Eysenck’s theory of personality

Eysenck’s personality theory is considered a true paradigm, the most solid that Psychology has offered to our times. It is one of the theories that best explains why each person has their own personality.

Consider that there are 3 large dimensions of traits or superfactors from which prognoses can be made at a biopsychosocial level. A person’s levels of Psychoticism, Extraversion, and Neuroticism are sufficient to formulate physiological, psychological, and social predictions.

Biography of Hans Eysenck

Hans Eysenck was born on March 4, 1916 in Berlin, Germany. He grew up and lived in that city until 1934, when he had to flee to France and then to the United Kingdom, as he was fleeing the Nazi regime.

Eysenck grew up with his maternal grandmother, Frau Werner, with whom he had a free education full of intellectual and cultural stimuli. Once he emigrated to London, he began his studies in psychology and worked as a clinical psychologist there.

During the Second World War he worked as a psychologist at the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital in London, responsible for the psychiatric treatment of military personnel. Later, in 1947, he was appointed head of the psychology department. He founded the Maudsley Hospital Institute of Psychology in 1950, which became one of the largest in Britain.

Hans Eysenck’s approach

When the Second World War broke out, this psychologist of German origin was forced to migrate to England. In London, he worked as an emergency psychologist at Mill Hill Emergency Hospital, where he was responsible for the psychiatric treatment of military personnel. His professional background, his research, his more than 700 published articles and his personality studies have guaranteed him a place among the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. XX.

He was deeply skeptical about the use of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis in clinical cases. On the contrary, advocated behavioral therapy as the best treatment for mental disorders.

Traits: personality scanner

Therefore, its approach is framed within the theory of traits. That is, he considers that human behavior is determined by a series of attributes. These genetic traits are the foundations or basic units of personality.because they predispose us to act in a certain way.

Furthermore, it assumes that these traits vary between individuals, are consistent across different situations, and remain more or less stable over time. Likewise, he considers that By isolating these genetic traits it is possible to see the deepest structure of the personality.

Eysenck (1985) stated that “personality variables have a clear genetic determinationinclude specific physiological and hormonal structures, and are testable through psychological and psychophysiological experimental procedures.”

Eysenck and individual differences

For this psychologist, our traits are influenced by genetics, a source of individual differences. Yes indeed, Eysenck did not rule out other types of environmental influences or situationswhich means that these features can be accentuated or attenuated when coming into contact with the environment.

For example, family interactions during childhood. The affection and communication that exists between parents and children can impact their greater or lesser development. His approach is, therefore, biopsychosocial: a mixture of biological, psychological and social factors as determinants of behavior.

The structure of personality according to Eysenck

This author considers that Personality is hierarchized into 4 different levels. At the base, there would be specific responses, those that occur once and that may or may not be characteristic of the person. At a second level, habitual responses, such as those that occur more frequently and in similar circumstances.

Third are the habitual acts ordered by features. That is, associations of similar habits. Finally, At the top of the pyramid are the superfactors, which we delve into below.

His two-factor theory or PEN model

Starting from these ideas, Hans Eysenck developed his two-factor theory. For it, It was based on the results of the answers to their personality questionnaires. Factor analysis is a statistical technique for data reduction and agglutination of information into variables. In this case, it is about reducing behavior to a series of factors with common attributes, the superfactors. Each set of factors is grouped under a dimension.

Eysenck identified 3 independent dimensions of Personality: Psychoticism (P), Extraversion (E) and Neuroticism (N), which is why it is called the PEN model. For this author, these 3 superfactors are enough to adequately describe personality.

The 3 dimensions of Eysenck’s personality theory

Neuroticism (emotional stability-instability)

Eysenck understands neuroticism as the highest degree of emotional instability. With this dimension he wants to explain the reason why some people are more likely than others to suffer from anxiety, hysteria, depression or obsession in different situations. It defines them as those who overreact more frequently and find it difficult to return to a normal level of emotional activation.

At the other end of the dimension are emotionally stable, calm, equanimous people who have a high degree of self-control.

As highlighted by the team Vanina Schmidt (2008), Eysenck found support for his hypothesis of continuity between normality and neurosis through factorial and criterial analysis. Thus, neuroticism became a quantitative continuum. That is, a dimension in which each person can be placed based on the degree of neuroticism achieved.

Extraversion (extraversion-introversion)

People with higher scores in extraversion have major traits of sociability, impulsiveness, disinhibition, vitality, optimism and keen wit. On the other hand, the most introverted show more signs of tranquility, passivity, little sociability, reflexivity or pessimism.

However, Eysenck’s personality theory considers that the main difference between both factors is physiological. On the one hand, it proposes Excitation-Inhibition Model and on the other Cortical Activation Theory.

Excitation-inhibition model. Esyenck proposed that individuals predisposed to develop extraverted behavior have weak excitatory potentials and strong reactive inhibition. On the other hand, people with introverted behavior have strong excitatory potentials and weak reactive inhibition. According to this model, physiological inhibition is inversely proportional to behavioral inhibition.Cortical Activation Theory. According to this theory, people who have high arousal under resting conditions show introverted behaviors. In this way, the greater the cortical activation, the less behavioral activation and vice versa.

Psychoticism

A person’s degree of psychoticism reflects their level of vulnerability to impulsive, aggressive or low-empathy behaviors. These people are usually insensitive, inhuman, antisocial, violent, aggressive and extravagant.
If your score is high is related to various mental disorders, such as psychosis.

Unlike the other two dimensions, psychoticism does not have an opposite or inverse extreme, because it is a component present at different levels in people.

Personality is one of the most interesting, studied and essential topics in Psychology. It has been studied in depth, with the aim of explaining why a person is the way they are. One of the most important is this theory of personality by Eysenck, which has become a true paradigm. Furthermore, at the time, laid the foundations for the scientific study of personality and human behavior.

You might be interested…