Hans Eysenck's Theories Of Personality

We usually think of personality in terms of how we act and the differences we can see in each person. The concept of personality refers to the dynamic integration of the totality of a person’s experiences and behavior patterns including both conscious and unconscious behavior patterns, experiences and views, and intentional states (Kernberg, 2016). Personality derives from human experiences and the environment in which your grow up in, in can be codetermined by genetic dispositions. Genetics does play a part in a person’s personality but just how much and how is it determined. A major part of a person’s identity is building character and a personality. The combination of the scientific advances in the area of genetic determination of

Eysenck’s interests were best known for his theories of personality and intelligence. His definition of personality is “the sum-total of the actual or potential behavior-patterns of the organism, as determined by heredity and environment it originates and develops through. Personality consist of acts and dispositions organized in hierarchical fashion in terms of their level of generality. The cognitive sector, the conative sector, the affective sector, and the somatic sector (Binger, 2014). Eysenck’s theory of personality focused on temperaments that where controlled by genetic influences. Eysenck is famously known for his works in personality, intelligence, psychiatry, differential psychology and also built up a personality questionnaire known as “Eysenck personality Questionnaire”. Physiology and genetics where a mainly relevant in his theory he also believed personality differences grow out of our genetic inheritance. He believed that personality is based by biology and he viewed people as having two specific personality dimensions: extroversion vs. introversion and neuroticism vs. stability. He later added a third-dimension psychoticism vs. socialization. Eysenck proposed that extroversion was caused by variability in cortical arousal, with introverts characteristically having a higher level of activity in this area than extroverts. He also hypothesized that neuroticism was determined by individual differences in the limbic system, the part of the human brain involved in emotion, motivation, and emotional association with memory (Binger,