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(A)
Physiological Theory
Humoral Theories
Perhaps the oldest personality theory known is
contained in the cosmological writings of the Greek philosopher and
physiologist Empedocles and in related speculations of the physician
Hippocrates. Empedocles' cosmic elements—air (with its associated qualities,
warm and moist), earth (cold and dry), fire (warm and dry), and water (cold and
moist)—were related to health and corresponded (in the above order) to
Hippocrates' physical humours, which were associated with variations in
temperament: blood (sanguine temperament), black bile (melancholic), yellow bile
(choleric), and phlegm (phlegmatic). This theory, with its view that body
chemistry determines temperament, has survived in some form for more than 2,500
years. According to these early theorists, emotional stability as well as
general health depend on anappropriate balance among the four bodily humours; an
excess of one may produce a particular bodily illness or an exaggerated
personality trait. Thus, a person with an excess of blood would be expected to
have a sanguine temperament—that is, to be optimistic, enthusiastic, and
excitable. Too much black bile (dark blood perhaps mixed with other secretions)
was believed to produce a melancholic temperament. An oversupply of yellow bile
(secreted by the liver) would result in anger, irritability, and a “jaundiced”
view of life. An abundance of phlegm (secreted in the respiratory passages) was
alleged to make people stolid, apathetic, and undemonstrative. As biological
science has progressed, these primitive ideas about body chemistry have been
replacedby more complex ideas and by contemporary studies of hormones,
neurotransmitters, and substances produced within the central nervous system,
such as endorphins.
Humor (from Latin “liquid,” or “fluid”), in
early Western physiological theory, one of the four fluids of the body that were
thought to determine a person's temperament and features. In the ancient
physiological theory still current in the European Middle Ages and later, the
four cardinal humours were blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile), and melancholy
(black bile); the variant mixtures of these humours in different persons
determined their “complexions,” or “temperaments,” their physical and mental
qualities, and their dispositions. The ideal person had the ideally proportioned
mixture of the four; a predominance of one produced a person who was sanguine
(Latin sanguis, “blood”), phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholic. Each complexion
had specific characteristics, and the words carried much weight that they have
since lost: e.g., the choleric man was not only quick to anger but also
yellow-faced, lean, hairy, proud, ambitious, revengeful, and shrewd. By
extension, “humour” in the 16th century came to denote an unbalancedmental
condition, a mood or unreasonable caprice, or a fixed folly or vice.
(B) Morphological (body type) Theories :
Morphological theory defines distinguish types
of personalities on the basis of body shape ( somatotype).
This theory was developed by the German
psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer.
Book - Physique and Character (1921),
Some Points :
1.
a frail, rather weak (asthenic)
body build as well as a muscular (athletic) physique were frequently
characteristic of schizophrenic patients,
2.
a short, rotund (pyknic)
build was often found among manic-depressive
3.
Slim and delicate
physiques are associated with introversion,
4.
Rounded heavier and
shorter bodies tend to be cyclothymic—that is, moody but often extroverted and
jovial.
(C) Psychoanalytic theories
Freud
- Austrian neurologist
Sigmund Freud
Beginnings were based in studies of
psychopathology, psychoanalysis became a more general perspective on normal
personality development and functioning. The field of investigation began with
case studies of so-called neurotic conditions, which included hysteria,
obsessive-compulsive disorders, and phobic conditions.
Key Terms
- defense mechanisms, obsessive-compulsive condition,.
To Freud the fantasies were the mental
representations of basic drives, among which sex, aggression, and
self-preservation were paramount. These drives, moreover, required taming as the
child matured into an adult, projection,
Jung
- The Swiss psychiatrist Carl
Gustav Jung,
Modulating basic drives -
introversion and extroversion.
Introversion was defined as preoccupation with
one's inner world at the expense of social interactions and extroversion as a
preference for social interplay for living out inner drives (collectively termed
libido).
Adler
- The Austrian psychiatrist Alfred
Adler,
Coping Strategy
- people compensated for a behavioral deficiency
by exaggerating some other behaviour: a process analogous to organic processes
called hypertrophy, in which, for example, if one eye is injured, the
other eye may compensate by becoming more acute. In Adler's view, a person with
a feeling of inferiority related to a physical or mental inadequacy would also
develop compensating behaviours or symptoms, e.g. shortness of stature could
lead to the development of domineering, controlling behaviours.
(D) Trait theories
In the 1940s many investigators focused on
intensive studies of individual traits and of combinations of traits that seemed
to define personality types, such as the “authoritarian personality.” Others
studied the characteristic presence of certain needs such as the need for
achievement or affiliation. The method used to measure these needs was to
examine the fantasy productions of Murray's Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and
to relate the motive score to other behavioral indexes such as personal history,
occupational choice, speed of learning, and persistence of behaviour following
failure.
Traits Taken For Study
- Traits such as sociability, impulsiveness, meticulousness, truthfulness etc.
traits represent structures or habits within a person and are not the
construction of observers; they are the product of both genetic predispositions
and experience. It can be generally stated that traits are merely names for
observed regularities in behaviour, but do not explain them
Trait names have further been reduced to three
higher-order factors —introversion–extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism—and
some psychologists have attempted to explore the biological roots of each
factor.
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(E) Modern trends in personality studies
(i)
Sex differences -
1.
Girls generally begin to
speak earlier than boys and have fewer language problems in school and in the
course of maturation.
2.
females do better than
males on verbal tasks.
3.
Males generally exhibit
greater skill in understanding spatial relations and in solving problems that
involve mathematical reasoning.
4.
Beginning at the toddler
stage, the activity level of males is generally higher than that of females.
5.
Boys are more likely to
be irritable and aggressive than girls and more often behave like bullies.
6.
Men usually outscore
women in antisocial personality disorders, which consist of persistent lying,
stealing, vandalism, and fighting, although these differences do not appear
until after about the age of three.
A study by the American anthropologists Beatrice
B. Whiting and Carolyn P. Edwards found that males were consistently more
aggressive than females in seven cultures, suggesting that there is a
predisposition in males to respond aggressively to provocative situations,
although how and whether the attacking response occurs depends on the social and
cultural setting.
Genetic aspects
In systematic studies of humans, studies of
twins and adopted children have been used to try to evaluate environmental and
genetic factors as determinants of a number of behaviour patterns. These studies
have shown that genetic factors account for about 50 percent of the range of
differences found in a given population. Most of the remaining differences are
attributable not to the environment that is common to members of a family but to
the environment that is unique to each member of the family or that results from
interactions of family members with one another. In the United States,
behaviour geneticists such as Robert Plomin report that, in behaviours
describable as sociability, impulsiveness, altruism, aggression, and emotional
sensitivity, the similarities among monozygotic (identical) twins is twice that
among dizygotic (fraternal) twins, with the common environment contributing
practically nothing to the similarities. Similar findings are reported for twins
reared together or separately.
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