The accurate definition of personality has been a point of discussion amongst many different philosophers within many different disciplines since the beginning of civilization. Personality can be defined as "the relatively stable set of psychological characteristics that influences the way an individual interacts with his or her environment" (Johns , 1996: 75). Personality has a rocky history within the workplace and organization behavior because of measurement problems. There is now a renewed interest because of the emphasis on service jobs with customer contact, concerns about ethics and integrity and contemporary interest in teamwork and cooperation. All of these point to the potential contribution of personality.
Trait theory is based on several assumptions. The first of many trait theory assumptions are that any difference between people that is seen as significant will have a name. These names, known as traits, are conceived of as continuous dimensions. Trait theories assume that people vary concurrently on a number of personality factors.
These traits are of both the conjunctive and disjunctive form. To understand a trait, it is necessary to understand what a particular trait is and what type of behavior is proof of that trait.
As it became evident to many psychologists that, mathematically, combinations of five factors were useful in describing personality, there was a need to clearly define what these factors were. Indeed, this process led to some dissent in the ranks. One dissenter from the five-factor theorists was renowned psychologist H. J. Eysenck. Eysenck felt that, due to overlaps in the five factors and their correlates, in fact a three-factor model was more appropriate and accurate. His trait theory is called the PEN model (whi ...