Theory of Personality

In the article titled, "The Relationship Between the Big Five Personality Traits and Academic Motivation," authored by Meera Komarraju and Steven J. Karau, the researchers attempted to understand the relationship between personality characteristics and academic motivation.   A relationship between these two factors is known to exist but a direct correlation between the two has not been identified thus the purpose of this study was to address the specifics of that relationship.   The researchers hypothesized that each of the Big Five Personality Traits would be related to the sixteen subscales of the Academic Motivations Inventory, which were grouped into three key motives, thus explaining which personality traits affected academic motivation positively and negatively.   The three groups of motives were avoidance, engagement, and achievement.   Avoidance was found to have a positive relationship to Neuroticism and Extraversion but was found to be negatively related to Conscientiousness and Openness.   Engagement was found to be positively related to Openness and Extraversion.   Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness were found to be the biggest players in achievement.   Significant relationships were found between personality and motivation using these scales and subscales.  
Eysenck's Hierarchical Trait Viewpoint is a type theory of traits.   Eysenck's theory puts a heavy focus on traits in order to study and understand personality.   He found that there is a hierarchical structure to traits starting at specific actions and going to general types of traits.   The first level is specific response.   Specific responses are actions that take place in a particular situation at a particular time.   The next level up is the habitual response level.   Habitual responses are specifics responses that are repeated over more than one situation.   They are simply recurring specific responses.   The next level up is trait, which is defined by Eysenck as habitual responses that are... [continues]

Read full essay