Important Figures in Psychology to Mention

• Raymond Cattell was another important figure that helped pave the way for how personality is perceived today. he went straight towards three types of data which are called life, experimental, and questionnaire based. He also created the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire.

• Hans Eysenck was an important figure who helped personality psychology by arguing that theories need to be the main focus and then it would be easier to figure out what needs to be measured. He wanted to improve upon the theories of Hippocrates, Galen, Jung, and Wundt. Could the four types of Hippocrates (phlegmatic, melancholic, sanguine, and choleric) be understood through two super-trait dimensions?

• Sanguine focuses on traits such as leadership, carefree, lively, easygoing, responsive, talkative, outgoing, and sociable.

• Phlegmatic focuses on traits such as being calm, even-tempered, reliable, controlled, peaceful, thoughtful, carefree, and passive.

• Choleric focuses on trait such as being active, impulsive, optimistic, changeable, excitable, aggressive, restless, and touchy.

• Melancholic focuses on traits such as being quiet, unsociable, reserved, pessimistic, sober, rigid, anxious, and moody.

• The Big Five personality theory, also known as the “OCEAN” test states that individual traits are likely to fall in these five categories: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. It is also considered to be highly reliable and widely applicable in many situations and has a high degree of predictability in many contests. Its reliability shifts as a person develops.

Discussion of The Big Five

• Openness to new experiences describes how someone may express traits such as curiosity, inventiveness, and exploratory. People who score high in this category tend to be intellectually and emotionally curious. Those who score lower in this category tend to be cautious and more consistent in their intellect and goals.

• Conscientiousness describe show someone may express traits such as being organized, industrious, and efficient. It has also been associated with health-linked behaviors and lower levels of smoking.

• Extroversion is based on brain activities that determine one’s level of arousal. Under-arousal, boredom, leads to extroversion and over-arousal, jitteriness, leads to introversion.

• Agreeableness relates to maintaining positive social relations. Extroversion predicts success in social clubs like fraternities and sororities, but agreeableness does not. Both predict acceptance by peers for adolescence but only agreeableness is more likely to result in peaceful interactions.

• Neuroticism describes one’s level of emotionality. people with higher levels of neuroticism tend to see changes in people and situations…tend to be easily upset and are prone to anxiety and depression.