is hereditary because it has to do with emotion and motivation. In the brain the amygdala and hypothalamus control these and the environment cannot control brain functions. Psychoticism was not in Eysenck’s theory of development. He believed psychoticism is what makes people angry, hostile, and antisocial which is caused by stress. Depending on how much stress is on someone the more likely they
Hans J. Eysenck developed personality descriptions based on what he saw as physiological causes of personality to behavioral effects. He developed questionnaires that incorporated the concept of extraversion-introversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism to develop his 3-factor model (Module 3: Constitutional Approach.). This model is known as the PEN model.
Vegeta, one of the main protagonists of the anime series Dragonball Z, showed conflicting attitudes, feeling of superiority, lust for power, pessimistic attitudes as well as internal struggle between being good and bad throughout the series. His ability to maintain his superior attitude when he lost his race and planet as well as events that lead him from being evil and self centered person to a caring and good person can be explained through many psychological viewpoints.
Personality can be accurately described by the American Psychology Association (APA) as “[the]individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving” (“Personality”, n.d.). A person’s personality is also the most complicated thing about them; it is a combination of all the qualities that could possibly describe a person. Therefore, one is bound to wonder what determines an individual 's personality, which brings us to the age-old argument of nature versus nurture.
Eysenck is best known for his contributions to psychology through the field of personality which defined by psychologists as the sum of consistent, organized and unique thoughts and reactions to the environment. More specifically, Eysenck studied the trait perspective of personality. This perspective mainly focuses on describing patterns of behavior. However, he also studied in the areas of mental illness and intelligence.
Studies on the heritability of personality characteristics have shown that genetics may play a part in the temperament of a child which builds the base of the personality of an individual as they develop. A study by Sandra Scarr, psychology professor with a PhD from Harvard, conducted an experiment testing the biological basis of introversion and extroversion by assessing the personalities of 61 pairs of twin girls through interviews, tests, and games. Twins were used in this study since identical twins contain the same exact genes and fraternal twins share an average of 50% of their genes. By observing how closely the twins resembled one another compared to the variances, she determined the interclass correlation. Through the experiment, high correlation was found which led to the conclusion that there is a moderate to high genetic contribution to social introversion-extroversion. (Scarr 825-826). Though this may have been proven, it does not necessarily mean that whether you are introverted or extraverted is wholly based on the genes that you
Hans Eysneck suggested that personality had three dimensions: extraversion-introversion, emotional stability - neuroticism, and psychoticism. Today, after the findings of Robert McCrae and Paul Costa, that theory has been expanded to include openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. The positives of this theory are in its clarity. Being able to pinpoint traits and tie a personality to it are very advantageous. The big disadvantage is that trait theory fails to address the development of traits, and gives no theories into personality
Psychology is an extremely expansive topic over the human mind and it’s functions. One of the oldest debates in psychology however, would be nature vs nurture. The nature vs nurture debate is basically whether or not a person’s development is predisposed in their DNA or if a majority of it is influenced by life experiences and environment (Nature and Nurture Debate, n.d.). A person's development has many components to it, one particular interesting branch being personality- if psychologists understand a person's personality they can begin to predict behavior. Personality is much more interesting than that though, a person wouldn’t be themselves without that spark of personality which differentiates them from another. Although there is no real
479). Throughout my life, I have always been described by teachers, friends, and family as an introvert. I’m shy around other people and often have a difficult time talking to them. In school, I’m the student that the teacher doesn’t know if I’m in class or not, unless I participate in discussions. It was interesting to learn more about introversion by reading about it in the book and the discussions in class. I was intrigued by the research information in the book, “shyness has a strong biological influence” (Grison, Heatherton,Gazzaniga, 2017, p. 484). My grandfather displayed the same quiet nature. Whenever, I went to my grandparent’s home, I noticed how he sat and listened intently to others, but didn’t speak much. He has always had a quiet nature. In addition, I learned more about the trait from the Eysenck’s Biological Trait Theory of Personality, which described how “personality traits had two major dimensions:
It is believed that personality was broken into two different yet basic dimensions; extraversion-introversion and neuroticism (Cale, 2006, p. 251). A third dimension came into play later in Eysenck’s research; this would come to be called psychoticism (Cale, 2006, p. 252). Though the other dimensions are important to personality this paper will focus on the biological factors of only extraversion-introversion.
Personalities have the tendency to change from birth and throughout life. Each individual is unique and will behave and think differently according to life experiences and connections with people they meet in their social environment. Childhood is an important stage that psychologists have researched due to the influences of family in their early development. Psychologists have also considered how genetics may influence personal traits and forming personalities. This has brought forward the argument of nature versus nurture in early development. Where in other studies, psychologists have investigated personalities of mid aged and mature adults and whether traits are ever evolving. Even though there are psychologists that believe that personality
Personality takes many shapes and forms and is affected by many factors. My understanding of personality is simply a genetic and environmentally determined set of psychological traits that influence our reactions in the world around us. Genetic because our parents possess a certain set of psychological personality traits that we tend to have in common with them so therefore in my opinion there are heritable personality traits. Personality is environmental because we each have our own separate experiences in the world and these experiences help form our unique personality. Neo-Freudians such as Jung have given us a wide array of ideas of how they believe personality is developed and formatted. Jung in particular has a very interesting
In this way we all make personality judgments about the people we know. A major part of coming to understand ourselves is developing a sense of what our personality characteristics are. We even form impressions about personalities of people we do not know, but have only read about. As we shall see, these everyday uses of the term are quite different from the meaning psychologists give to the term personality. They used the five factors which are conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness. Modern psychologists have found that the size of numerous brain parts are connected to different personality traits. This has started varied theories on how the brain is connected to our brain. There are numerous theories that influence personality. Two things to consider when it deals with personality is the interaction of nature and nurture. Nature involves biology and genetics influence. Nurture involves the influences of the environment and the way people are brought up in the world. Personality trait theories are biologically based according to some, other have different opinion. One of the most famous theories come from Sigmund Freud. Freud had psychodynamic perspectives like consciousness, unconsciousness and precociousness. Consciousness is whatever are thought process is at that moment. Precociousness
All people have a personality. However, the type of personality people have creates the distinction. Also, these distinctions determine how people interact with others in different situations and surroundings (Robbins & Judge, 2011). Also, the word personality comes from the Latin word persona or mask. Thus, the word suggests a person’s personality is the mask or image shown to others (“Personality,” n.d.). So, personality refers to the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others” (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 135). Moreover, personality determinants are driven by several factors. These factors include heredity, culture, personal experiences, and other people (“Personality,” n.d.). Thus, these factors help shape our personality.