CHAPTER 1 What is Personality?

DEFINITION Personality:

Consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within the individual.

What it means…Refers to an individual’s characteristic

patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms (hidden or not) behind those patterns

Even though we share similarities as humans, each person is unique - that uniqueness is your personality!

HOW DO WE STUDY PERSONALITY? Humans are incredibly complex and

multifaceted, we can’t study everything at once…thus… We try to limit what we look at by searching for

specific patterns using a basic approach or theory

Six Theories/Approaches: Psychoanalytical, Trait, Biological, Humanist, Behavioral/Social Learning, and Cognitive (Note: Not all textbooks in Personality Theories organize the approaches in this manner – although this is a common differentiation)

Each theory/approach is a systematic, self-imposed limitation of studying personality

Each theory/approach correctly identifies and examines an important aspect of human personality

SIX THEORIES/APPROACHES: Psychoanalytical Approach Trait Approach Biological approach Humanistic Approach Behavioral/Social Learning Approach Cognitive Approach

Let’s take a basic look at these approaches using an individual who is outgoing and try to explain why this person is outgoing…

PSYCHOANALYTICAL APPROACH This approach looks at the workings of

the unconscious mind and the nature and resolution of internal mental conflict

Example: This person is outgoing to please their inner voice (they may not be aware of this). Their inner voice developed in relation to their early life experience and society.

TRAIT APPROACH This approach focuses on the way

people differ from each other and how these differences can be conceptualized and measured as personality characteristics

Example: We would look at the behavior of this person and describe their outgoing personality as extroverted - as compared with introverted.

BIOLOGICAL APPROACH This approach tries to understand

personality in terms of the body such as anatomy, chemistry, physiology, genetic inheritance, the brain, and shared evolutionary characteristics

Example: Our person genetically inherited their outgoing personality, in other words, they were born with an outgoing personality.

HUMANISTIC APPROACH This approach explores the individual’s

conscious experience with the world, the ways people have free will strive for self-acceptance

Example: Our person has decided to be outgoing because it will help me be the person I want to be.

BEHAVIORIST/SOCIAL LEARNING The ways in which people change as a

result of experience (the rewards and punishments or consequences they encounter) and how the social environment influences personality

Example: Our person has been rewarded for being outgoing and has learned to be outgoing from the observation of other outgoing people.

COGNITIVE How the cognitive processes of

perception, memory and thought affect behavior and personality

Example: Our person has a perception of him/herself as an outgoing person.

CULTURE AND PERSONALITY Cross-Cultural Psychology

This area of personality psychology reminds us that the experience of reality varies across cultures

Most research about personality has been completed in western, individualistic cultures

This research may not be applicable to people from other cultures

INDIVIDUALISTIC AND COLLECTIVISTIC CULTURES Differences in Individualistic and Collectivistic

Cultures:

Individualistic Emphasis Collectivistic EmphasisIndividual needs Group needsIndividual achievements Group achievementsCompetition Cooperation

Example: How do we measure achievement?

Individualistic CollectivisticIndividual success Group successPersonal recognition Group (not personal)

recognition

THE STUDY OF PERSONALITY Theory

Comprehensive model of how personality is structured

Application Apply knowledge gained from theory and research

to issues that directly affect people’s lives Assessment

Ways to measure personality (get ready – you will be taking a lot of personality tests this quarter!) specific to each theoretical approach

Research Theoretically generated research leading to new

questions and more research in order to further define and refine a theory

SOME IDEAS TO CONSIDER… Here are a few of the big ideas in

personality that each theoretical approach must address: Nature or nurture…or both?

Is your personality a product of your heredity or shaped by the environment you grew up in…or a combination of both?

Conscious or unconscious determinants of behavior? To what extent are you aware of your behavior and

why you do the thing you do? Free will or determinism?

Do you decide your own fate or is your behavior subject to forces outside of your control?