12/12/16
PSYC 101
Mydland
Personality Trait Theories The topic up for discussion is the four major different types of personality theories such as psychodynamic, trait-or-five factor model, humanistic and social-cognitive. The goal in this paper is to explain the advantages and disadvantages of each theory accurately. The first theory, psychodynamic is the theory that focus the most on the inner workings of personality, especially internal conflicts and struggles. The theory was brought up by no other than Sigmund Freud and he stated that personality was a key was a dynamic system directed by the conflicting desires of the id, ego and critical and unswerving superego. The advantage of psychodynamic theories is that it focuses its strength on the effects that children experience when going through childhood. The only disadvantage, is that because the psychodynamic theory is a limited application, it plays too much emphasis on sex and aggressive instincts known to be extremely subjective. Secondly, trait based theories such as the five factor model which is a hierarchal of five basic scopes: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientious, neuroticism and finally openness to experience. These types of theories have substantial stable qualities that a person shows in most …show more content…
This type of approach is psychologically in perspective which emphasizes the study of the whole person. The psychologists look at behavior through the eyes of the observer, but also the eyes of the person doing the behavior. Some different types of advantages of the humanistic theory is that it mostly emphasizes individual choice and responsibility, it satisfies a lot of people’s ideas of what being a human means such as personal ideas and self-fulfillment. A major disadvantage is that some critics argue that its subjective ideas such as authentic and real experiences are extremely difficult to