Trait theory

Trait theory suggests that some natural behaviours may give someone an advantage in a position of leadership.

[2] There are two approaches to define traits: as internal causal properties or as purely descriptive summaries.

In his approach, "cardinal" traits are those that dominate and shape a person's behavior; their ruling passions/obsessions, such as a need for money, fame etc.

This can make the study of personality difficult as meaning and the expression of traits may be different within cultural groups.

[12] British psychologist Hans Eysenck has argued that fewer factors are superior to a larger number of partly related ones.

[14] However, when they are high, there is considerable overlap with psychiatric conditions such as antisocial and schizoid personality disorders.

Eysenck suggests that different personality traits are caused by the properties of the brain, which themselves are the result of genetic factors.

[18] Moreover, Eysenck surmised that there would be an optimal level of arousal, after which inhibition would occur and that this would be different for each person.

[19] In a similar vein, the three-factor approach theorizes that neuroticism is mediated by levels of arousal in the limbic system and that individual differences arise because of variable activation thresholds between people.

By contrast, proponents of the five-factor approach assume a role of genetics[8] and environment[20] but offer no explicit causal explanation.

Given this emphasis on biology in the three-factor approach, it would be expected that the third trait, psychoticism, would have a similar explanation.