TRAIT THEORIES OF

PERSONALITY
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INTRODUCTION
BY POOJA AGARWAL
PERSONALITY AND TRAITS
What is personality?
Personality is defined as the characteristic set of behaviors, cognitions, and
emotional patterns that evolve from biological and environmental factors.

What are traits?

Traits can be defined as a stable characteristic that causes a person to depict a
response to any situations in certain ways.

Trait Theories :
Trait theories indicate that the traits are always constant regardless of the
situations. Trait theory approach focuses on personality differences between
individuals.

The Trait Theory of Personality uses traits as a means of studying personality.

Gordon Allport was the first psychologist to use a trait approach to study
personality.
He identified 4,000 traits in 1936 and divided them into three categories: central
traits, secondary traits, and cardinal traits.
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 HIPPOCRATES’
THEORY OF
HUMORS
BY PARIDHI LADDHA
THE THEORY OF FOUR HUMORS
The theory of the four humors was given by Hippocrates.

The Choleric Temperament:

• The Choleric humor is said to be the “leader temperament”.
• Confident, overbearing and passionate, full of bursting energy
and ambition.
• They are mostly extroverted.
• The are strong-willed, dominant and has a quick temper.

The Sanguine Temperament:

• Sociable, charismatic and stimulation seeking, people-
orientated and optimistic about life.
• These are “happy go lucky” people.
• Although they never lacks friends, they tend to be disorganized
and impulsive.

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The Melancholic Temperament:
•Thoughtful, introspective and reserved.
•They crave time alone and are serious, intense and moody, as well as
sensitive, perfectionistic and careful in decision making.

The Phlegmatic Temperament:

•We all tend to have those quiet, relaxed and stable people in our lives.
These are the Phlegmatic people.
•They are “consistent” because they are loyal friends, colleagues, and
lovers.
•They are prone to passive-aggression and laziness.
•They are the meek, submissive, and trustworthy “nice guys” and
“good girls” of the world.

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 ALLPORT’S
THEORY
BY KAREN D’CRUZ
 Allport
This theory emphasizes the uniqueness of the individual and the
internal cognitive and motivational processes that influence
behavior.
He believed that personality is biologically determined at birth, and
shaped by a person's environmental experience.
He categorized the traits into three levels:
1. Cardinal
2. Central
3. Secondary

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CATTELL’S 16 PF
BY KAJAL BANKAR

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Cattell’s 16 Personality Factors

1. Abstractedness 9. Reasoning
10. Rule - Consciousness
2. Apprehension 11. Self - Reliance
3. Dominance 12. Social Boldness
4. Emotional Stability 13. Sensitivity
5. Liveliness 14. Tension
6. Openness To Change 15. Vigilance
7. Perfectionism 16. Warmth
8. Privateness

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OCEAN
BY SONIA PATWARDHAN
-Hippocrates:
Humourism

-From D.W. Friske (1949)

to McCrae & Costa (1987)
EYSENCK’S THEORY OF
PERSONALITY
BY MODHUJA ADHIKARY

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 EYSENCK’S THEORY OF PERSONALITY
• While developing the PEN model, Eysenck sought to measure personality based on two
dimensions:-
•1. Extraversion vs. Introversion and
•2. Neuroticism vs. Emotional stability
• Extraversion vs. Introversion:
-Carl Jung suggested that the extraversion introversion levels depend upon the focus of
an individual's psychic energy
• Neuroticism: Emotional In/stability)
• Psychoticism vs. Normality:
According to the PEN model high levels of traits such as psychoticism reduce a person's
responsiveness to conditioning, meaning that they don't adopt the social norms that one
may learn through rewards and punishment.

• As a result, the theory suggests that individuals may be more prone to criminal behavior as
they seek to fulfill their own interests whilst violating the rules of behavior accepted by
others.
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SHELDON’S
SOMATOTYPES
BY FRENY POKAR

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SHELDON’S SOMATOTYPES
• In the 1940’s, Sheldon proposed a theory about how there are certain
body types that are associated with certain personality characteristics.
• The original work of Sheldon was used to characterise criminals and he
found that most of the criminals were mesomorphs because violent
crimes were usually committed by big strong men.

• There are three such somatotypes

Ectomorph
Mesomorph
Endomorph.

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CRITICISM
• It was clear that the procedure was not empirically sound.
Sheldon did have large numbers of photographs spread
out before him when he selected the types, but that
hardly makes the procedure empirical. –Humphreys

• A key criticism of Sheldon's theory is that it was not a

theory at all but a general assumption of continuity
between structure and behaviour and a set of descriptive
concepts to measure physique and behaviour in a scaled
manner.

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THEMATIC APPERCEPTION
TEST
(TAT)
BY SHEFALI KUNWAR

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 Thematic Apperception Test and Children’s
Apperception Test
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT):
Involves describing ambiguous scenes including men, women, children and even
animals.
Main purpose: to learn more about the client’s thoughts, concerns, needs,
motives and current situation.

Scoring: Rating sentences from 1 to 5 depending upon 28 needs and 20 presses

(environmental influences)
Today, clinicians rely on their skills and understanding of the client.

In Educational Settings:
Children’s Apperception Test (CAT)
CAT-A: for children identifying more with animals
CAT-H: for children identifying more with humans
CAT-S: children in common family situations
Main purpose: To assess personality, level of maturity, psychological health,
children’s control, drives, conflicts, imagination and autonomy on both
conscious and unconscious level

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THANK YOU