Hans Eysenck's Personality Theories

His theories include: Definition of Personality Enduring Aspects of Personality Physiological Correlates of Personality Dimensions How Are Personality Characteristics Acquired?

Hans J Eysenck is somewhat difficult to identify or classify. He supports a model of personality characterized by types and traits because he firmly beliefs that the most fundamental personality characteristics are inherited. His equally strong belief that both heredity and environment determine behavior supports his active verbal support of learning theory and the behavior therapies. Eysenck does not keep his nose to only one grindstone, and refuses to be neatly categorized as a theorist. He has involved himself with such topics as the relation between smoking and health, criminality, the heritability of intelligence, educational theory and practice, sexual behavior, the effects of psychotherapy, and even astrology; in addition to personality theory and behavior therapy. These wide-ranging interests are a partial cause of his ability that equals and compete with Cattell's: Eysenck's most recent bibliography (1982) lists around 40 books and over 600 articles and chapters.

Eysenck shares with Cattell the view of people as creatures with lasting and measurable qualities, and also the belief that measurement is fundamental to all scientific development. In psychology we are not yet sure what we should be measuring, so Eysenck says, taxonomy, or the classification of behavior, is an important first step toward the measurement of behavior . And factor analysis is the best means of classifying behavior. From the beginning of his career, Eysenck was certain that most personality theories are too complicated and too loosely formulated. He has attempted to derive conceptions of behavior that are simple and can be used to its maximum in proper working order, and as a result, his system is characterized by a very small number of major dimensions that have very thorough empirical definition. At the same time, his conceptions reflect his study and absorption of the thought of many different figures in our intellectual history: Hippocrates, Galen, Kretschmer, Jung, Pavlov, Hull, Spearman, and Thurstone. Eysenck has used questionnaires, or self-ratings; ratings by others; objective behavioral tests; assessments of physique; physiological measurements; and the biographical and other historical information as means of obtaining personality data. He believes that all kinds of data are useful in attempting to understand the organism . He also believes that because each method of obtaining data collection has its weaknesses (e.g., self-ratings are biased by subjects' views of themselves; objective tests carried out in a traditional experimental manner may tap too little of the total organism they are intended to understand), one should assemble "all and every type of factual and objective information which can be used to support or refute [an] hypothesis under investigation".

DEFINITION OF PERSONALITY Expanding on the definitions of Allport and Murray, Eysenck suggests that personality is: The sum-total of the actual or potential behavior-patterns of the organism, as determined by heredity and environment; it originates and develops through the functional interaction of the four main sectors into which these behavior-patterns are organized: the cognitive sector (intelligence), the conative sector (character), the affective sector (temperament), and the somatic sector (constitution). Eysenck calls attention to a statement to which many of the theorists would support by including the role of heredity and environment in this definition-that we are creatures of both inheritance and our experience. No theorist, however, with the possible exception of Cattell, has focused as much specific research effort on this proposition as Eysenck. Eysenck's inclusion of the "somatic sector" underlines his interest in relating the behavoural aspects of personality to underlying physiological structure and function. Although like Sheldon he has given some attention to the relations between physique and personality, Eysenck's major effort has gone into probing the possible relations between observable behavior and the functioning of various parts of the brain.

ENDURING ASPECTS OF PERSONALITY For Eysenck, personality consists of acts and dispositions organized in a hierachical fashion in terms of their level of generality.

Behavioral acts and dispositions

Levels Specific response Habitual Response Generality Least General Less general Example A person may buy food, telephone a friend, or move furniture A person may give a lot of parties, and each time he does so he may go shopping for food and drinks, telephone friends to invite them, and rearrange his furniture to accommodate a crowd. Someone not only gives a party frequently but is often seen with groups of people, is the campus salesperson for The New York Times and is planning a career in career of sociability, inasmuch as he appears to choose activities that involve his with other people A person's sociability is combined with tendencies to be venturesome, lively, and the like, we might further hypothesize that he is on the extravert side of the extraversion-introversion dimension

Trait

More general

Type

Most General

ENDURING ASPECTS OF PERSONALITY (continued) At the level of the type, Eysenck proposes three other broad dimensions: neuroticism, psychoticism, and intelligence. He is careful to point out that no one is ever a pure anything-a neurotic person's not neurotic all the time, for example, and quite clearly one cannot be intelligent and nothing else. Still, our typical levels of behavior do differ, so that each of us reflects a distinctive combination of these four dimensions and their many sub dimensions. Thus the in , if it were to represent the person described properly, would have to be greatly expanded so as to include each type that contributes to this individual's personality, together with each type's subsidiary traits and habitual specific responses. J.P. Guilford, a pioneer in the technique of factor analysis, has also represented personality traits or dimensions in a hierarchical fashion. How did Eysenck derive his types, or dimensions, according to which people vary? He began, during World War II, by studying some of the many soldiers who were treated at the hospital where he served as staff psychologist. Eysenck's (1947) first major work studied some 700 military psychiatric cases, and it led to the isolation of the two variables of introversion-extraversion and normality-neuroticism. These two factors were extracted from the analysis of a large number of variables, many of which were traits (e.g., anxiety, dependency) but some of which were factual data (e.g., age, martial status). Much of Eysenck's initial database consisted of ratings by psychiatrists and life-history information. Subsequent explorations, however, employed other kinds of data sources such as questionnaires and performance tasks

ENDURING ASPECTS OF PERSONALITY (continued) The major dimensions are independent of one another: for example, normal behavior may take introverted or extraverted forms, as may neurotic behavior. The above table describes some components of introversion(I), extraversion(E), and neuroticism(N), and depicts combinations of these dimensions and accompanying sets of traits. As you can see, for example, the normal extravert tends, among other things, to be lively and responsive, the normal introvert reliable and thoughtful. The neurotic extravert may be touchy and aggressive, whereas the neurotic introvert may be anxious and pessimistic. The third major dimension, along which people vary, Eysenck proposes, is normality-psychoticism. Note that psychoticism (P) is not equivalent to psychosis as, for example, in schizophrenia-although a schizophrenic person would be expected to score high on psychoticism. The high-P person tends to be hostile and unconventional and considered "peculiar" by acquaintances. Eysenck has devoted a great deal of study to intelligence. One of his major concerns, the heritability of intelligence focuses on the controversy surrounding this topic.

PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF PERSONALITY DIMENSIONS INTROVERSION - EXTRAVERSION Introversion: tender mindedness; Extraversion: tough mindedness; introspectiveness; seriousness; performance impulsiveness; tendency to be outgoing; desire interfered with by excitement; easily aroused but for novelty; performance enhanced by restrained; inhibited; preference for solitary excitement; preference for vocations involving vocations; sensitivity for pain contact with other people; tolerance for pain NEUROTICISM Below-average emotional control, will-power, capacity to exert self; slowness in thought and action; suggestibility; lack of persistence; tendency to repress unpleasant facts; lack of sociability; below average sensory acuity but high level of activation PSYCHOTICISM Poor concentration; poor memory; insensitivity; lack of caring for others; cruelty; disregard for danger and convention; occasionally originality and/or creativity; liking for unusual things; considered peculiar by others

The major dimensions are independent of one another: for example, normal behavior may take introverted or extraverted forms, as may neurotic behavior.The table above describes some components of introversion(I), extraversion(E), and neuroticism(N), and depicts combinations of these dimensions and accompanying sets of traits. As you can see, for example, the normal extravert tends, among other things, to be lively and responsive, the normal introvert reliable and thoughtful. The neurotic extravert may be touchy and aggressive, whereas the neurotic introvert may be anxious and pessimistic. The third major dimension, along which people vary, Eysenck proposes, is normality-psychoticism. Note that psychoticism (P) is not equivalent to psychosis as, for example, in schizophrenia-although a schizophrenic person would be expected to score high on psychoticism. The high-P person tends to be hostile and unconventional and considered "peculiar" by acquaintances (see also table 2). Eysenck has devoted a great deal of study to intelligence. One of his major concerns, the heritability of intelligence focuses on the controversy surrounding this topic. HOW ARE PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS AQUIRED? Neurotic behavior is learned: traumatic events can produce particularly strong neurotic reactions in people who have inherited tendencies to neuroticism. Conditioned fears come to be elicited not only by the original events that triggered them but similar events. Learned neurotic behaviors can be unlearned, through behavior therapies.