Chapter 9: Personality and Human Potential
Trait Theories of Personality
’cause you got personality,
Walk, personality
Talk, Personality
Smile, Personality
Charm, personality
Love, personality
And of Cause you’ve got
A great big heart
From the song Personality by Lloyd Price
By personality , we usually mean an individual’s distinctive characteristics, qualities, and behaviors. As the Lloyd Price song describes, do you think you “got” a personality? How would you describe your personality? As a follow-up to the developmental psychology chapter and introduction to the chapter on personality, it might be fun to engage in a bit of romantic fantasy and develop your priorities for a partner in life. Try to construct an ordered list of those personality qualities you consider most important for your partner. Research with college students surveying the desirable qualities college students sought in a potential mate resulted in the following list: ‘‘kind and understanding,” ‘‘religious,” ‘‘exciting personality,” ‘‘creative and artistic,” ‘‘good housekeeper,” ‘‘intelligent,” ‘‘good earning capacity” (i.e., provider), ‘‘wants children,” ‘‘easygoing,” ‘‘good heredity,” ‘‘college graduate,” ‘‘physically attractive,” and ‘‘healthy” (Buss & Barnes, 1986).
Would you list similar qualities to those of the college students in the research study? Many of those qualities can be considered traits ; an individual’s patterns of behavior (including thoughts and feelings) that are consistent across time and situations. Traits often refer to extreme points on a continuum; for example, kind vs. unkind (mean), intelligent vs. unintelligent (slow), easygoing vs. serious, exciting vs. unexciting (dull), creative vs. uncreative (rigid), and religious vs. irreligious in the list above. Other terms in the research study refer to extreme points on a continuum of physical characteristics (e.g., attractive vs. unattractive, healthy vs. unhealthy, good heredity vs. poor heredity) or to specific behavioral outcomes (e.g., college graduate vs. not, good provider vs. not, wants kids vs. not, good housekeeper vs. not). How many of these qualities would you include on your list? Do you agree with including each of them? What important qualities do you think were left out? Would you consider these qualities to be a description of his/her personality? Do you think your parents would have the same priorities as you?
In a study, college students and their parents were asked to rank these 13 different traits for desirability in a potential long-term life partner for themselves or their children (Perilloux, Fleischman, & Buss, 2011). The traits were scored such that the value (between 1 and 13) indicated importance of the trait. The average rankings for sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers are listed in Figure 9.1. Before you look at the findings, you might find it interesting and informative to rank order these 13 traits based on your own priorities. Assign the score of 13 to your highest p