Personality Theories

Personality Theories

A humanistic approach to personality is a theory that gives emphasis to people's natural kindness and craving to achieve higher levels of performance. Carl Rogers along with Abraham Maslow insist that people have the ultimate need for self-actualization, a form of self-fulfillment, making this be a person's highest potential in his or her own unique way. Carl Rogers also suggest people can develop a sort of need to be respected and loved as well. As other's display these emotions, we as human beings begin to grow dependent on these feelings. As human's we begin to start visualizing and evaluating ourselves the way others tend to see us, and we begin to trust other people's values and start to worry about what others think of us.

A Trait theory is a theory where a personality is seeking to identify the necessary basic traits, such as a straightforward way to look at people. People may come up with a list of any individual's personal traits; as you or someone else may see him or her. Although making up a list of people's traits could be easy to some people, that person may not know or understand which trait is most important to understand that certain person's behavior. Traits are reliable in a person's character; it will show when a person's behavior is displayed in certain situations, and how the situation is handled.

When comparing humanistic approach theory and trait theory; people who fall under the humanistic approach theory are more worried about what others think of them, always wanting, and yearning to make everyone happy. If for an instance the person was not happy the person who falls under the humanistic approach theory will not be happy with themselves because they feel as if they have failed and will not get any good recognition from the person they had let down. Whereas, a person falling under the trait theory could go either way; depending on the character of the person. A trait list of an individual's basic traits could be made up, but they can never determine if the list is important to the individual or not. Where humanistic worries the trait theory pays no attention to both the conscious and unconscious.

There are no similarities with either the humanistic approach theory or the trait theory. Humanistic approach theory will put strain on the conscious more than the unconscious, the trait theory disregards them. Humanistic stresses interaction on nature and nurture, approaches vary with nature and nurturing with the trait theory. The trait theory will stress determination, in which humanistic will stress freedom. Trait theory will put emphasis on the stability trait during a person's life, and humanistic will stress a personality should be flexible and strong throughout one's life.

Personalities can be assessed in many ways. Two ways of assessing a person's