The Validity Of Personality Traits

Most personality theories share a common interest in traits. Theorists have become fascinated with traits, as they essentially tell us what makes us, us. Perpetual features within us demonstrated by our actions within everyday life. Trait theory aims to assess personality, whilst identifying and measuring the extent of particular repetitive personality traits for example - shyness and analysing how much these traits vary from person to person. Trait theory is perhaps the most widely used perspective when it comes to analysing personality and it vastly differs in comparison to other theoretical perspectives. In order to test the validity of trait theories this essay will identify its key theories, focusing on how personality traits are defined

It does this mainly through application of self-report, a type of survey in which participants read a question then select a response without the researcher interfering with their answer. However, this can produce some obscure results as to analyse one self’s behaviour is much more difficult as it is feels so naturally occuring so we’re often unaware of our own personality and it could be perceived very differently from an outsider's perspective. Nevertheless, this is made fairly reliable by the development of extremely thorough tests. A good example of this is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI Test), which has has multiple reconstructions and further development since the late 1930s, it has a specific skill to spot a participant's habit of giving invalid answers. This means, in addition to rating a participant's scale of behavior, it can additionally rate them on their likelihood of honesty and sincerity - or lack of it (Butcher, J. N., & Williams, C. L, 2009). This is proved valid due to it being widely used, for example, in medical practice it is applied to test mental illness. Trait evaluation is also used during school when students are selecting unversity choices and career prospects. Students are usually given a questionnaire with multiple questions which determine

Maybe the greatest quality of trait theory is that it can be easily understood, therefore it is fairly straightforward to execute. Thus, it's the sort of thing that can be executed effortlessly, of which it has been for a long time with numerous participants. Dissimilar to personality theory, it's truly instinctive and has been widely used and agreed upon by many theorists. Another key aspect is that it is objective in its approach. Trait theory ordinarily depends on hard information or measurable statistics, that much personality theories do not have. A great deal of analysis includes individual translation of subjective components, and subsequently, can be affected by the inclinations of the theorist. In trait theory, the subjective encounters of the theorists included are kept at a minimum and therefore would unlikely impact the hypotheses. On the other hand, the greatest downfall of trait theory is that although its objective, it struggles to explain how certain characteristics develop or why they develop. Its overall analysis is narrow and often does not go deep enough to uncover the true cause of personality. Likewise, the assembly of traits is additionally remarkably poor at foreseeing behaviour. Somebody can be examined utilizing trait theory to analyse behaviour tendencies, however, a person may behave differently than they would in a different environment, it could actually be entirely