Q.What is trait approach to personality? How does it differ from type approach?
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →The trait approach explains personality through specific, enduring attributes (traits) along which individuals differ by degree, whereas the type approach sorts people into a few broad categories or 'types' based on overall similarity of behaviour.
The trait approach
The trait approach focuses on the specific psychological attributes along which individuals tend to differ in consistent and stable ways. For example, one person may be less shy while another is more shy; here 'shyness' is a trait along which individuals can be rated in terms of the degree to which the quality is present or absent. Trait theories are mainly concerned with the description of the basic components of personality — they try to discover the 'building blocks' of personality by clubbing the wide range of human variations into a smaller number of traits.
A trait is considered a relatively enduring attribute or quality on which one individual differs from another. To summarise, traits are (a) relatively stable over time, (b) generally consistent across situations, and (c) their strengths and combinations vary across individuals, leading to individual differences in personality. Prominent trait theorists include Allport (who classified traits as cardinal, central and secondary), Cattell (who used factor analysis to find 16 source traits and built the 16 PF) and Eysenck (who reduced personality to a few biologically based dimensions).
The type approach
The type approach attempts to comprehend human personality by examining certain broad patterns in the observed behavioural characteristics of individuals. Each behavioural pattern refers to one type, in which individuals are placed in terms of the similarity of their characteristics with that pattern. Attempts to categorise people into types are ancient — Hippocrates' four humours (sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic, choleric), the Ayurvedic tridosha (vata, pitta, kapha) and trigunas (sattva, rajas, tamas), Sheldon's endomorph/mesomorph/ectomorph typology, Jung's introverts and extraverts, and Friedman and Rosenman's Type-A and Type-B personalities are all examples.
How they differ
| Basis | Type approach | Trait approach |
|---|---|---|
| Method | Examines broad patterns and places people into a type | Identifies specific attributes along which people differ |
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