Eysencks Theory of Personality:-
Eysencks theory of personality tries to synthesize the types and trait approaches of personality. While Cattell has tried to use the factor analysis technique to give some basic dimensions to personality by 16 basic traits, H.J. Eysenck, a famous German-born British psychologist, went a step further in the adopting factor analysis technique by extracting second order factors and grouping traits into definite personality types.
Eysenck says that there are four levels of behavior organization. They are –
1) At the lowest level, there are specific responses. They grow from the special response to any single work. Example – Blushing.
2) At the lower second level, there are habitual responses form. They comprise similar responses of an individual to similar situations. For example – i) the inability of making friendship easily and ii) hesitancy in talking to strangers are habitual responses.
3) At the third level, there is the organization of habitual acts into traits. Behavior acts which have similarities are said to belong to same group and are called traits. In the above example of habitual responses (i) and (ii) give birth to a group of traits called “Shyness”.
4) The fourth level of behavior organization is the organization of these traits into a general type. A type is stated as a group of correlated traits. Traits which are similar in nature give birth to definite type just as in picture bellow. Traits like persistence, rigidity, subjectivity, Shyness, irritability etc. have been grouped into a type named as Introversion.
A person can be classified as an introvert, if he has traits as described at the third level, Habits and habit system as described at the second level and responds specifically as described at the first level.
The three basic dimensions derived by Eysenck through his work. They are –
i) Introversion – Extroversion
ii) Neuroticism (Emotional instability – Emotional Stability)
iii) Psychoticism
These three basic dimensions refer to certain personality types. They are introvert, extrovert, neurotic and psychotic.
Here each personality types stands along with a scale with a low end and a high end for putting people at various points between the two extremes.
For example – Introversion represents a continuous between extreme introversion and extreme extroversion.
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