Eysenck’s Personality Theory: The Most Solid Theory
Eysenck’s personality theory is considered a paradigm and the most solid theory that psychology has offered. It best explains why each person has their own personality.
The theory is that there are three major features in each of us. These three traits are psychotism, extroversion and neuroticism. According to Eysenck, each person has a different level of each move. The levels of these traits are what make up our personalities.
Hans Eysenck’s approach
At the outbreak of World War II, this German psychologist had to move to England. In London, he worked as an emergency psychologist at Mill Hill Emergency Hospital where he was responsible for military psychiatric treatment. Eysenck’s professional career and over 700 published articles on personality have secured his place as one of the most influential psychologists.
Eysenck was deeply skeptical of using psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in clinical cases. However, he defended behavioral therapy as the best treatment for mental illness.
Features: personality scanner
Eysenck’s approach is based on personality theory. To understand this, we must consider that human behavior is determined by a number of attributes. These attributes, or genetic traits, are the basis of personality. They dispose of us to act in a certain way.
In addition, Eysenck’s theory assumes that these properties vary between individuals. The theory also assumes that characteristics are coherent in different situations and remain more or less stable over time within an individual. He also believes that by isolating these genetic traits, we can see the deeper personality structure.
Eysenck and individual differences
According to this psychologist, our traits are influenced by genetics, the source of individual differences. Of course, Eysenck did not rule out other types of environmental impacts or situations. This means that our properties can be enhanced when they come into contact with the environment.
Let’s use family interactions in childhood as an example. Love is the communication that exists between parents and children, and it can have a greater or lesser effect on the child’s development. Eysenck’s approach is biophysical, a mixture of biological, psychological and social factors. It combines all these factors as decisive factors for behavior.
Personality structure according to Eysenck
Eysenck categorizes personality into four different levels. On the underside you will find specific answers to questions that do not really characterize a person. At the second level you will find answers that happen more frequently under different conditions.
On the third level are habits that the person does often. Finally, at the top of the pyramid and the fourth level, are the super factors, which we take a closer look at below here.
Eysenck’s two-factor theory
Hans Eysenck based his two-factor theory on these ideas. To do this, he analyzed the way people responded to personality questionnaires. Eysenck performed a factorial analysis, which is a statistical data reduction and agglutination technique. In this case, he used the technique to reduce the behavior of a number of factors with common characteristics: the superfactors. Each set of factors is grouped under one reduction.
Eysenck identified three independent personality dimensions: Psychotism (P), Extroversion (E) and Neuroticism (N), and therefore it is called the PEN model. According to him, these three super factors describe personality at a sufficient level.
The three dimensions of Eysenck’s personality theory
Neuroticism (stability – emotional instability)
First, Eysenck understands neuroticism as the highest degree of emotional instability. He uses this dimension to explain why some people are more prone than others to suffer from anxiety, hysteria, depression or obsession. He defines neurotic people as those who react excessively more often and finds it difficult to return to a normal level of emotional activation.
At the other extremity of the dimension, there are emotionally stable, calm, affordable people who have a high degree of self-control.
Extroversion (extroversion – introversion)
Second, people with higher positions in extroversion have greater qualities in sociability, impulsivity, lack of inhibitions, vitality, optimism and ingenuity. On the other hand, the more introverted people are generally more calm, passive, less social and more pessimistic.
However, Eysenck’s personality theory considers that the main difference between the two factors is physiological. It is based on the level of cortical arousal.
Psychotism
Third, the level of a person’s psychotism reflects their vulnerability to impulsivity, aggression, and lack of empathy. These people are often insensitive, antisocial, violent, aggressive and extravagant. If you focus heavily on psychotism, you may be predisposed to various mental disorders, such as psychosis.
Unlike the other two dimensions, psychostics does not have an opposite or inverted extremity. Instead, psychotism is present at different levels in everyone.
To conclude, personality is one of the most interesting, studied and most important topics in psychology. Personality is studied in depth with the purpose of explaining why a person is the way they are. One of the most important theories is Eysenck’s personality theory, which has become a cornerstone theory. When Eysenck first created his theory, it laid the foundation for the scientific study of personality and human behavior.
