Gordan Allports Five characterisitics: Peter Griffin

user-pic
Vote 0 Votes

One of my favorite television shows still airing is Family Guy. Needless to say the most commonly known character from the show is Peter Griffin. Despite being on television for close to a decade, Peter displays a wide range of personality characteristics which makes it hard to categorized him in Allport's list of five. However I will try. It is easy to say that Peter Griffin is high in extraversion considering he is always socializing and talking with every other character on the show. He is also for the most part friendly, just not to Meg. As far as agreeableness goes, Peter seems to lack the ability to cooperate with others because he is so immature and is always getting what he wants. He is far from being trustworthy, since he is always lying to his wife Lois so he does not get in trouble. Conscientiousness is not something Peter is strong in since he is very careless and reckless. For example a bit that keeps showing up in the show is when Peter buys random vehicles and operates, but usually crashes all of them. To list a few the hindenpeter, petercopter, and the peter-rang. I cannot really pin point where he is in neuroticism since he is not really anxious, moody or tense or on the other end, relaxed poised, or steady. This is one characteristic that depends on what flashback or situation he is in, so it contributes to the situation part of the debate. Finally, needless to say Peter is very open to experience. This is easy to see since he is very impulsive and the situations he gets himself into are almost always to due curiosity.Peter.jpg

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/187051

2 Comments

| Leave a comment

Peter (and really all the main characters of Family Guy) are difficult to pinpoint exactly on the Big 5 because as the series progresses, their characters almost become caricatures of themselves. But you seem to do a good job defining Peter. As for neuroticism, I'd say he's pretty low, because in most episodes I never see him that tense or in a bad mood. Especially in the newer episodes, Peter hardly shows regret for his actions (which grow more wild as the series progresses) until the resolution of the plot, and he only has to show a small amount of genuine regret for Lois to forgive him.
I think doing the Big 5 for Lois would be really interesting, considering her character from the first few seasons compared to now has dramatically changed from typical mom that holds the family together to someone almost resembling Peter in conscientiousness and intelligence.

I agree with your assessment of Peter. I would say that not only would those characteristics matches with Peter but also with other characters in other shows that are made to be comedies similar to Family Guy. For example, The Simpsons, Homer will match most of those characteristics but may have a few differences.

Leave a comment

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by krelw001 published on April 23, 2012 10:07 PM.

The Most Complex Character on TV was the previous entry in this blog.

Let's Get Down to Studying is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.