Expressions like “has a strong personality” or “has a lot of personality” are very common in everyday life. When we hear the term “personality”, almost all of us know what to understand: we usually think about how someone in their environment acts, whether they are likeable, sensitive, shy. . . Specifically, “having a lot of personality” means socially being a very assertive person, even aggressive at times, even if this has no scientific basis. Now, in fact, if we were asked to define precisely what personality is, many people would not know exactly what to say, because it is a complex and encompassing term. In this entry we will clarify it a little.
In fact, it is necessary to begin by clarifying that at present there is still no consensus as to which specific characteristics or dimensions of individuals determine their personality, although various theories have been developed to try to explain (or at least some clarification) the controversy. These include:
– The 16-factor model (R. B. Cattell, 1995): the author carried out extensive data collection, grouping them into three types: L-data (by observing individuals directly, looking at their behaviour in certain situations), Q-data (self-reporting by the study participants, expressing how they perceived themselves) and T-data (objective test or tests). and standardized). With them, he proposed the existence of sixteen personality characteristics, each of them actually double (the strongest and weakest state of the characteristic). Among these, the adjectives “reserved-open”, “submissive-dominant”, “practical-imaginative”, “trustworthy-suspicious” and “relaxed-tense” stand out. Each pair would count as one of the characteristics found by the author, so there would be sixteen pairs. In addition, it showed the existence of four other factors, which would arise from the combination of all the others: introversion-extraversion, little-too much anxiety, susceptibility-tenacity, and dependence-independence.
– The three-factor model (H. J. Eysenck, 1967): the author proposes three main dimensions in the personality of individuals. These would be psychoticism (as opposed to “impulse control”, refers to traits such as aggressiveness or impulsivity), extraversion (includes degree of sociability, dominance. . . ) and neuroticism (as opposed to “stability”, includes, among others, the level of anxiety and self-esteem of the individual).
– The two-factor model of J. Gray (1970): modifying a little the model proposed by Eysenck, Gray proposed the existence of two main factors in the human personality, anxiety and impulsivity. Anxiety would consist of a high degree of introversion and neuroticism, while impulsivity would originate from the combination of extraversion and neuroticism.
– The Big Five model of Costa and McRae (1992): defends the existence of five dimensions of personality. These would be extraversion, emotional stability (neuroticism), sensitivity to personal relationships, will/detailment, and openness to experience. Interestingly, there is still debate as to whether these characteristics are inherited or learned, although there is a tendency to think that they all have a strong inherited component, rather than a social (acquired) one. This is one of the most accepted models in psychology.
Over time, however, another type of model has emerged, the interactionists, who argue that studying personality from the point of view of trait alone, with watertight adjectives, does not make much sense. These new models argue that personality is something relatively changeable (even if it has stable components) that needs to be analyzed according to the situation in which it occurs. So, for example, a person may be very extroverted in their family, but introverted at work, and previous models would not be able to capture this difference.
The reconciliation of the two points of view (interactionism and the search for adjectives to define personality) has now led to a much more complete view of the concept of personality. It is thought that the individual is born with certain traits that he cannot change as such, but learns to adapt them to the situation as far as possible (with biological limits). For example, there are people with a high rate of anxiety, who learn to control it with psychological techniques. This means that personality is relatively changeable or modifiable and depends on much more than certain genetic patterns, such as how we feel at a given moment.
In conclusion, there is no single definition of personality, and according to scientific research, the term.
References:
Cattell, R. B., & P. Cattell, H. E. (1995). Personality structure and the new fifth edition of the 16PF. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 55(6), 926-937.
Costa Jr, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Four ways five factors are basic. Personality and individual differences, 13(6), 653-665.
Gray, J. A. (1970). The psychophysiological basis of introversion-extraversion. Behaviour research and therapy, 8(3), 249-266.
Eysenck, H. J. (1967). The biological basis of personality (Vol. 689). Transaction publishers.
Xavi Ponseti
Col. Nº B-03138
