The Four Causes of Personality. A Thomistic Approach to Personality Theory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/SetF.2025.012Keywords
theory of causality, personality psychology, philosophy of psychology, thomistic psychologyAbstract
Among personality psychology theorists there is general agreement that personality is the result of multiple causes. Biological and environmental causes are especially mentioned. However, no coherent theory of causality is found among them to account for the multi-causality that affects personality. This article proposes that the Aristotelian-Thomistic theory of causality can provide personality theory with the necessary framework of understanding for a coherent and integrated view of this multi-causality. From this perspective, the term ‘cause’ is analogous, and has four main meanings: the material cause, the formal cause, the efficient cause and the final cause. These are not unconnected causes, but constitute a system in which each cause is reciprocally dependent on the other. Moreover, these four causes are genera, which contain other specific causes. In this article we propose to determine for each factor affecting personality one of these causes, showing the capacity of this causal theory to contribute to personality theory and to the philosophy of psychology from a Thomistic perspective. From the application of the Aristotelian-Thomistic causal theory to personality, it is proposed, finally, a complete definition of the concept of personality where each of the four causes is assigned, in comparison with other less complete definitions taken from authors relevant to the Personality Psychology.
References
Adler, Alfred. 1968. Understanding Human Nature. London: G. Allen & Unwin.
Adler, Alfred. 1968. The Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind. New York: Capricorn Books.
Ainsworth, Mary, Blehar, Mary, Waters, Everett, & Wall, Sally. 1978. Patterns of Attachment. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Allport, Gordon. 1961. Pattern and Growth in Personality. London: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Álvarez-Segura, Mar, Echavarria, Martin F., and Vitz, Paul C. 2017. “A Psycho-Ethical Approach to Personality Disorders: The Role of Volitionality.” New Ideas in Psychology, 47: 49–56.
Aquinas, Thomas. 1961. Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.
Aquinas, Thomas. 1947. Summa Theologica. New York: Benziger Bros.
Aristotle. 2007. The Metaphysics. New York: Dover Publications.
Aristotle. 2001. On the Sense and the Sensible. Blacksburg, VA : Virginia Tech.
Arnold, Magda B. 1960. Emotion and Personality II (Neurological and Physiological Aspects). New York: Columbia University Press.
Arnold, Magda B. 1969. “Human Emotion and Action.” Human Action: Conceptual and Empirical Issues, edited by Theodore Mischel, 167–96. New York: Academic Press.
Arnold, Magda B. 1971. “Motives as Causes.” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 1(2): 185–92.
Austin, Nicholas. 2017. Aquinas on Virtue. A Causal Reading. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Bolton, Derek, & Hill, Jonathan. 2007. Mind, Meaning and Mental Disorder. The Nature of Causal Explanation in Psychology and Psychiatry. New York: Oxford University Press.
Bowlby, John. 1988. A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. New York: Basic Books.
Ceci, Stephen J., & Williams, Wendy M. eds. 1999. The Nature-Nurture Debate: The Essential Readings. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cloninger, C. Robert, Svrakic, Dragan M., & Przybeck, Thomas R. (1993). “A Psychobiological Model of Temperament and Character.” Archives of General Psychyatry 50: 975–90.
Cooney, Brian. 1991. A Hylomorphic Theory of Mind. New York: Peter Lang.
Cornelius, Randolph R. 2006. “Magda Arnold's Thomistic Theory of Emotion, the Self-ideal, and the Moral Dimension of Appraisal.” Cognition and Emotion 20(7): 976–1000.
Echavarría, Martín F. 2010. “Persona y personalidad. De la psicología contemporánea de la personalidad a la metafísica tomista de la persona.” Espíritu 59(139): 207–47.
Ehrenfels, Christian von. 1890. “Über ‘Gestaltqualitäten’.” Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie 14: 249–92.
Evans, Jonathan St B. T. 2017. Thinking and Reasoning. A very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Eysenck, Hans J. 1968. The Scientific Study of Personality. London: Routledge & K. Paul.
Fabro, C. 1941. Percezione e pensiero. Milano: Vita e pensiero.
Filloux, Jean-Claude. 1961. La personalité. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Frankl, Viktor E. 2000. Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.
Fromm, Erich 1947. Man for Himself. An Enquiry into de Psychology of Ethics. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett.
Gilson, Etienne. 1971. D’Aristote à Darwin et retour; essai sur quelques constantes de la biophilosophie. Paris: J. Vrin.
Goldstein, Kurt. 1963. The Organism, a Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man. Boston: Beacon Press.
Grice, James W. 2011. Observation Oriented Modeling: Analysis of Cause in the Behavioral Science. San Diego: Elsevier.
Howard, George S. 1990. “Aristotle, Teleology, and Modern Psychology.” Theoretical & Philosophical Psychology 10(1): 31–38.
Hulsey, Timothy L., and Hampson, Peter J. 2014. “Moral Expertise.” New Ideas in Psychology 34(1): 1–11.
Hladký, Vojtěch, & Havlíček, Jan. 2013. “Was Tinbergen an Aristotelian? Comparison of Tinbergen’s four Whys and Aristotle’s four causes.” Human Ethology Bulletin 28(4): 3–11.
Jaworski, William. 2016. Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind: How Hylomorphism Solves the Mind-Body Problem. New York: Oxford University Press.
Jung, Carl G. 1953. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. New York : Pantheon Books.
Kagan, Jerome. 2010. The Temperamental Thread: How Genes, Culture, Time and Luck Make us Who We Are. New York: Dana Press.
Kahneman, Daniel. 2003. “A Perspective on Judgement and Choice”. American Psychologist 58: 697–720.
Killeen, Peter R. 2001. “The Four Causes of Behavior.” Current Directions in Psychological Sciences, 10(4): 136–140.
Killeen, Peter R., & Nash, Michael A. 2003. “The Four Causes of Hypnosis.” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 51(3): 195–231.
Killeen, Peter R., Tannock, Rosemary, & Sagvolden, Terje. 2011. “The Four Causes of ADHD: A Framework.” In Behavioral Neuroscience of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and its Treatment. Vol. 9, edited by Stanford, Clare & Tannock, Rosemary, 391–425. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Klukhohn, Clyde & Murray, Henry A. 1965. “Personality Formation: The Determinans.” In Personality: In Nature, Society and Culture, edited by Klukhohn, Clyde & Murray, Henry A, 53–67. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Köhler, Wolfgang. 1962. Gestalt Psychology. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Lersch, Philipp. 1956. Aufbau der Person. München: J.A. Barth.
Lewin, Kurt. 1935. A Dynamic Theory of Personality. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Long, Stephen. 2015. The Teleological Grammar of the Moral Act. Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press.
Lorenz, Konrad Z. 1968. “The Role of Gestalt Perception in Animal and Human Behaviour.” In Aspects of form. A Symposium on Form in Nature and Art, edited by Whyte, L. L. 157–78. New York: Elsevier.
Martin, Jack, Sugarman, Jeff H., & Hickinbottom, Sarah. 2010. Persons: Understanding Psychological Selfhood and Agency: New York: Springer.
Millon, Theodore & Everly, George S. 1985. Personality and Its Disorders: A Biosocial Learning Approach. New York: Wiley.
Murray, Henry A. 2008. Explorations in Personality. 70th Aniversary Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nuttin, Joseph. 1980. Motivation, Planning, and Action. A Relational Theory of Behavior Dynamics. Hillsdayle, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Peirce, Charles S. 1974. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Volume 5 and VI. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press.
Pérez Álvarez, Marino. 2017. “The Four Causes of ADHD: Aristotle in the Classroom.” Frontiers in Psychology 8, art.928: 1–13. Accessed July 16, 2024. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00928
Pérez Álvarez, Marino. 2009. “The Four Causes of Behavoir: Aristotle and Skinner. International Journal of behavior 9(1): 45–57.
Pérez Álvarez, Marino. 2003. Las cuatro causas de los trastornos psicológicos. Madrid: Universitas.
Pérez Álvarez, Marino and García-Montes, José Manuel. 2004. “Personality as a Work of Art.” New Ideas in Psychology 22: 157–63.
Plomin, Robert. 1990. Nature and Nurture. An Introduction to Human Behavioral Genetics. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Rachlin, Howard. 1992. “Teleological Behaviorism.” American Psychologist 47: 1371–82.
Rogers, Carl R. 1951. Client-centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications and Theory. London: Constable.
Rowe, David C. 1994. The Limits of Family Influence. Genes, Experience and Behavoir. New York: Guilford Press.
Rychlak, Joseph F. 1979. Discovering Free Will And Personal Responsibility. New York: Oxford University Press
Rycklak, Joseph F. 1990. The Psychology of Rigorous Humanism. New York: New York University Press.
Rycklak, Joseph F. 1994. Logical Learning Theory: A Human Teleology and Its Empirical Support. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Sloman, Steven A. 1996. “The Empirical Case for Two Systems of Reasoning.” Psychological Bulletin 119: 3–22.
Smith, Christian. 2015. “To Flourish or Destruct: A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motivations, Failure, and Evil.” Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Spranger, Eduard. 1966. Lebensformen. Geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie und Ethik der Persönlichkeit. Tûbingen : Niemeyer.
Stern, William. 1938. General Psychology from the Personalistic Standpoint. New York: MacMillan.
Sugarman, Jeff. 2017. “Psychologism as a Style of Reasoning and the Study of Persons.” New Ideas in Psychology 44: 21–27.
Tinbergen, Nikolaas. 1963. “On Aims and Methods of Ethology.” Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 20: 410–433.
Viano, Cristina, Natali, Carlo, & Zingano, Marco, eds. 2013. Aitia I. Les quatre causes d'Aristote : origines et interpretations. Leuven: Peeters.
Witherington, David C. (2017). “The Explanatory Significance of Wholes: How Exclusive Reliance on Antecedent-Consequent Models of Explanation Undermines the Study of Persons.” New Ideas in Psychology 44: 14–20.
Wright, Lawrence. 1997. Twins and What they Tell us About Who We Are. New York: Wiley.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Martin Echavarria
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
CC BY ND 4.0. The Creator/Contributor is the Licensor, who grants the Licensee a non-exclusive license to use the Work on the fields indicated in the License Agreement.
- The Licensor grants the Licensee a non-exclusive license to use the Work/related rights item specified in § 1 within the following fields: a) recording of Work/related rights item; b) reproduction (multiplication) of Work/related rights item in print and digital technology (e-book, audiobook); c) placing the copies of the multiplied Work/related rights item on the market; d) entering the Work/related rights item to computer memory; e) distribution of the work in electronic version in the open access form on the basis of Creative Commons license (CC BY-ND 3.0) via the digital platform of the Nicolaus Copernicus University Press and file repository of the Nicolaus Copernicus University.
- Usage of the recorded Work by the Licensee within the above fields is not restricted by time, numbers or territory.
- The Licensor grants the license for the Work/related rights item to the Licensee free of charge and for an unspecified period of time.
FULL TEXT License Agreement
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 182
Number of citations: 0
