Ocean Traits Factors

437 Words2 Pages
Personality is described as the sum total of the physical, mental, emotional, and social characteristics of an individual, or could be described as the organized pattern of the behavioral characteristics of an individual. There are many personality theories, but they can be grouped under four basic perspectives: which is the psychoanalytic, humanistic, social cognitive, and trait perspective. But my concentration would be on trait theories. Trait theories of personality focus on identifying, describing, and measuring individual differences. There are lots of trait personality theories. Raymond Catell the pioneer of trait theory, reduced Allport’s list of 4000 terms to about 171 characteristics by eliminating terms that seemed to be redundant or uncommon. Later on Catell uses a statistical technique called factor analysis to identify the traits that were most eventually reduced to sixteen personality factors. Hans Eysenck a British psychologist also contributed to the trait personality, which he came up with three basic dimension of personality. Many trait theories felt Cattell’s trait model was too complex, and that his 16 personality’s factors could be reduced to a smaller, more basic set of traits. Yet Eysenck’s three-dimension trait theory seemed too limited, failing to capture other important dimensions of human personality. Today, the consensus among many trait researchers is that the essential building blocks personality can be described in term of five basic personality’s dimensions, which are sometimes called “the big five”. They could also be called O.C.E.A.N. This stands for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraverted, Agreeableness, and also Neuroticism. Openness could be described as a strong intellectual curiosity and a preference for novelty and variety. Someone who is considered to have the openness traits would have appreciation for
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