Study of personality based on psychological traits has a quite interesting history. It started with Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert in 1936 who used a very innovative method. They searched an unabridged dictionary for words that could be used to describe persons. They identified around 35000 words. Further analysis was done to eliminate mere evaluative terms (e.g:awful) resulting in 4000 genuine words that can be called words describing genuine traits.
Raymond Cattell identified 35 personality variables from this list of 4000 words. Further empirical testing and analysis (using statistical technique of factor analysis) resulted in 12 personality factors. He could identify a further 4 factors using self report questionnaire. Thus he came up with the 16 personality factors. He also devised test for measuring these 16 factors (16 PF test).
Later the highly influential British psychologist Eysenck argued that only 2 factors are needed to describe the personality These were extraversion - introversion and neuroticism - emotional stability. Though this was widely accepted, there was a feeling that this is not the whole story.
In 1961, Ernest Tupes and Raymond Christal did studies using the 35 factors of Cattell. They produced evidence that a 5 five factor model could fit in well with empirical data and could explain personality. Thus this model was better than Eysenck's 2 factor model.
The utility of this model was confirmed by Norman and Goldberg 20 years later creating renewed interest in this model.
The 5 factors involved are
Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. (can be abbreviated as OCEAN)
Each factor has around 5 or 6 underlying traits. These traits have a strong correlation to the adjectives used to describe a person in the natural languages. Studies have been done in Chinese, hebrew, Filipino and several Indo-European languages.
The personality disorders described in DSM - IV can be understood based on the levels of the underlying traits of these 5 factors.
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2 weeks ago
3 comments:
dear dr hareesh , do you think that we can treat a personality disorder OR do we have to accept and modify our behavious accordingly ,is there a scope for any phyachaiatric drugs or psychologic counselling .
most often it is seen that the relatives or his /her friends adjust or adapt to that behaviour of the person .
please enlighten us on this
… police dog trials have shown that dogs presented with handkerchiefs held under human armpits can distinguish the sweats of any two individual human except identical twins (Kalmus 1955). This suggests that there is an enormously variable richness of genetic labeling in molecules of sweat. In the light of the result with identical twins, one feels inclined to bet that police dogs could be trained to sniff out the coefficient of relationship between pairs of humans and that, …
Dawkins, The extended phenotype
Dear kokoori and others,
Personality disorders are ego syntonic by definition as so the sufferer may not ask for treatment. So it is not easy to attempt to treat them. But as is always the case in medicine, especially psychiatry, there are exceptions. Pateints may ask for agree to get treated for some of the problem behaviors. Adaptation by others aroung the sufferer is an option if it is possible to practice it. But not so in many cases. Psychotherapy for personality disorders require specific training and skills. It is not easy to find such therapists. Drugs have a definite role in some PDs like schizoid, paranoi, schizotypal, borderline, anxious avoidant etc. Thank you
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