Free Essay: Comparison of Personality Theories and Analysis of Your Own Personality

Personality is a scientific study with the objective of revealing how a person is individually different because of psychological forces. Personality focuses on the investigation of personal psychological variances, human nature investigation and psychological resemblances between persons, and also the building of a clear picture of the person and their critical psychological procedures. Personality is described as an organized, vibrant established of features and individual possess that distinctively influences their motivations, cognitions, behaviors, emotions, and environment in various circumstances. Personality can also be referred to like the design of social adjustments, feelings, actions, and thoughts always showed for quite some time that intensely influences values, self-perceptions, attitudes, and expectations of an individual.

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Personality envisages how an individual can react to stress, other people, and their problems. There are two aspects of studying personality, idiographic psychology which tries to understand the distinctive feature of a person, and nomothetic psychology which pursues common rules applied to various individuals like the character of neuroticism and principle of self-actualization (McCrae & Terracciano, 547). Therefore personality study has a wide and diverse past within psychology with a lot of theories such as psychodynamic, behaviorist, biological, humanistic just to mention a few.

As an individual the personality that explains me better is neuroticism. Therefore I would choose The Big Five Personality Theory to describe my personality. The theory can also be called the five-factor model, it has been through numerous translations into different languages and has been applied in several cultures, making it not only valid theory of personality but its validity has been established internationally (Marsh & Morin, 1194). Making it the most acceptable personality model today. Though the theory through its factors does not entirely exhaust personality descriptions, they are called the big five since they cover a big portion of terms related to personality. For instance one of the factors of the big five theory which is agreeableness comprises of terms such as amiability, generosity, and warmth that is on its positive side but have temper and aggressiveness on its negative side.

The Big Five Personality Theory comprises of five factors which explains almost every individual's personality. The factors include neuroticism, agreeableness, extroversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience. But among the five factors neuroticism is the factor that explains my personality. Neuroticism is the only factor of this theory where negative characters are mostly indicated. It is not an aspect of incompetence or meanness, but being comfortable and confident in individual`s skin. It covers a person`s general temper and emotional stability. Neuroticism is associated with some characteristic such as being moody, pessimism, fear, being nervous, unstable, insecure, anxious, jealous, unconfident, timid, wary, oversensitive, self-critical, testy, and awkwardness. Individuals like me who are somehow high in this factor of neuroticism are commonly given to worry, have low self-esteem, sadness, and anxiety. From personal experience, I get angry very easily or temperamental. Most people with this factor gets angry easily, and we tend to be unsure of ourselves and also become self-conscious. Also as a personal experience, sometimes I feel more confident, very sure of myself as a student that I will be successful in life. And this explains the other side of neuroticism, where we feel brave, adventurous, confident, and sure of ourselves. We don't doubt ourselves or worry. According to Jeronimus et al. (751), neuroticism negatively relates to one`s center of control and self-efficacy as well as self-esteem. It can be connected to poor motivation and job performance which include self-efficacy linked to motivation and setting of goals. In connection with other factors of the theory, neuroticism links to conscientiousness and agreeableness negatively as well as a negative, weak connection to openness to experience and extroversion (Boyd, Helen and Paul 54). The high side of neuroticism is associated with life challenges, such as unhealthy adjustments to changes in life, addiction and deprived job performance.

The theory comprises of other factors such as, Agreeableness: this factor shows how individuals relate with one another (Clark and Schurer 11). Extroversion is believed to be concerned with people`s energy and their quest for connection with others, while agreeableness worries about orientation to individuals (Schultz, Duane and Sydney 91). Agreeableness has some characteristics like trusting, patience, tactful, being humble, sensitive, kind, helpful, loyal, amiable, unselfish, cheerful, moderate, considerate, and modest. People with the high end of agreeableness are always respected, sensitive to others needs or problems, and they are liked (Cobb-Clark 12). While those on the other side of this factor are not trusted, people. They are rude, antagonistic, ill-tempered, sarcastic, blunt, and callous. Although not all of them are abrasive and cruel, they don't leave people with a warm feeling. About other factors, it weakly relates to extroversion, positively refers to conscientiousness, and relates negatively to neuroticism.

Extroversion as a factor of the big five theory has two ends, which is introversion and extroversion. It concentrates on where the energy of an individual comes from and how people relate to others. For instance, those considered to be introverts easily get tired from associating with others and prefer being alone while extroverts get energized by continually interacting with people (Cobb-Clark 13). Its characteristics include energetic, friendly, fun-loving, sociable, outgoing, talkative, socially confident, and affectionate. Those on the high end of extroversion pursue social interaction opportunities, they like action instead of observation, while those on the low end are likely to be thoughtful, quiet, reserved, and introspective. About other factors, it has weak, positive relations to openness to experience and weak, negative relations with neuroticism.

Conscientiousness is a factor considered to be more of impulse control and usually act in a manner which is socially acceptable, with behaviors which enable goal-directed conduct (Ashton and Lee 1952). People with this factor normally organize and plan their activities effectively, they also abide by the law. Their characteristics include thorough, consistent, ambitious, predictable, reliable, persistent, controlled, self-disciplined, hardworking, planner, energetic and resourceful (Lombardo, Pietro 751). This factor is more applicable to students because those on its high end are likely to be prosperous in their careers and school, do well in leadership posts and can seek their dreams with a lot of determination (Ashton and Lee 1954). On the hand, those in low end are likely to be impulsive, to procrastinate, impetuous and be flighty have the positive relation with agreeableness, negative one with neuroticism but no relations with the remaining factors.

Openness to experience, this factor has been explained as the complexity and deepness of people`s experiences and their mental life. Also referred to as imagination or intellect. This factor concentrate on the readiness of an individual to be vulnerable, try out new things, and their capability to think critically and efficiently (Marsh and Morin 1197). Its characteristics include a range of interests, clever, insightful, daring, creative, original, curious, imaginative, and intellectual (Gluckman 34). On the high end of this factor individuals tend to get involved in the creative hobby, talent or career, enjoys learning, enjoys art and likes associating with people. While on the low end they usually stick to their knowledge, prefers less entertainment and mental arts. It relates weakly to both extroversion and neuroticism while totally no relation to conscientiousness and agreeableness (Marsh and Morin 1209).

The big five personality theory, however, has some limitations. Primarily, it theorizes characteristics on a scale instead of as variables of dichotomous. Besides, it only concentrates on behavior and biological center of personality (Ashton and Lee 71). Not only does this theory apply in numerous cultures and states across the globe, but there is an active and steadfast valuation scale for evaluating the five factors.

Work Cited

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Boyd, Denise Roberts, Helen L. Bee, and Paul A. Johnson. Lifespan development. Pearson, 2014.

Cobb-Clark, Deborah A., and Stefanie Schurer. "The stability of big-five personality traits." Economics Letters 115.1 (2012): 11-15.

Friedman, Howard S., and Miriam W. Schustack. Personality: Classic theories and modern research. Pearson, 2016.

Gluckman, Max. Clinical psychology: The study of personality and behavior. Routledge, 2017.

Jeronimus, Bertus F., et al. "Mutual reinforcement between neuroticism and life experiences: A five-wave, 16-year study to test reciprocal causation." Journal of personality and social psychology 107.4 (2014): 751.

Lombardo. R, Pietro. G, Foschi. R (2003). The concept of personality 20th C American Psychology: history of psychology 6(2) p123-142

Marsh, Herbert W., Benjamin Nagengast, and Alexandre JS Morin. "Measurement invariance of big-five factors over the life span: ESEM tests of gender, age, plasticity, maturity, and la dolce vita effects." Developmental psychology 49.6 (2013): 1194.

McCrae, Robert R., and Antonio Terracciano. "Universal features of personality traits from the observer's perspective: data from 50 cultures." Journal of personality and social psychology 88.3 (2005): 547.Myers Ewen, Robert, and Robert B. Ewen. An introduction to theories of personality. Psychology Press, 2014.

Schultz, Duane P., and Sydney Ellen Schultz. Theories of personality. Cengage Learning, 2016.