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PERSONALITY TYPE AND ADJUSTMENT PATTERNS

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The psychology of personality is a very broad topic, to which people have taken diverse theoretical approaches. Personality is easy to observe but hard to pin down. According to Allport (1961) personality is the dynamic organization within the person of the psychological and physical systems that underlie that person's patterns of actions, thoughts, and feelings. What dynamics are assumed, however, and what systems are proposed to underlie those dynamics vary greatly across theoretical viewpoints. Personality psychology is partly about what makes everyone the same and partly about what makes people differ from each other. That is, personality theories are partly statements about human nature: assertions that people are basically (for example) biological creatures, social creatures, self-protective, self-actualizing, or learning creatures. To understand the person, one has to adopt some view of the essence of human nature. Personality also concerns individual differences. Individual differences can be found on any dimension imaginable, but the so-called five-factor model (has been widely adopted as a consensual framework. The five factors are most commonly labeled extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. In this view, these broad dimensions are key determinants of behavior, and the aggregation of information resulting from a person's placement on these dimensions gives a reasonably good snapshot of what that person is like. Each broad trait is composed of multiple facets, which provide a more nuanced picture. Broad adoption of the five- factor model does not mean unanimity about it. There are staunch advocates of other frameworks, including two three-factor models, an alternative five-factor model, and a six-factor model (Ashton et al. 2004). Indeed, some important traits do not fit smoothly into the five-factor framework. For example, optimism has overtones of both extraversion and neuroticism, but does not quite fit either construct.

Functional Organization: There are two views of human nature.

Biological Models: An increasingly influential perspective, not just in personality but in all of psychology, treats humans as biological entities. From this view, it is desirable to develop a clear understanding of the basic properties of animal self-regulation and of how those properties are manifested in human behavior. Biological models assuming approach and avoidance temperaments have acquired a good deal of influence over the past decade They hold that approach and avoidance systems are supported partly by distinct brain areas, and that the sensitivity of each system (which varies among persons) influences behavior in response to environmental reward and threat cues. Developmental theorists have posited another temperament, generally termed effortful control slower to develop (Casey, et al. 2008) and super-ordinate to approach and avoidance temperaments. Effortful control can override impulses stemming from the approach and avoidance systems. It acts as a supervisory system, provided sufficient mental resources are available. This confers many advantages, including constraining emotions and permitting the organism to plan for the future and take situational complexities into account in behavioral decisions. Effortful control is a construct from developmental psychology, but its features closely resemble those of adult self-control: the ability to override impulses to act and the ability to make oneself undertake or persist in difficult, uninteresting, or unpleasant tasks. Approach and avoidance systems, together with a supervisory system able to reorder the priorities they pursue, form the core of a biological model of human nature. They also form the core of a conceptually distinct but complementary view of human nature grounded in the goal construct.

Goal Based Models: Some views of behavior emphasize its goal-directed quality. From this perspective, knowing a person means knowing the person's goals and values and the relations among them. In goal-based theories, it is important to distinguish between motivational processes aimed at moving toward goals and those aimed at staying away from threats. A desired goal has a positive incentive value that pulls behavior to it. Looming harm or pain has a negative incentive value that pushes behavior away from it. Sometimes only approach or avoidance is 

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