Personality Traits

Personality traits are distinctive patterns, behaviours, attitudes, feelings, thoughts, and habits that are relatively constant, reliable, and enduring in different genders or sexes. In trait psychology, personality traits are the ideas ingrained in people that differ from one another and behave in different ways but mostly women face gender discrimination among them.

Role of Environment on Personality

In psychology, these personality traits are defined by gender, i.e., which has a higher average score or a lower average score for a specific personality trait. It also depends on where they stand on the primary characteristics that endure across time and settings.

However, the extent to which genders differ psychologically is a more contentious issue that needs actual investigation. We know that men and women have different biological anatomy and functions, like the proliferation of the fetus and physique. But some academics, researchers, and psychologists argue that such a biological view of human behavior undervalues the impact of the social and cultural influences that form who we are and how we behave. It is because environmental factors can either increase or decrease the genetic differences in living things that exist at the time of birth.

Feminine Personality Traits

Evolution of Personality Traits

Evolutionary psychologists and some academic observers differ in their studies. According to evolutionary psychologists, current gender personality traits are the outcome of the demands of survival made on our distant ancestors, and these demands were different for men and women. Men in ancient times with more assertive personalities would have been better at competing for mates. On the other hand, women with more nurturing, loving, or caring personality traits would have been more successful at raising offspring and tending to vulnerable people. These gender-based personality traits are evolved and transferred from ancestors to succeeding generations. Many people, even in popular culture, have supported this perception of stark gender disparities.

The Big Five Personality Trait Model

The Big Five Personality Trait Model

The well-known Big Five Personality Trait Model is the most extensively used model of personality traits and contains five broad personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Consistency, stability, and individual differences are criteria for measuring these traits.

In defining the Big Five Personality Trait Model, people must exhibit reasonably consistent and stable behavior in all circumstances to show a personality trait.

Openness, Intellect, or Openness to Experience

Openness, Intellect, or Openness to Experience

It is generally about art appreciation, new ideas, emotions, feelings, adventure, creativity, imagination, curiosity, and other experiences. People with this personality trait are intellectually active and curious, love adventures and exploring new things, are emotional, sensitive to beauty, and are attracted to different arts and abstract works. These people are passionate, knowledgeable, curious, and have unusual beliefs. 

At the basic level, we cannot observe any substantial gender variation in openness and intellect personality traits, most likely due to the traits’ diverse content. But some studies show that women outperform men in the facets of aesthetics and feelings, whereas men typically outperform women in the aspect of the concept.

Extroversion

Extroversion

This personality trait includes characteristics like liveliness, assertiveness, sociability, optimism, conformism, enthusiasm, focus, and action-oriented. In social gatherings, extroverted people are more dominant than introverted ones. The extroverted personality trait factor mostly merges elements of traditional male domains like sovereignty with traditional female spheres like acquiescence. People with low extroversion personality traits are thoughtful, calm, controlled, reserved, nurtured, and so on. Because of these personality traits, both genders face discrimination in different cultures. It is distinguished by various aspects, like men showing greater boldness and a desire for pleasure and women showing increased gregariousness.

Neuroticism

Neuroticism

Neuroticism is another factor of gender-specific personality traits. This category of personality trait has a negative effect because people with neuroticism have a predisposition to feel in response to perceived threats and punishment. It includes propensities to experience unpleasant or negative feelings and emotions like anxiety, anger, melancholy, embarrassment, vulnerability, sadness, worry, shame, and many others.

When compared between men and women, neuroticism is more prevalent in women. In addition, women outperform men on comparable measures that do not gauge the Big Five, such as self-esteem and anxiety indices. Anger, or wrath, is the one aspect of neuroticism in which women do not necessarily score higher than men. 

Agreeableness

Agreeableness

Agreeableness is one of the Big Five personality trait factors that means the person tends to be helpful rather than distrustful and hostile. People who show agreeable traits are cooperative, helpful, kind, generous, courteous, harmonious, trustworthy, and considerate of others’ concerns. Personality traits in the overall interest of social stability lie in the agreeableness attribute.

People with low agreeableness personality traits are frequently aggressive, challenging, contentious, or unpredictable. They prioritize their needs and interests over others and are unconcerned with others’ welfare. These people are less willing to go above and beyond for others; we can say they are self-centered. According to Smith, P. B., Dugan, S., & Trompenaars, F. (1997), almost all aspects of agreeableness are also attributes of female gender stereotypes. As a result, having high scores of agreeableness traits most closely resembles the social role of a female homemaker and nurturer.

Conscientiousness 

Conscientiousness

Conscientiousness describes attributes connected to self-discipline, acting dutifully, following rules, hard work, and self-control. It shows the ability to exercise impulse control and achieve goals by following rules and regulations. Researchers use stability and consistency tools for conscientious personality traits, and people must show consistency and stability in their behaviors.

However, it is difficult for researchers to measure personality traits because of cultural variations across the world, and in such differences, there is often no gender difference in conscientiousness at the Big Five trait level. Conscientious people aim for success in comparison to norms or external expectations. It is how people control, regulate, and steer their impulses, emotions, or desires. High-scored conscientiousness level individuals plan and organize rather than unplanned actions and interpret rigidity and preoccupation as rigidity and preoccupation.

Flexibility, easiness, and unpredictability are traits of low conscientiousness, but they can also emerge as carelessness and a lack of trustworthiness. There are a few studies on various characteristics of conscientiousness, and those studies have generally found no apparent gender differences in conscientiousness. On some aspects of conscientiousness, such as order, dutifulness, and self-discipline, women do significantly better than males.

Criticism

According to researchers and psychologists, these five big personality traits are universal and have biological (natural)origins and environmental (nurturance) influences. They believe this big five-personality-trait model has almost all the core characteristics that shape our personal, social, and cultural perspectives. But some critics believe that behaviour results in an interaction between a person’s underlying personality and contextual factors. The circumstance that someone finds themselves in plays a crucial role in how they might behave according to the situation. However, most people respond consistently and stably according to their underlying personality traits, but some may not act accordingly.

Masculine Personality Traits

These attributes represent various aspects of one’s personality, but still, it is complex and variable because a person may exhibit behaviors that span several of these personality traits.