Personality Type

Faux Socialist

Is their a certain personality type that displays characteristics such as these:
seeks out weak people, helps them develop their confidence,
sometimes using them for their own benefit (but not intentionally),
and is generally considered a person who would 'rub off' people positively?

dar100

Sounds like someone with a few positive traits, although I don't see how you can use someone for your own benefit without knowing it.

Hardly a "personality type"

Faux Socialist

dar100 wrote: »

Sounds like someone with a few positive traits, although I don't see how you can use someone for your own benefit without knowing it.

Hardly a "personality type"

Thanks. I forgot to mention 'sees potential in people and helps them bring it out.'

Valmont

dar100 wrote: »

...although I don't see how you can use someone for your own benefit without knowing it.

I think this is very important to keep in mind when dealing with any theories of personality, especially ones with 'types'. There is no reason for us to believe that the 'type' so perceived is in fact the causal result of some unseen biological processes. In looking at a person's behaviour this way we are essentially ignoring the very real motivations and values that led to them to a particular point - I would argue that these facts are more telling about someone than any arbitrary personality category we would like to place them in. It is important to note however that we can hold this position and also acknowledge that there are stable characteristics or general dispositions that some individuals will possess across their lifespan. A friend showed me some letters I wrote to him twenty years ago last month and it was frightening how little certain elements of my personality had changed - naturally it's hard for us to see our stable traits without some perspective.

dar100

Valmont wrote: »

I think this is very important to keep in mind when dealing with any theories of personality, especially ones with 'types'. There is no reason for us to believe that the 'type' so perceived is in fact the causal result of some unseen biological processes. In looking at a person's behaviour this way we are essentially ignoring the very real motivations and values that led to them to a particular point - I would argue that these facts are more telling about someone than any arbitrary personality category we would like to place them in. It is important to note however that we can hold this position and also acknowledge that there are stable characteristics or general dispositions that some individuals will possess across their lifespan. A friend showed me some letters I wrote to him twenty years ago last month and it was frightening how little certain elements of my personality had changed - naturally it's hard for us to see our stable traits without some perspective.

Totally agree with this statement, motivation and values are intrinsically linked to behavior, and personality in general. On a slightly different topic, they can also be linked to outcomes intelligence tests, in the same manner.

Stable and enduring characteristics been one of the defining features of personality, which links into your own statement Valmont. However, I have recently read a piece of research suggesting, that when an individual enters the later stages of the lifespan, the personality does begin to adapt and change.

Now, I don't possess a huge amount of knowledge in this area, and my critical appraisal of psychological research is not up to much, so I cant speak to the validity or reliability of this work.

However, it did get me thinking about the later stages of Erickson's psycho-social development, in particular the Generativity stage, and how this links if (if at all), to the above mentioned research? I'm sure some of our values and motivations change, adapt and have the potential to become fairly inconsistent.

For some reason Scrooge is coming to mind, and the almost spiritual awaking of sorts:):)

Export

Would you call them people pleasers with a bit of a martyr complex?

jumbo

I think the whole area of personality types can be blurred by DSM-based thinking, which is often considered the 'canonical' reference, yet it is a psychiatric manual and as such will be very much tied to strongly bio-medically influenced characteristics. A psychological perspective takes in other influences such as social and developmental. Also, we often seek to explore positive traits to see how they arise and may be replicated, as opposed to a purely pathological view were we're concerned with correcting 'negative' traits ...

On the original question, off the top of my head Eriksson and generativity come to mind, though this is more to do with life-stages. In terms of altruism one might check out Latane and Darley, and also the more general are of "Prosocial Behaviour".