Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, most theories focus on motivation and psychological interactions with the environment one is surrounded by. Trait-based personality theories, such as those defined by Raymond Cattell, define personality as traits that predict an individual's behavior. On the other hand, more behaviorally-based approaches define personality through learning and habits. Nevertheless, most theories view personality as relatively stable.
In psychology, trait theory is an approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behaviour, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are aspects of personality that are relatively stable over time, differ across individuals, are relatively consistent over situations, and influence behaviour. Traits are in contrast to states, which are more transitory dispositions.
The Big Five personality traits is a suggested taxonomy, or grouping, for personality traits, developed from the 1980s onward in psychological trait theory.
Psychoticism is one of the three traits used by the psychologist Hans Eysenck in his P–E–N model model of personality.
Agreeableness is a personality trait manifesting itself in individual behavioral characteristics that are perceived as kind, sympathetic, cooperative, warm, and considerate. In contemporary personality psychology, agreeableness is one of the five major dimensions of personality structure, reflecting individual differences in cooperation and social harmony.
Openness to experience is one of the domains which are used to describe human personality in the Five Factor Model. Openness involves six facets, or dimensions: active imagination (fantasy), aesthetic sensitivity, attentiveness to inner feelings, preference for variety (adventurousness), intellectual curiosity, and challenging authority. A great deal of psychometric research has demonstrated that these facets or qualities are significantly correlated. Thus, openness can be viewed as a global personality trait consisting of a set of specific traits, habits, and tendencies that cluster together.
Affective events theory (AET) is a model developed by organizational psychologists Howard M. Weiss and Russell Cropanzano to explain how emotions and moods influence job performance and job satisfaction. The model explains the linkages between employees' internal influences and their reactions to incidents that occur in their work environment that affect their performance, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. The theory proposes that affective work behaviors are explained by employee mood and emotions, while cognitive-based behaviors are the best predictors of job satisfaction. The theory proposes that positive-inducing as well as negative-inducing emotional incidents at work are distinguishable and have a significant psychological impact upon workers' job satisfaction. This results in lasting internal and external affective reactions exhibited through job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.
The traits of extraversion and introversion are a central dimension in some human personality theories. The terms introversion and extraversion were introduced into psychology by Carl Jung, although both the popular understanding and current psychological usage vary. Extraversion tends to be manifested in outgoing, talkative, energetic behavior, whereas introversion is manifested in more reflective and reserved behavior. Jung defined introversion as an "attitude-type characterised by orientation in life through subjective psychic contents", and extraversion as "an attitude-type characterised by concentration of interest on the external object".
The HEXACO model of personality structure is a six-dimensional model of human personality that was created by Ashton and Lee and explained in their book, The H Factor of Personality, based on findings from a series of lexical studies involving several European and Asian languages. The six factors, or dimensions, include Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). Each factor is composed of traits with characteristics indicating high and low levels of the factor. The HEXACO model was developed through similar methods as other trait taxonomies and builds on the work of Costa and McCrae and Goldberg. The model, therefore, shares several common elements with other trait models. However, the HEXACO model is unique mainly due to the addition of the Honesty-Humility dimension.
The Revised NEO Personality Inventory is a personality inventory that assesses an individual on five dimensions of personality, the so-called Big Five personality traits. These traits are openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. In addition, the NEO PI-R also reports on six subcategories of each Big Five personality trait.
Paul Costa Jr. is an American psychologist associated with the Five Factor Model. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1970.
Within personality psychology, it has become common practice to use factor analysis to derive personality traits. The Big Five model proposes that there are five basic personality traits. These traits were derived in accordance with the lexical hypothesis. These five personality traits: Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience have garnered widespread support.
Personality changes are changes in individuals personalities over time. Originally thought to be concrete and unchanging, recent studies have found evidence that personality can change throughout a person's life.
The Big Five personality traits are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. The Big Five Personality is a test that people can take to learn more about their personality in relation to the five personality traits. Cross-cultural psychology as a discipline examines the way that human behavior is different and/or similar across different cultures. One important and widely studied area in this subfield of psychology is personality, particularly the study of Big Five. The Big Five model of personality has become the most extensively studied model of personality and has broad support, starting in the United States and later in many different cultures. The Big Five model of personality started in the United States, and through the years has been translated into many different languages and has been used in many countries. Some researchers were attempting to determine the differences in how other cultures perceive this model. Some research shows that the Big Five holds up across cultures even with its origin in the English language. However, there is also some evidence which suggests that the Big Five traits may not be sufficient to completely explain personality in other cultures. In countries such as South America and East Asia, the results weren't as accurate because they weren't as open as some people in other countries are.
In psychology, a facet is a specific and unique aspect of a broader personality trait. Both the concept and the term "facet" were introduced by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae in the first edition of the NEO-Personality Inventory (NEO-PI) Manual. Facets were originally elaborated only for the neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion traits; Costa and McCrae introduced facet scales for the agreeableness and conscientiousness traits in the Revised NEO-PI. Each of the Big Five personality traits in the five factor model contains six facets, each of which is measured with a separate scale. The use of facets and facet scales has since expanded beyond the NEO PI-R, with alternative facet and domain structures derived from other models of personality. Examples include the HEXACO model of personality structure, psycholexical studies, circumplex models, the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), and the California Psychological Inventory.
Colin G. DeYoung is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota. His research is in the field of personality psychology and personality neuroscience.
Most scientists agree that religiosity is not an independent personality trait, despite there being some commonality between their characteristics. Religiosity and personality traits both relate to one's feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. However, unlike for personality, one's level of religiosity is often measured by the presence or lack of belief in and relationship with a higher power, certain lifestyles or behaviors adopted for a higher power, and a sense of belonging with other followers of one's religion. Additionally, personality traits tend to follow a normal distribution, such that the majority of individuals' scores for a personality trait will be concentrated towards the middle, rather than being extremely high or low. Distributions for religiosity, however, follow a non-normal distribution, such that there are more individuals who score particularly high or low on religiosity scales.
The alternative five model of personality is based on the claim that the structure of human personality traits is best explained by five broad factors called impulsive sensation seeking (ImpSS), neuroticism–anxiety (N-Anx), aggression–hostility (Agg-Host), sociability (Sy), and activity (Act). The model was developed by Marvin Zuckerman and colleagues as a rival to the well-known five factor model of personality traits and is based on the assumption that "basic" personality traits are those with a strong biological-evolutionary basis. One of the salient differences between these two models is that the alternative five model lacks any equivalent to the dimension called openness to experience in the five factor model.
The biological basis of personality is the collection of brain systems and mechanisms that underlie human personality. Human neurobiology, especially as it relates to complex traits and behaviors, is not well understood, but research into the neuroanatomical and functional underpinnings of personality are an active field of research. Animal models of behavior, molecular biology, and brain imaging techniques have provided some insight into human personality, especially trait theories.
Intelligence and personality have traditionally been studied as separate entities in psychology, but more recent work has increasingly challenged this view. An increasing number of studies have recently explored the relationship between intelligence and personality, in particular the Big Five personality traits.
