personal growth paper

What Is Personality

· According to the text

· Personality is, “an individual’s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits”(Weiten, Hammer, and Dunn, 2014)

· “Personality includes characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms-hidden or not-behind those patterns.” (Funder, 2007)

· Psychologists who research personality take different approaches to their research:

· Basic approach

· Observes patterns

· Trait approach

· Focuses on traits

· Biological approach

· Looks at anatomy, physiology, genetics, evolution

· Psychoanalytic approach

· Assessing unconscious, subconscious

· Phenomenological approach

Listen to people’s conscious experience of the world

Personality Traits

· A personality trait is, “a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations.”

· How do you most commonly behave across different situations?

· Shy

· Honest

· Moody

· Friendly

· THINK: Describe your personality. What kind of traits come to mind? How would someone else describe your personality?

· What do you notice about other people’s personalities?

Five-Factor Theory of Personality

· One of the most prominent theories of personality

· Also referred to as the "Five Factor Model" or FFM (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and as the Global Factors of personality (Russell & Karol, 1994)

· This theory states that almost all personality traits derive from the Big Five Personality Traits

· Extroversion, Neuroticism, Openness to experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness

Five Factors

· Openness

· Curiosity, flexibility, vivid imagination, impulsive

· Conscientiousness

· Diligent, disciplined, well organized, dependable

· Extraversion

· Outgoing, sociable, upbeat, friendly, assertive

· Agreeableness

· Sympathetic, trusting, cooperative, modest

· Neuroticism

· Anxious, hostile, self-conscious, insecure, vulnerable

All five factors show an influence from both heredity and environment.

Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

· According to Freud: personality is divided into three main components:

· Id

· Primitive, instinctive component of personality that operates according to the pleasure principle

· Ego

· The decision making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle

· Superego

· Moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

· Introspective, self report inventory

· Assesses how people perceive the world and make decisions

· Based on Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types, uses 4 scales

· Extroversion/Introversion

· Sensing/Intuitive

· Thinking/Feeling

· Judging/Perceiving

· Results come in a Four letter combination

· ENFP

· An example of an MBTI type assessment can be found here