Eysenck's Personality Theory, Key Concepts. Hans Eysenck was a psychologist and personality theorist who became famous for his theory of personality and intelligence that focuses on temperaments, which he believes were controlled by genetic influences. In fact, Eysenck believes that personality is largely governed by biological predispositions. towards certain personality traits coupled with conditioning and socialization during childhood.
As we can see, Isink's personality theory takes into account both nature and nurture. Isink's goal was to combine the best theories and practices of experimental psychology with the best measurement techniques of individual differences. From his earliest analyses of the dimensions of individual differences, Through multiple iterations at theory building to his lasting achievements in building a paradigm for personality research, he left a legacy of broad and rigorous research. Eysenck strove to integrate behavior genetics, psychophysiology, cognitive psychology, aesthetics, and psychometrics into a unified theory of personality and individual differences. Although best known for his biological theory of extroversion, His impact upon the field was much more than that and which cannot be summarized in this brief paper.
Hence, this paper will only briefly sketch the key concepts of Eysenck's theory of personality. Structure of personality. According to Eysenck, the 16 primary personality factors identified by Cattell in the 16-PF test were unreliable and could not be replicated.
Eysenck chose instead to focus on higher-order factor analysis, and through his work, he identified three superfactors, namely, extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism. According to Eysenck, higher-order factors are similar to types, and they represent combinations of primary personality traits. Thus, he considered the 16 factors that Cattell included in the 16-PF as primary factors.
Whereas extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism were second-order factors, or types. Actually, even the primary factors are comprised of lower-level responses that result in a hierarchical model of personality, namely, specific responses, habitual responses, traits or factors, and finally, types, or superfactors. Similarly, G, or general intelligence, is a higher order factor than its component intelligences, for example, verbal, numerical, memory, visuospatial, and reasoning.
Thus, Isink's theory does not contradict that of Cattell, but rather looks at a higher level of personality structure. As already mentioned, Isink's theory focused on temperament, that is, innate, genetically based personality differences. He believed personality is largely governed by biology, and he viewed people as having two specific personality dimensions, namely, extroversion versus introversion, and neuroticism versus stability. After collaborating with his wife and fellow personality theorist Sybil Eysenck, he added a third dimension to this model, psychoticism versus socialization.
An extrovert, according to Eysenck, is commonly described as an outgoing, expressive person, but the technical definition described by I-SYNC is more complex. Extroversion is a combination of sociability, impulsiveness, frivolity, general activity, and overt sexuality. The complex nature of each higher order factor may lead to some of the differences in personality theory. According to I-SYNC, The impulsiveness associated with extroversion is most likely hereditary, that is, a temperamental trait, whereas the sociability aspect of extroversion is more likely to be influenced by one's environment.
Thus, perhaps, it is not surprising that I-SYNC finds support for hereditary influences on personality whereas others, like Cattell, find support for environmental influences. Depending on how one designs their questions and experiments, the component traits within a higher order factor can support different perspectives. According to his theory, people high on the trait of extroversion are sociable and outgoing and readily connect with others, whereas people high on the trait of introversion have a higher need to be alone, engage in solitary behaviors, and limit their interactions with others. Neuroticism refers to one's emotional stability, or lack thereof. It incorporates mood swings, poor emotional adjustment, feelings of inferiority.
a lack of social responsibility, a lack of persistence, issues of trust versus suspiciousness, social shyness, hypochondria, and the lack of relaxed composure. Neuroticism raises the intensity of emotional reactions. Since it is a function of the reactivity of the autonomic nervous system, it is an inherited characteristic.
Individuals who measure high in neuroticism are more likely to suffer from neuroses, but high neuroticism is not necessarily less desirable than low levels of neuroticism. For example, aesthetic appreciation and creativity can benefit from an individual being highly emotional. On the clearly negative side, high levels of neuroticism have routinely been found in criminals, perhaps because whenever an individual has antisocial tendencies, A high level of neuroticism enhances their fear-anxiety responses and functions as a powerful, albeit dysfunctional, drive. In the neuroticism-stability dimension, people high on neuroticism tend to be anxious.
They tend to have an overactive sympathetic nervous system with low stress. Their bodies and emotional state tend to go into a flight-or-fight reaction. In contrast, people high on stability tend to need more stimulation.
to activate their flight or fight reaction and are therefore considered more emotionally stable. Cattell also studied neuroticism, and his findings were very similar to those of Eysenck. Psychoticism was added to Eysenck's theory well after identifying extroversion and neuroticism, and it is the least clearly defined or heritable of the three superfactors.
It incorporates traits of dominance leadership, Dominant submission, sensation-seeking, and the lack of a superego. Children who score high on a measure of psychoticism tend to have behavior problems and learning difficulties. They become loners, skip school, commit crimes, and are generally disliked by teachers and peers. Whether as children or as adults, they do not typically benefit from traditional psychotherapies or counseling, as there tends to be a paranoid Suspicious barrier. There is some evidence, however, for successful treatment with intensive behavioral techniques.
Interestingly, whether or not these children become criminals as adults seems to depend on how they score on the other two superfactors. High neuroticism seems to be the factor which makes juvenile delinquency a habit that persists into a life of crime. In the psychoticism-socialization dimension, people who are high on psychoticism tend to be independent thinkers, cold, nonconformist, impulsive, antisocial, and hostile. People who are high on socialization, often referred to as superego control, tend to have high impulse control, they are more altruistic, empathetic, cooperative, and conventional.
The role of heredity in personality Isink believed strongly in the inheritance of personality and intelligence. If it is true that genetics plays a major role in personality, then evolution should provide us with an interesting test, do other primate species demonstrate the same superfactors that we see in humans? Isink examined this question in conjunction with Harry Harlow.
After conducting factor analysis on the social behavior of rhesus monkeys, They found three clear behavior factors, namely, affectionate, fearful, and hostile social behavior. These factors match well with the human factors of extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism, respectively. Of course, there were marked differences between animals, but those differences were characteristic and reliable for each monkey. Thus, it would appear that the biological basis for personality superfactors can be confirmed in comparative psychological studies. Personality and real-life issue Although Iseng's approach to personality focused on group differences and genetics, he was not without concern for the individual and her or his daily life.
He also challenged the way in which psychologists are pursuing their discipline and the effect it has on the public's view of psychology. In 1972, he published Psychology is about People, which included jokes about psychology and psychiatry, as well as topics as diverse as sex. socialism, education, pornography, and behaviorism. In Uses and Abuses of Psychology, he challenged the stereotypes associated with views on national character and urged the learning of facts about other cultures.
In Sense and Nonsense in Psychology, he examined such things as hypnosis, lie detectors, telepathy, interpreting dreams, and politics. Isink wrote extensively about sex and personality, and the role that violence and the media may play in distorting sexuality. He also wrote about the relationship between personality and criminal behavior, and the role that personality and stress play in the lives of people who smoke cigarettes. Like Cattell, Jensen, and others, Isink was very much caught up in the controversy over racial differences in intelligence testing.
iSync, however, offered something for the average person, two books on how to measure your own IQ.