Psychology & Psychiatry

How parents' personalities shape children's lives

A new analysis led by Joshua Jackson, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, explores how parents' personalities—boisterous or reserved, agreeable ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

New links found between personality and cognitive abilities

In a new landmark study, University of Minnesota research shows surprising links between human cognition and personality—pillars of human individuality that shape who we are and how we interact with the world. Personality ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

People's life goals relate to their personality type, study suggests

In the first research of its kind, a new University of California, Davis, study suggests that for the most part, people formulate goals consistent with their personality traits—and an individual's goals are related to how ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Mother's personality can affect child's mental health

Scientists have looked at over 8,000 parents and children in Children of the 90s and found that the children of women with personality traits associated with emotional and relationship difficulties were at greater risk of ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Psychologists define the 'dark core of personality'

Egoism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, sadism, spitefulness and others are among the traits of the malevolent side of human personality. As results from a recently published German-Danish research project show, ...

Genetics

Owning a dog is influenced by genetic make-up

A team of Swedish and British scientists have studied the heritability of dog ownership using information from 35,035 twin pairs from the Swedish Twin Registry. The new study suggests that genetic variation explains more ...

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Trait theory

In psychology, Trait theory is a major 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 behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are relatively stable over time, differ among individuals (e.g. some people are outgoing whereas others are shy), and influence behavior.

Gordon Allport was an early pioneer in the study of traits, which he sometimes referred to as dispositions. In his approach, central traits are basic to an individual's personality, whereas secondary traits are more peripheral. Common traits are those recognized within a culture and may vary between cultures. Cardinal traits are those by which an individual may be strongly recognized. Since Allport's time, trait theorists have focused more on group statistics than on single individuals. Allport called these two emphases "nomothetic" and "idiographic," respectively.

There is a nearly unlimited number of potential traits that could be used to describe personality. The statistical technique of factor analysis, however, has demonstrated that particular clusters of traits reliably correlate together. Hans Eysenck has suggested that personality is reducible to three major traits. Other researchers argue that more factors are needed to adequately describe human personality. Many psychologists currently believe that five factors are sufficient.

Virtually all trait models, and even ancient Greek philosophy, include extraversion vs. introversion as a central dimension of human personality. Another prominent trait that is found in nearly all models is Neuroticism, or emotional instability.

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