Personality
Putting It Together: Personality
Learning Objectives
In this module, you learned to
- define personality and the contributions of Freud and neo-Freudians to personality theory
- describe and differentiate between personality theories
- explain the use and purpose of common personality tests
Personality psychology is about how individuals differ from each other in their characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving. In this module, you examined some of the foundational theories that explain personality and learned about personality testing today. Some of the most interesting questions about personality attributes involve issues of stability and change. Are shy children destined to become shy adults? Are the typical personality attributes of adults different from the typical attributes of adolescents? Do people become more self-controlled and better able to manage their negative emotions as they become adults? What mechanisms explain personality stability and what mechanisms account for personality change?
Remember that the Big Five personality traits include:
- extraversion (attributes such as assertive, confident, independent, outgoing, and sociable),
- agreeableness (attributes such as cooperative, kind, modest, and trusting),
- conscientiousness (attributes such as hard working, dutiful, self-controlled, and goal-oriented),
- neuroticism (attributes such as anxious, tense, moody, and easily angered),
- openness (attributes such as artistic, curious, inventive, and open-minded).
The Big Five is one of the most common ways of organizing the vast range of personality attributes that seem to distinguish one person from the next. In a meta-analysis of several studies of the Big Five test, Roberts, Walton, and Viechtbauer found that in general, average levels of extraversion (especially the attributes linked to self-confidence and independence), agreeableness, and conscientiousness appear to increase with age whereas neuroticism appears to decrease with age (Roberts et al., 2006). Openness also declines with age, especially after mid-life (Roberts et al., 2006). These changes are often viewed as positive trends given that higher levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness and lower levels of neuroticism are associated with seemingly desirable outcomes such as increased relationship stability and quality, greater success at work, better health, a reduced risk of criminality and mental health problems, and even decreased mortality. This pattern of positive average changes in personality attributes is known as the maturity principle of adult personality development (Caspi, Roberts, & Shiner, 2005). The basic idea is that attributes associated with positive adaptation and attributes associated with the successful fulfillment of adult roles tend to increase during adulthood in terms of their average levels.
Beyond providing insights into the general outline of adult personality development, Roberts et al. (2006) found that young adu