The Essence of Humanistic and Personality Trait Theories (Term Paper Sample)

The Essence of Humanistic and Personality Trait Theories
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Personality Theories
It was with time that personality theories took different views on personality development. There are psychologist theorists who believed that human behavior was as a result of unconscious experiences according to Sigmund Freud theory (Schultz & Sydney, 2012). Other theories such as the psychodynamic theory believed that human personality is as a result of an interaction of the conscious and unconscious experiences. On the other hand, the social cognitive theory believed that a personality is as a result of traits developed and their social interaction with the environment. All these theories played a significant role in understanding human behavior including his perception of the world around him and within him.
However, there are two interesting theories on how human behavior is molded and that is the humanistic personality theory and the trait theory. Both theories carry significant concepts on human behavior and theorists behind these theories highly disagreed with the psychodynamic and the psychoanalytic theories. The humanistic theorists chose to view the human being from a subjective point of view and not an objective point of view (Ellen, 2014). As both theorists built on their concepts of human behavior there are several things that stood out in their findings. The Carl Roger’s theory and Abraham Maslow’s theories did not have stages of development in human as the Freud’s and Jung’s theories. They took different approaches of describing human behavior when compared to the other theorists.
On the other hand, Hans Eysenk, McCrae, and Costa developed a detailed personality model comprising of basic five factors and other fundamental factors to explain the trait theory. The theory is anchored on a particular association with person’s strengths and most the times, these traits are distributed in the population with some exhibiting strong characteristics of the trait while others low (Carr, 2004).
Humanistic Personality Theory
The humanistic personality theory was first coined by Carl Rogers who believed in the study of human behavior from a subjective point of view. His argument was that a human being couldn’t be studied like an animal and needed to be given an identity that was unique to a human being. This also meant that his discontent in Freud’s and Carl Jung’s theories were because of the nature of their research on human beings. According to Rogers the self involves his perceptions, ideas and concepts of self (Nicholas, 2009). He used various concepts to explain his study of the human behavior including the client-centered therapy.
Humanistic Personality Theories
Carl Rogers
Rogers anchored his theories on the concept known as "Self-actualization." Self-actualization referred to a person who achieved the utmost sense of self-discovery or full potential. Success in finding the ultimate satisfaction based on who a person was or dreamed to be was the human’s ultimate goal. This also means that once a person reached his full or maximum potential was not only satisfied but fulfilled. He also went further to describe that humans have the tendency to react differently to different experiences. If a person perceives an experience as contrary to their self-structure then they can either distort it or deny it while if the experience is in congruent to his self-structure the person he accepts it.
The fact that congruence and incongruence played a significant role of describing the personality structure then it meant that a person was either incongruent or congruent in relation to the experiences to his real self. If an experience did not fit or agreed with a person’s perception of self then the experience was incongruent with the person’s real self or perceived self. The other aspect is that if the experience was agreed with the person’s perception of self then it was congruent. Therefore, once a person was congruent with his or her experience then Rogers described the person as free and at ease with his sense of self (Engler, 2008).
Abraham Maslow
Abraham Maslow theory states that the key motivation for a human being is to satisfy particular needs and they were classified in five categories as hierarchy of needs (Frick, 1991). The Maslow hierarchies of needs were as follows:
1 Physiological needs: According to Maslow, these refer to the very basic needs of a human being including, eating, clothing and shelter. These are some of the most basic needs that human being feels must fulfill before getting to the next category of hierarchy of needs.
2 Security needs: These referred to needs of feeling secure both emotionally and psychologically. A person who feels secure in both aspects is likely to thrive better in the environment.
3 Social: The human being was referred to as a social being. Therefore, social needs or the need to feel appreciated or accepted by others in a particular environment was critical in making sure that the person felt at peace with himself.
4 Intellectual: This does not confine intellect to education only but also refers to self-confidence and a healthy self-esteem. In other words, an intellectual person is aware of himself and feels confident enough to mingle with the others in the society.
5 Self-Actualization/Personal Potential: This refers to self-actualization where a person achieves his or her full potential in the society. This also means that person feels completely satisfied with current accomplishments and has a high self-opinion of self. Therefore, when a person fulfills all the other hierarchy of needs successfully then they are said to have reached their self-actualization.
Therefore, in this theory it is clear that Maslow’s definition of a healthy personality refers to a person who has achieved not only the basic needs but also security, social and intellectual needs (Koontz, 2010).
Both Maslow’s and Roger’s approaches on personality development concur on the grounds that self-actualization is the ultimate human need and as long as a human being hasn’t explored his full potential then there might be a personality dysfunction. Both theorists have a very strong basis for pitching their concepts on humanistic theory on personalities. Both theories revolved on subjective analysis of a human being. Therefore, human personalities vary depending on how much they fulfilled their full potential.
Trait Personality Theories
The trait personality theory is based on traits or behavioral patterns found in human beings. The argument is that there are particular behavioral patterns found in a particular section of the human race where some exhibit stronger traits of a particular behavior than others. The main contributors of the theory include Hans Eysenk , McCrae and Costa. All these theorists shared interesting concepts on personality traits.
Hans Eysenk
Eysenk used three dimensions to describe some of the super traits in human beings. Each of these dimensions carried different personality dispositions and behavioral patterns found in human beings. These dimensions included extraversion-introversion, psychoticism and neuroticism.
Extraversion-introversion: Extraverted personalities portrayed different behavioral traits when compared to introverted personalities. An extraverted personality consists of the following patterns, sociable, lively, easy-going, lighthearted, talkative, and possessed leadership skills. On the other hand, the introverted personality had the opposite traits which were very calm, patient, even-tempered, level headed, cautious, reliable and calm.
Pyschoticism: Those that had stronger behavioral patterns of psychoticism were very aggressive, quite impersonal, cold, ego-centric, not empathetic, and were only concerned about their welfare. According to Eysenk these people were best suited in professions that required such emotions including judicial professions or correctional facilities.
Neuroticism: According to Eysenk people under this category were emotionally unstable and exhibited stronger emotional reactions to trivial issues. Therefore, some of the common traits included, quick tempered, touchy, unpredictable, easily excited or angered, and sensitive. People with these traits could not be left to handle professions that could easily trigger these emotions (Burger, 2010).
Therefore, according to Eysenk all these categories could fairly describe a person’s personality and even though some exhibited stronger traits of neuroticism there were also others that shared some traits in two categories. Actually, depending on a person’s personality there were indications of higher or lower cortical arousal activity with extraverts scoring higher. So these traits helped in describing most probable reactions (Carducci, 2009).
McCrae and Costa
McCrae and Costa developed their five factor personality model based on a longitudinal study conducted on people with personalities and aging (Caprara, 2000). According to their findings they used five factors to narrow down on some of the most common traits exhibited by people. These five factors are openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism and extraversion. Depending on the approach a person had to any of these five factors then that is what that would determine their long-term behavioral pattern.
Neuroticism: People who exhibited neuroticism traits were considered to have a negative affectivity. Therefore, such people displayed the following behavioral traits which are anxiety, anger, depression, self-consciousness, fragileness, and impetuousness. This also meant that people who projected these traits tende...