Traits

Compare the phenomenological and trait approaches to psychology, the ways in which the differ in both origin and content, and whether the two approaches make different predictions about the relationship between personality and behaviour. Personality places its emphasis on understanding who we are, why we are the way we are, and usually is concerned with the possibility of change anywhere along the spectrum of psychopathology to self fulfilment. There are many approaches to understanding the …

…of social institutions and physical realities which constitute the cultural pattern’. (Cattell 1950,33- 34;as cited by Hergenhahn,1990). Cattell was not only concerned with traits that the individual possessed; he also wanted to know about the groups that a person belonged. For Cattell, personality was the sum of a person's traits and syntality was a summary of a group's traits (Hergenhahn, 1990). Both the personality (individual traits) and the syntality (group traits) are needed to predict behaviour.