Personality Theory In Psychology

Personality is one of the main areas of psychology research. Over the years, researchers developed theories trying to explain how people are different and similar. Personality traits were grouped together to be determinants of more general traits such as Extraversion, Agreeableness or Neuroticism. The traits were tested for various correlations. All this to better understand why people behave the way they do and how big impact does the personality have on behaviour. For those who explored personality, it was also important to look for reasons why certain personality traits occur in some individuals and not in other individuals. For instance, what makes people differ. A range of approaches looks at this problem, for example, genetics or psychoanalysis.

Both of them fall into a category of biological approaches and attempt to explain how biology, in terms of physiology or evolution, is linked to personality. In spite of them being indeed good and valuable explanations of some behaviours, they also have their limitations. Physiological properties can easily be influenced by internal and external factors and confound the results. Next, most research test for correlations so the implication is that no causality can be defined. For evolutionary approach, a weakness is that a lot of research involves bias and hypothetical situations, and consequently, results might not be adequate to real-life situations. Subsequently, research frequently omits homosexual context, so the results cannot be applied to all members of the population. Additionally, it is probably impossible to predict if mutations are going to be adaptive for current and future generations. To conclude, physiological approach, as well as evolutionary approach, has its strengths and weaknesses. Possibly, for best understanding of differences in personality, it is vital to consider as many perspectives as possible to find the most fitting

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