Dimensions of Personality

Martin Rein, Hans Eysenck

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351522274
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This is the original work on which Hans Eysenck's fifty years of research have been built. It introduced many new ideas about the nature and measurement of personality into the field, related personality to abnormal psychology, and demonstrated the possibility of testing personality theory experimentally. The book is the result of a concentrated and cooperative effort to discover the main dimensions of personality, and to define them operationally, that is, by means of strictly experimental, quantitative procedures. More than three dozen separate researches were carried out on some 10,000 normal and neurotic subjects by a research team of psychologists and psychiatrists.

A special feature of this work is the close collaboration between psychologists and psychiatrists. Eysenck believes that the exploration of personality would have reached an advanced state much earlier had such a collaboration been the rule rather than the exception in studies of this kind. Both disciplines benefit by working together on the many problems they have in common.

In his new introduction, Eysenck discusses the difficulty he had in conveying this belief to scientists from opposite ends of the psychology spectrum when he first began work on this book. He goes on to explain the basis from which Dimensions of Personality developed. Central to any concept of personality, he states, must be hierarchies of traits organized into a dimensional system. The two major dimensions he posited, neuroticism and extraversion, were in disfavor with most scientists of personality at the time. Now they form part of practically all descriptions of personality. Dimensions of Personality is a landmark study and should be read by both students and professionals in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, and sociology.

Chapter One
Methods and Definitions

1. Introduction

2. The Experimental Population

3. Theories of Temperament

4. Generality versus Specificity

5. Arrangement of Material

6. Definitions and Concepts

7. A Theory of Personality Structure

8. Summary

1. INTRODUCTION

WRITING in 1943, Henderson and Gillespie pointed out that “if it is doubtful what we measure with ‘intelligence’ tests, it is still more uncertain what we would try to measure if we tackled ‘emotions’ in a similar way”. An effort is made in this book to discover the main dimensions along which such “measurement of the emotions” can take place, and to provide experimental evidence of the feasibility of such measurement.

In planning the series of researches which are summarized here, we have tried to combine two fields of psychological work which in the past have unfortunately been kept separate to a large extent. On the one hand, there exist large numbers of factorial studies of personality questionnaires and ratings; on the other, there are many experimental studies of isolated segments of behaviour. Little attempt has been made to fit these experimental determinations of a person’s persistence, suggestibility, sense of humour, level of aspiration, perseveration, personal tempo, rigidity, or irritability into a consistent conceptual scheme, a scheme which can be elaborated, in the present state of our knowledge, only by factorial studies of the type mentioned.

In effecting such a combination of two rather distinct fields of research, we may hope to overcome restrictions and difficulties associated with either of these fields separately. The main drawback of the statistical treatment of questionnaires and ratings has always been the stigma of subjectivity which inevitably adheres to procedures which involve the attribution of personality qualities to oneself or to others on the basis of uncontrolled observation. The main drawback of the experimental approach has always been the fact that such work is almost inevitably restricted to such a small segment of personality that the results became subject to the charge of “atomism” (Allport, 1937). The combination of the two approaches here suggested reduces the dangers of subjectivity by closely associating ratings with experimental checks on their validity, and equally reduces the dangers of atomism by fitting each experimental result into the pattern of the whole personality. Such, at least, was the underlying theory on which the present series of researches was planned; how far we have been able to translate this theory into effect it must be left to the reader to decide.

2. THE EXPERIMENTAL POPULATION

In view of the fact that experimental data, strictly speaking, are valid only for the population from which the samples tested were originally drawn, a short description of the type of case referred to Mill Hill Emergency Hospital may not be out of order. These patients are admitted to the hospital on a psychiatrist’s recommendation, and present a mainly neurotic symptomatology of a rather monotonous character. Few examples of psychotics, mental defectives, or the physically ill are encountered; those admitted usually show some admixture of neurotic symptoms. The symptoms encountered in the majority of patients have been described by Slater (1943) as follows:

“In general the ‘neurosis’ exhibited was not so much an illness as a simple failure to adapt to army routine and discipline, in part an incapacity to adapt, and a response to this incapacity. Whether ill or not, the commonest symptoms were those of anxiety, hysteria, depression, hypochondriasis, etc., and tended to be shown by members of all diagnostic groups. The causes of breakdown were of the same uniform character: separation from home and family, home worries, a life of relative hardship, army discipline, the pressure of tasks physically, intellectually or temperamentally beyond them. Only in a minority of patients were the more violent stresses of war the main precipitating factor….

“The monotonous character of precipitating cause and clinical picture was mirrored by a monotonous uniformity of the underlying personality. There were few who did not show to some degree a psychic asthenia, a feebleness of will and purpose, coupled with tendencies to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION TO THE TRANSACTION EDITION
• FOREWORD
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE: METHODS AND DEFINITIONS
• CHAPTER TWO: ASSESSMENTS AND RATINGS
• CHAPTER THREE: PHYSIQUE AND CONSTITUTION
• CHAPTER FOUR: ABILITY AND EFFICIENCY
• CHAPTER FIVE: SUGGESTIBILITY AND HYPNOSIS
• CHAPTER SIX: APPRECIATION AND EXPRESSION
• CHAPTER SEVEN: SYNTHESIS AND CONCLUSIONS
• APPENDIX A: An Experimental Study in the Methodology of Factor Analysis
• APPENDIX B: Static Ataxia as an Index of Neuroticism
• BIBLIOGRAPHY AND AUTHOR INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX