Psy210 Personalities Theory Activity

The three theories that I have chosen to compare and contrast are trait theory, learning theory, and humanistic theory. Each theory has a different approach of how to determine how a human behaves. Each theorist has their own way of determining one’s behavior and many theorists believe that they are correct in their theory while another theory is incorrect. The trait theory has suggested that individual personalities are composed of broad dispositions. Psychologist Hans Eysenck came up with the five factor model for the trait theory. This model represents five core traits that interact together to form the human personality. The five traits are more commonly described as extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. Trait theory is descriptive and will deal with genetics to determine a personality. With the learning theory theorists believe that if we practice a certain behavior enough that we would essentially learn that behavior to be normal for us. Albert Bandura has become one of the most influential theorists when it comes to the learning theory. He believed that people could learn behaviors by watching others. Learning could also be linked to a permanent change in a person’s behavior. Humanistic theory focuses on the meaning of life and self-actualization. This theory developed the hierarchy of needs. Abraham Maslow developed the hierarchy of needs based on what he believed was the order of biological needs for survival. Humanistic psychology is used to influence therapy, education, healthcare and other areas. The psychoanalysis within this theory would focus on the unconscious behaviors that we has humans possess. The three theories that I have compared here are different in many different ways, however they are all a way of studying the behavior of our personalities. The trait theory focuses on specific traits that we as humans have developed over our life. Many believe that the traits we develop are genetic. The learning theory suggests that as humans we can develop behaviors by observing the behaviors of others around us. Humanistic theory focuses on the meaning of life and how we has humans behave to survive within our world.