Eysenck's Theory Of Personality Development

The Behaviourist approach focuses on the role of the external environment and learning processes in determining our actions identifying personality as learnt whereas the psychodynamic approach argues that personality is caused by unconscious forces and not learnt. Personality is defined as ‘The distinctive and relatively enduring ways of thinking, feeling and acting that characterises a person’s responses to life situations’ (Holt et al., 2015, p.563). Behaviourists deem that parents can guide their children to be what they want them to be as children have no ‘talents’ while the psychodynamic approach claims that adult personalities are determined from childhood experiences .

Perhaps, the most complex issue that seems to puzzle philosophers, psychologists and educators for years has been the debate about nature versus nurture. There seems to be a huge divide between the two philosophies as clearly nature refers to the concept of personal characteristics being related biologically and nurture being classed as the influence of the surrounding environment on the persons characteristics. Many questions come to light when considering these factors in psychology.

Another factor that is affected by genes is one's’ personality. Scientists have studied many sets of twins and came to the conclusion that personality is based on five traits: agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and how extraverted a person is (Bouchard). Recently in my psychology class, my professor mentioned a story that I found very interesting. She told us that researchers found that identical twins who were separated at birth, still developed the same likes and dislikes, dressed the same, and were interested in the same career paths. This suggests that a large part of a person’s personality is genetic. If personality was based entirely on someone’s genes, there would be no way that identical twins would still have

Contemporary researchers believe that both hereditary and environment are involved in every aspect of a child’s development (Berk, 2012, pg. 82). Physical aspects, such as the color of a child’s eyes or hair, and even behavioral similarities such as a child being outgoing or shy, are frequently the responsibility of genetics. Even so, while our observable characteristics are apart of our hereditary makeup, these aspects will constantly be affected by a lifelong history of personal experiences (Berk, 2012).

For example, one type of physical element within our bodies that may influence our personalities is our genes. Our genetic makeup determines whether our hair is curly or straight, whether our eyes are blue or brown, and whether we have large, heavy bones or a slight build. It also appears that our genetic makeup influence how active we are, whether we are hot-tempered and disagreeable, and whether we like to be with others or prefer solitude. Understanding if and how genetics contribute to personality falls squarely within the biological domain (Dr. S. Abel,

Personality is basically who you are, it is a sum total of your qualities, thoughts and principles. The book, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is supposed to be based on personality or, rather the division of personality, which is now known as a mental disease called dissociative identity disorder (DID). This book is supposed to be based on this, and has been thought so since the Victorian era (that is when the book was released). However I think that Hyde and Jekyll are the same personality.

Dr. Rettew connects to class discussions and readings on shared and unshared environmental influences, evocative gene environment correlation, temperament, and the goodness-of-fit. Twins that with unshared environmental influences, such as different placentas, could adapt different temperaments (Berk, 2009). Also, twins that have been adopted into separate families could have different personality traits because they lived in completely different environments their whole life, even if they shared environmental influences of the same placenta (Berk, 2009). With an evocative gene environment correlation, a child’s genotype could draw in a certain type of environment, such as babies who appear more attractive will receive more attention (Berk, 2009). The type of attention a child gets could affect its temperament. Temperament is relatively stable at birth, but during preschool years the goodness-of-fit between the child’s temperament and the parenting style could produce favorable outcomes (Berk, 2009). For example, parents with a goodness-of-fit could respond to their child in a sensitive manner if they are frustrated or angry (Berk, 2009). Temperament has many other influences other than it being genetically, and Dr. Rettew highlights most of these

In the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, a well-known study for the genetic basis for personality, it was found that characteristics of their personalities were largely controlled by genetics. In this study from 1979 to 1999, 350 pairs of twins, whether

Every individual goes through different experiences that mold them into who they are. The combination of their genetic makeup, the environment in which an individual is exposed to, peers, culture, and many other factors determine who they are as an individual (Twenge & Campbell, 2016). This is also what is considered to be an individual’s personality. It is the greatest influence on how an individual will react in any given situation; not everyone will react the same in any situation. Personality is the recurring patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and feelings that can be seen across all situations and time (Twenge & Campbell, 2016, p. 6). If an individual’s personality includes being highly extraverted, then reactions and responses should be

John Locke, English philosopher and physician, believed that all things that humans do are shaped solely from nurture. His idea was that people were born blank, like a blackboard, and who they became was a result of their collective experiences. When exploring various topics of humanity, brain activity, and the concept free will, we can observe acts of nature and of nurture. As shown in Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, Shankar Vedantam’s The Hidden Brain, and “Free Will” by Matt Ridley, people are malleable. In life, humans behave like their peers, but have a few natural genetic tendencies. When it comes to personality traits, genetics play an even smaller role as your personality is shaped by your thoughts of ideas. The controversial

Twin studies have been popular by psychologists due to both genetic and environmental factors. As noted in “A Second Look at Twin Studies” by Winerman, equal environments in the classical twin study may not exist as identical and fraternal twins may not always be treated equally and it is an assumption without proof. Though the genetic makeup of the twins may be the same, the impact on the twin from the environment such as, parents, teachers, and peers may not. Twin researchers assume twins raised in the same home are raised in uniform environments.

It has long been acknowledged that our hair, skin colour and certain diseases are governed by our genes. Other physical attributes if not determined, seem to be strongly linked to the genetic makeup of our parents. Height, weight and life expectancy are all correlated between related individuals. This has led many to speculate as to whether personality traits can also be inherited. People have speculated if psychological characteristics such as behavioural tendencies, personality attributes and mental capability was ‘wired in’ before

Personality is defined as the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual 's unique character. Personality theory is the approaches to understanding the “What”, “How” and “When” of characteristics and features that make up an individual 's personality. An insight into personality is important to understand the function of a person’s mind. By doing this you would be able to understand and observe your own psyche from an outside perspective, interact with others better and understand why they do what they do or predict how someone may react to something.

The concept of personality has fascinated psychologists for years. Allport proposed the hierarchy of traits – cardinal, central, and secondary traits (Allport, 1945). Cattell also proposed his theory, the sixteen dimensions of human personality (Cattell, 1944). Jung developed a type-based theory of personality, with different dichotomous personality categories, which was further developed by Myers and Briggs in 1962 to produce the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Ford, 2013). Some psychologists have even argued that personality does not exist; that people change behaviour over time and across various situations. The counter-argument to this is that individuals will adapt their behaviour to fit the situation, and generally demonstrate some pare of their personality in a given situation (Coaley, 2014). However, personality is a broad and rather ambiguous concept, meaning that is it difficult to define succinctly; and yet how we define it plays a crucial part in how we investigate it. Eysenck’s theory of personality concluded that there were 3 dimensions: extraverted-introverted, neuroticism-stability, psychoticism-socialisation (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1964). With the broadening field of psychometrics, the Eysencks were the first to make their approach more quantifiable and legitimate than others had been in the past.

This is an individual assignment. This assignment is for KMC1093 Personality Development course in order to pass the course. First of all, personality development is associated with psychological aspects which are included cognitive, behaviour and emotion. It is believed that everybody has their own way to interacting with the other people and with their social environment. There are three components in the nature of personality. The first component stated that the personality reflects individual differences. Every individual have its own characteristics. Second component is a statement that personality is consistent and enduring, and the last component claimed that personality can change. There are many factors can influence the personality development which are heredity, parental characteristic, person’s cohort, birth order, normative age-graded influences, normative history-graded influences, non-normative life events, culture, and normative socio cultural-graded influences.