Personality.

10 Pages 2440 Words

y development
Traits are the basic units of personality and according to Allport, there are eight theoretical assertions. They are more than nominal existence; more generalized than habits; they are dynamic and determine behavior; they may be established empirically; they are only relatively independent of other traits; traits are not synonymous with moral or social judgements; they may be viewed either idiographically or nomothetically and acts; and even habits, that are inconsistent with a trait are not proof of the nonexistence of the trait.
Allport also believes that they exist and are based in the nervous system. Allport uses concept of functional autonomy to suggest that the motives of an adult may have their roots in the tension-reducing motives of the child, the adults grows out of them and becomes independent of these earlier tension-reduction efforts, therefore, genetic underlies personality.
In addition, Cattell determines that human motivation consists of innate tendencies, called ergs, and environmentally determined motives, called sentiments. The effort to satisfy motives and sentiments are made in the service of the more basic ergs or biological goals. Eysenck says that humans are biosocial organisms whose behaviors are ¡¥determined equally by biological factors such as hunger, thirst etc.¡¦ (Eysenck, 1990, p.64). By conducting studies of identical and fraternal twins, he suggests that heredity plays a major part in accounting for differences between individuals.
Eysenck has recognized a four-level hierarchy of behavior organization and more concentrated on the higher level where various traits may be linked together to form what he has called secondary, higher-order factors or superfactors. For example, the traits of sociability, impulsiveness, and liveliness, and excitability can be grouped together under the superordinate concept of extraversion. Superfactor defines a dimension with a low end (introversion) and...