The Aviator: The Various Perspectives Of Personality

The Various Perspectives of Personality

There have been numerous studies of the factors that can affect a person’s personality. Typically, these studies always reflected on what role a child’s early life played in their adult personalities. The character of Howard Hughes from the movie The Aviator was a fitting example of the many effective factors (Scorsese, 2004). This paper’s purpose is to examine and describe theories such as the psychoanalysis perspective, physiological perspective, and biological perspective of personality traits.

Psychoanalysis Perspective

Erik Erikson was a student of Freud whose approach to psychoanalysis was called ego psychology (Larsen & Buss, 2008). It is believed that ego was the most powerful part of a personality.

Robert Cloninger’s tridimensional personality model, there are three personality traits which are tied to the three neurotransmitters (Larsen & Buss, 2008). The first trait is novelty seeking. This trait shows to have low levels of dopamine. Individuals with low levels of dopamine strive to provide experiences to increase the dopamine. The experiences for this trait could include excitement and thrills. The second trait is identified as harm avoidance. This trait was associated with abnormalities in the serotonin metabolism. Low serotonin levels could result in depression but when serotonin became elevated, it was the result of anxiety or stress. While anxiety may increase, vulnerability may decrease which could lead to overreacting to stress. High harm avoidance in individuals is described as cautious, inhibited, and apprehensive. The individuals are on constant lookout for threatening events because they had expected harmful events will happen to them. The third trait is identified as reward dependence. This last trait was related to low norepinephrine. Individuals who are high on this trait tend to be persistent. To produce rewards, they work long hours and continue to strive after others had given up. According to Cloninger, the functional interaction of these three dimensions lead to integrated patterns of behavior (Strandbygaard & Jensen,

One example from the movie is in the first scene. Howard was shown being bathed by his mother who warns him that he is unsafe from germs and diseases. Her worriedness about diseases and anything else harmful showed her neuroticism. This neuroticism was passed on to Howard who, when reaching adulthood, experienced worsened symptoms of this trait. The mother also displayed signs of obsessive compulsive disorder. OCD may have genetic components and having parents or other family members with the disorder can increase the risk of developing OCD (Staff, n.d.). Howard Hughes inherited this disorder from his mother which shaped his personality throughout his adult life. A second example from the movie was the scene in which Howard was at the premiere of his first movie. He was shown walking down the red carpet and experiencing anxiety from the large crowd that was gathered. Due to the anxiety, he was unable to properly answer questions during an interview and was shown not being able to focus on what the reporter was saying. Howard was being anti-social and became distressed which was a perfect example of his elevated levels of psychoticism. As he grew older the levels of this trait only grew higher as well and caused great social and personal issues throughout his everyday