0.9 Trait theories of personality  (Page 24/41)

Discussion Question: Cattell believed that personality assessment worked best when the psychologist understood a person’s entire personality sphere. To accomplish this, one needs to measure L-data, Q-data, and T-data. Do these data provide a complete picture of the person? What data do you think might be the most difficult to obtain, and how might that affect the overall personality picture?

Stages of Development

Cattell described six principal life stages: infancy , childhood , adolescence , maturity , middle age , and old age . Infancy, from birth to 6 years old, is the “great formative period for personality” (pg. 211; Cattell, 1950a). In relation to its family members, the infant develops its basic social attitudes, sense of security or insecurity, the strength of various defense mechanisms (which determine whether the individual will be prone to neuroses), and the general strength of the ego and super-ego. Childhood, the period from age six to fourteen years old, is, according to Cattell, a relatively easy period of consolidation. The child grows toward independence, moving from its family to relationships with peers. Children are primarily realists, but they may have an active day dream life as they long for the status and privilege of adult life (Cattell, 1950a,b).

Adolescence is, of course, a period of psychological storm and stress, requiring many adjustments and readjustments in one’s life. Covering the ages of approximately 14 to 23 years old, Cattell believed that the stress experienced by normal individuals could best be illustrated by its consequences in extreme personalities. Adolescence is the time when some individuals become delinquents, whereas others show the initial signs of mental illness and neurotic behavior. While many of the changes occurring during adolescence are due to the physiological changes associated with puberty, external factors are also critical. All cultures appear to have some ritual associated with the break between childhood and adulthood, and many arrange for an initiation or formal ritual to take place. Of course, there are also positive changes associated with adolescence, such as increased interest in the arts of emotionality and love: poetry, religion, and drama (Cattell, 1950a,b).

Indeed adolescence is the time when even the dullest clod knows that he possesses a soul; and it has been said of the genius that he lives in a perpetual adolescence. (pg. 215; Cattell, 1950a)

Adulthood brings with it maturity, and the pursuit of a career, a mate, a family, and a home. From age 23 to 46 years old, personality becomes set, and the chosen habits of adolescence become settled. Cattell considered it a busy and happy time for most people, but not for those few who failed to resolve their adolescence. They become, in Cattell’s words, shipwrecked in physical disease, mental illness, and the persistent inability to solve the questions of work and wife (or husband, as the case may be; Cattell, 1950a). Middle age is characterized by the beginning of certain physical and mental changes that begin the inevitable decline toward old age and death. Thus, middle age demands a reevaluation of one’s life values, and often leads to the search for some philosophy to make sense of life. Positive changes include an increase in leisure. First, the responsibilities for raising children lessen as the children move out on their own, and later, one approaches the age of retirement.