THE 4 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSONALITY THEORIES - PSYCHOLOGY - 2026

The development of the personality is the process or the vital development through which the human being goes to fix his character, which includes a set of determined behaviors.

Personality was defined by the psychologist Carl Jung as an ideal that one wants to reach consciously through the processes of individualization, as a final goal in adult life. Above all, it must be made clear how important it is for development to focus on childhood and adolescence, since the self arises in these.

Broadly speaking, the personality formed will be determined by:

• Genetic aspects, which predispose to respond in a certain way to environmental stimuli as well as to the educational ones that they will receive from the environment.
• Educational practices and the experiences that the individual goes through throughout their development.

In this sense, personality development is a vital process that all people have to go through.

At birth, all people are devoid of personality, since it is not innate. In this way, as the subject advances and comes into contact with her environment, she will develop one way of being or another.

It should not be forgotten that human beings are social and that they are in continuous interaction with their context and with the culture present in this environment, developing a certain way of acting and thinking. In addition, they are also influenced by genetic factors transmitted by their parents.

Therefore, the personality develops in interaction with the physical, social and cultural factors of the environment.

Regarding biological inheritance, the person's organism is predisposed to acquire physiological, physical, behavioral and morphological characteristics of their parents. These are shown through physical appearance, intelligence, race or temperament, among others.

Endogenous theories:

They are characterized by defending how the personality is determined by the internal and innate characteristics of the person. Within which there are several models:

1- Eysenck PEN model

It defends the existence of traits or characteristics that dispose the person to act in a certain way before situations, providing stability and consistency to the behaviors, emotions and cognitive styles of individuals.

In addition, it proposes the existence of personality characteristics that it presents through a continuum and that affirms that they exist in all human beings although to a different degree or measure.

The basic dimensions that it proposes are those that compose in term PEN, psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticism, being non-exclusive categories that according to the degree of appearance of each one, would define the personality of each individual.

In this line, people with high neuroticism would be anxious, depressed, shy people, with low self-esteem, tense and irrational. Therefore, it is a dimension that is related to neurotic disorders.

People with high psychoticism would be antisocial, impulsive, cold, creative, unsympathetic, rigid, and hostile. Instead, people with low psychoticism would be empathetic, altruistic, socialized and responsible people.

On the other hand, the individuals that score high in extroversion are sociable, active, assertive, spontaneous and adventurous people, highlighting two central traits such as sociability and activity.

The theory includes a fourth dimension of cognitive abilities, which would be general intelligence or g factor. Furthermore, the model is hierarchical and psychobiological, stating that the personality variables are genetic and include specific physiological and hormonal structures.

2- Catell's 16-factor model

Catell, within this group of trait theories, develops his model of 16 personality factors, considering it as a set of traits that define the person with a predictive character about their behavior.

His goal was to find a series of traits that summed up people's personalities. According to the author, each subject moves in each feature thus giving rise to a specific personality.

This model includes factors related to sociability, emotionality, basic skills, responsibility and independence from the group; all of them forming the 16 primary factors.

The factorial studies showed the existence of four secondary factors: QI (low anxiety-high anxiety), QII (introversion-extraversion), QIII (little-much socialization) and QIV (passivity-independence).

3- Model of the big 5

McCrae and Costa's Five Factor model is one of the more recent theories. This pentafactorial theory establishes five primary traits that would correspond to the basic personality traits.

In the first place, there is the neuroticism / emotional stability factor that is related to the level of anxiety of the individual before some type of situation. By measuring this factor, depression, anxiety, irrational thoughts, negative emotions that each one presents are obtained.

The second factor, extraversion, is related to sociability and the ability to establish relationships, being very similar to what was explained about this trait in Eysenck's model.

Regarding factor three, openness stands out, referring to the attraction to new experiences, highlighting imagination and interests in multiple subjects.

The fourth would be cordiality, with respect to the relationship of each one with others, how is their dealings with people. Along this line, it should be noted that the opposite pole would be that of antagonism and would represent characteristics such as avoidance, detachment, sociopathy, and rejection.

Finally, the responsibility factor has to do with self-control, respect for others and for themselves, planning and obedience.

4- Freud's psychodynamic theory

The theory proposed by Freud related personality to the functioning of the mind, distinguishing between the “it”, the “I” and the “superego”. In this sense, he conceives of personality as opposing systems that are incessantly in conflict.

The "it" represents the innate part of the personality, our most elementary impulses, needs and desires, operating according to pleasure and covering the basic physiological needs without thinking about the consequences. The id is made up of the most primitive desires, the most primitive drives such as hunger, thirst, and irrational impulses.

The "I" evolves as development progresses, its purpose is to fulfill the wishes of the id and at the same time it has to reconcile itself with the demands of the superego, executing a regulatory role between the two. It follows the reality principle satisfying the wishes of the id but in an appropriate way and represents the conscious agent and tries to be realistic and rational.

For its part, the "superego" represents moral and ethical thoughts, it counteracts the "it", and consists of two subsystems that are the moral conscience and the ego ideal. It is not present from the beginning of the person's life, but arises as a consequence of the internalization of the father figure due to the resolution of the Oedipus complex.

From the balance between the id and the superego that the ego reaches, it will depend on whether the behavior of the subjects is considered normal or abnormal, each constituting its characteristic personality.

Other key concepts in his theory are the unconscious, since it comprises all those processes and phenomena of which we are not lucid.

The conscious refers to the phenomena that occur around us as well as mental processes that we become aware of. Finally, between the two would be the preconscious referring to those phenomena of which one is not aware but which can become so if attention is paid.

Exogenous theories

Instead, these theories posited that personality development was determined by social and cultural factors.

Skinner was one of the authors who defended this theory, proposing that personality was determined by a set of behaviors or behaviors that the person performs depending on whether they had positive or negative reinforcements.

This research was based on operant conditioning, reflecting an idea of ​​reinforcement for people to perform rewarded actions and avoid punished ones, which can be seen reflected in many guidelines that must be followed in society.

Interactionist theories

Interactionist theories defend that the social and cultural environment exerts an influence on the development of the personality of each individual. In this sense, the personality will exert a notable influence on the environment in which it is found.

Carl Rogers was one of the people who focused on this theory, for him the personality depends on the point of view that each one has.

In addition, it also develops the concept of "ideal self" as what the person aspires to be, comparing between this ideal and the "real self".

Broadly speaking, the greater the differences, the lower the personal satisfaction will be and the more negative feelings will appear, and vice versa.

Personality characteristics

Personality is made up of a series of different characteristics in each individual that are influenced by their experiences, their values, their beliefs, their personal memories, their social relationships, their habits and their abilities.

In turn, it is composed of certain traits or characteristics with which the person is defined, which are not observable and are manifested through behavior patterns in the different situations that the subject is facing.

The psychologist Gordon Allport was one of the first to investigate this construct, defending an empirical methodology and considering environmental influences and conscious motivations.

In this line, the author did not discard the contribution of unconscious mechanisms as defended by some of his colleagues and where psychoanalytic approaches predominated.

Thus, Gordon Allport defined personality as "the dynamic organization of psychophysical systems that determines a way of thinking and acting, unique in each subject in their process of adaptation to the environment."

Another of the authors who covered the subject of personality was Eysenck, who defined it as: "A more or less stable and lasting organization of the character, temperament, intellect and physique of a person that determines his unique adaptation in the environment."

For him, "character denotes the more or less stable and lasting system of conative behavior (will) of a person; temperament, its more or less stable and lasting system of affective behavior (emotion). The intellect, its more or less stable and lasting system of cognitive behavior (intelligence); the physical, its more or less stable and durable system of body configuration and neuroendocrine endowment ”.

Temperament

Temperament refers to the characteristic way of reacting of the subject with respect to his environment. It is innate and implies a psychological predisposition to respond in a certain way to what happens in our environment.

It is present from childhood and its stability throughout the life cycle depends on the degree to which this trait is very extreme in childhood. In turn, it understands the ability to be alert and respond, as well as emotional aspects.

Temperament is based on genetics. In fact, authors such as Eysenck defend that the differences in the personalities of each one occur as a consequence of hereditary factors.

A very popular theory in the Middle Ages was that promulgated by the ancient Greeks, who placed great importance on temperament. This civilization spoke of four different models of temperament based on the type of fluids; the humors.

The first type refers to the sanguine, that is, a happy and optimistic person. For the Greek people, this model of people had an abundant amount of blood, always presenting a healthy appearance.

Another type was the choleric characterized by presenting a significant and imminent soon in the subject's expression. It corresponds to normally aggressive people whose physical characteristics involve tense muscles and a yellowish complexion due to bile.

The third type referred to the phlegmatic temperament, characterized by slowness, disinterest, abandonment and passivity, which were considered cold and distant people. Its name comes from the word phlegm, which is the sticky mucus from the airways that we extract from our lungs.

The last specimen was defined as a melancholic temperament. That is, people who have a greater predisposition to be sad, depressed and pessimistic. It comes from the Greek words for black bile.

As a note, it is important to differentiate temperament from character, which is generated by experience and the culture in which the individual is immersed. In a supposed case study of character, it would correspond to studying how the person reacts to what is happening to him and how he responds to each circumstance.

Temperament and character constitute a characteristic personality based on their combination and intensity.

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