Development of personality

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  • Created by: I BB
  • Created on: 04-06-16 16:25

Personality and temperament

Personality is the thoughts, feelings and behaviours that make an individual unique. Temperament is the genetic component of personality.

Studies into temperament include: Thomas, Chess and Birch (in which children were observed and their parent's were interviewed, until eventually they could be categorised as either 'easy', 'difficult' or 'slow to warm up'), Buss and Plomin (in which the emotionality, sociability and activity of some monozygotic and dizygotic twins were tested) and Kagan and Snidman (in which a baby's behaviour was observed as their care giver slowly walked away whilst the child played with some toys).

Eysenck

There are three personality types: Extroversion (a personality type that describes people who look to the outisde world for entertainment), introversion (a personality type describing people who are content with their own company) and neuroticism (a personality type that describes people who are highly emotional and show a quick, intense reaction to fear). For each personality type there are associated traits.

Eysenck's personality scales

EPI: This is a personality scale used to measure extroversion/introversion and neuroticism/stability (e.g. you can be identified as a stable introvert, or a neurotic introvert etc.) and it is made up of a series of yes/no questions

EPQ: A further dimension was added to the scale: psychotisism. People who score high on this scale are hostile, aggressive, insensitive, cruel and lacking feeling.

The study that goes alongside his theory basically involved testing the personality of 700 servicemen through a questionnaire.

Evaluation of Eysenck's type theory:

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