THEORIES OF

PERSONALITY

Seminar 10: Hans Eysenck,

The Five Factor Model
 Today,  Hans Eysenck’s PEN model
we’ll  The Five Factor Model

discuss
PEN Model

Hans Eysenck
Four Level Eysenck (1947, 1994c) recognized a four-
level hierarchy of behavior organization

Hierarchy At the lowest level are specific acts or

cognitions, individual behaviors or
thoughts that may or may not be
characteristic of a person
At the second level are the habitual acts
or cognitions, that is, responses that
recur under similar conditions
Several related habitual responses form a
trait—the third level of behavior

Eysenck concentrated on the fourth level,

that of types or superfactors, a type is
made up of several interrelated traits
Dimensions of Personality
• Agreed with Cattell that personality is
composed of traits, or factors, derived by
the factor-analytic method.
• Eysenck was also a critic of factor analysis
and of Cattell’s research because of the
potential subjectivity in the technique and
the difficulty in replicating Cattell’s
findings.
• Eysenck used factor analysis to uncover
personality traits, he supplemented the
method with personality tests and
experimental studies that considered a
wide range of variables.
• Eysenck and his second wife, Sybil
together developed many of the
questionnaires used in their research.
• The Eysenck Personality Inventory
required 12 years of joint research and 20
factor analyses.
• The result of their efforts is a personality
theory based on three dimensions,
Psychometric evidence for the
factor’s existence must be Factor Analysis
established
Model
The factor must also possess
heritability and must fit an • The personality theory of
established genetic model Hans Eysenck has strong
psychometric and
biological components
• Eysenck listed four
the factor must make sense from criteria for identifying a
a theoretical view factor

it must possess social relevance

 • All three factors are part of normal personality
structure and all three are bipolar
– Extraversion being at one end of Factor E and
introversion occupying the opposite pole
– Factor N includes neuroticism at one pole and
stability at the other
– Factor P has psychoticism at one pole and the
superego function at the other

PEN Model
• Each factor is unimodally, rather than bimodally,
distributed.
– Extraversion, for example, is fairly normally
distributed in much the same fashion as
intelligence or height
• Eysenck contended that each of these factors meets
his four criteria for identifying personality
dimensions
• Eysenck’s factor analytic technique assumes the
independence of factors, which means that the
neuroticism scale is at right angles (signifying zero
correlation) to the extraversion scale
• Consider the list of
personality traits associated
with Eysenck’s three
personality dimensions
• You can see clearly, for
example, that people who
score high on the traits of
the E dimension would be
classified as extraverts,
whereas people who score
low would be classified as
introverts.
Dimension
s of Stability over time: The traits and
dimensions Eysenck proposed tend to

Personality remain stable throughout the life span

despite our different social and
environmental experiences. For instance,
the introverted child tends to remain
introverted through adolescence and into
adulthood

The Role of Intelligence: Although he

did not list intelligence as a personality
dimension, he considered it an important
influence on personality. He noted that a
person with an IQ of 120, which is high, is
likely to have a more complex and
multidimensional personality than a
person with an IQ of 80.
Extraversion
• Extraverts are oriented toward the outside
world, prefer the company of other people,
and tend to be sociable, impulsive,
adventurous, assertive, and dominant
• Biological influences
– Extraverts have a lower base level of
cortical arousal than introverts do.
– Because the cortical arousal levels for
extraverts are low, they need, and actively
seek, excitement and stimulation.
– In contrast, introverts shy away from
excitement and stimulation because their
cortical arousal levels are already high
(Eysenck, 1990b).
 Neuroticism
• Neurotics are characterized as anxious, depressed,
tense, irrational, and moody.
• Eysenck suggested that neuroticism is largely
inherited, a product of genetics rather than learning
or experience
• Biological influences
– Eysenck argued that in neurotics, the sympathetic
nervous system overreacts even to mild stressors,
resulting in chronic hypersensitivity leading to
heightened emotionality in response to almost any
difficult situation
– People are genetically predisposed either toward
neuroticism or toward emotional stability
Psychoticism
• People who score high in psychoticism are
aggressive, antisocial, tough-minded, cold,
and egocentric.
• They score low on emotional well-being and
have greater problems with alcohol, drug
abuse, and violent criminal behavior than
people who score low in psychoticism
• The research evidence tends to suggest a
large genetic component.
• However, it has also been found that those
who scored high in psychoticism had more
authoritarian and controlling parents than
those who scored low, thus supporting the
potentially harmful influence of the childhood
environment
 • To Eysenck, traits and dimensions are determined primarily by
heredity - research evidence shows a stronger genetic
component for extraversion and neuroticism than for
psychoticism.
• He did not rule out environmental and situational influences on
personality, such as family interactions in childhood, but he

The Primary believed their effects on personality were limited (Eysenck,

1990a).

Role of
• Comparisons of identical (monozygotic) and fraternal
(dizygotic) twins showed that identical twins are more alike in
their personalities than are fraternal twins, even when the

Heredity
identical twins were reared by different parents in different
environments during childhood.
• Studies of adopted children demonstrate that their personalities
bear a greater similarity to the personalities of their biological
parents than of their adoptive parents, even when the children
had no contact with their biological parents.
• This is additional support for Eysenck’s idea that personality
owes more to our genetic inheritance than to our environment
THE FIVE
FACTOR
MODEL

Robert McCrae and Paul

Costa
The Five
Factor Model
• Some more recent personality
researchers have expressed
dissatisfaction with both
theories, suggesting that
Eysenck had too few
dimensions (three) and Cattell
had too many factors (sixteen).
• Robert McCrae and Paul Costa
embarked on an extensive
research program starting in
the 1980s that identified five
so-called robust or Big Five
factors
Five-Factor Model
(FFM)
• The work of Costa & McCrae culminated in their new
five-factor personality inventory: the NEOPI
• The NEO-PI was a revision of an earlier unpublished
personality inventory that measured only the first three
dimensions; N, E, and O
• In the 1985 inventory, the last two dimensions—
agreeableness and conscientiousness were added
• In a direct comparison of their model with Eysenck’s,
inventory, Costa and McCrae reported that Eysenck’s
first two factors (N and E) are completely consistent with
their first two factors
• Eysenck’s measure of psychoticism mapped onto the
low ends of agreeableness and conscientiousness but
did not tap into openness
 Five-Factor
Model (FFM)
• Since the late 1980s and early 1990s,
most personality psychologists have opted
for the Five-Factor Model
• The five factors have been found across a
variety of cultures, using a plethora of
languages and show some permanence
with age
• McCrae and Costa agreed with Eysenck
that personality traits are bipolar and
follow a bell-shaped distribution.
• That is, most people score near the middle
of each trait, with only a few people
scoring at the extremes.
Research Neuroticism, extraversion, openness, and
conscientiousness have a strong hereditary
component
The factor of agreeableness has a strong
environmental component

All five factors have been found in diverse

cultures

Most of the factors remain stable to some

degree over the life span

Women report higher levels of neuroticism,

extraversion, agreeableness, and
conscientiousness than men
We tend to see others as being more
conscientious and less neurotic than ourselves
THAT’S ALL, FOLKS!