personality

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Chapter 1

Introduction to Personality Psychology

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Personality Defined Personality is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments.

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Psychological Traits • Describe ways in which people are different from each

other. • Define ways in which people are similar to some others. • Describe the average tendencies of a person.

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Psychological Mechanisms Refer to the processes of personality. • Have three essential ingredients. • Input: May make people more sensitive to certain kinds of

information from the environment. • Decision rules: May make people more likely to think about

specific options. • Outputs: May guide their behavior toward certain

categories of action.

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Within the Individual

• Personality is something a person carries with himself or herself over time and from one situation to the next.

• Definition of personality stresses that the important sources of personality reside within the individual.

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Personality is Organized and Relatively Enduring Organized. • Mechanisms and traits are linked to one another in a

coherent fashion. • Personalities contain decision rules that govern which

needs or motives are activated, depending on the circumstances.

Psychological traits are relatively enduring over time, particularly in adulthood, and are somewhat consistent over situations.

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Influential Forces of Personality • Personality traits and mechanisms can have an effect on

people’s lives. • Personality influences how people act, view themselves,

think about the world, interact with others, feel, select their environments, react to their circumstances, and what goals and desires they pursue in life.

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Person–Environment Interaction • Perceptions refer to how individuals “see,” or interpret, an

environment. • Selection describes the manner in which individuals

choose situations to enter. • Evocations are the reactions individuals produce in others,

often quite unintentionally. • Manipulations are the ways in which individuals

intentionally attempt to influence others.

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Adaption Adaptive functioning refers to accomplishing goals, coping, adjusting, and dealing with the challenges and problems individuals face as they go through life. Some aspects of personality processes represent deficits in normal adaptations. • Breakdowns in the ability to cope with stress. • To regulate one’s social behavior. • To manage one’s emotions.

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Environment • Physical: Direct threats to survival. • Social: Struggle for belongingness, love, and esteem. • Intrapsychic (within the mind): Having memories, dreams,

desires, fantasies, and a collection of private experiences.

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Three Levels of Personality Analysis • Human nature. • Individual and group differences. • Individual uniqueness.

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Human Nature • How we are “like all others.” • Traits and mechanisms of personality that are typical of our

species and are possessed by nearly everyone.

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Individual and Group Differences • How we are “like some others.” • Individual differences refer to ways in which each person

is like some other people (for example, extraverts and sensations seekers).

• Group differences refer to ways in which people of one group differ from those in another group (for example, cultural and age differences).

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Individual Uniqueness • How we are “like no others.” • Individual uniqueness refers to the fact that every

individual has personal qualities not shared by any other person in the world.

• Individuals can be studied nomothetically or idiographically.

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A Fissure in the Field • The gap within personality psychology, between the human

nature level of analysis and the analysis of individual and group differences, has not been successfully bridged.

• This translates into a gap between grand theories of personality (human nature level of analysis) and contemporary research in personality (individual and group differences level of analysis).

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Grand Theories of Personality • Attempt to provide a universal account of the fundamental

psychological processes and characteristics of our species.

• Statements about the universal core of human nature lie at the center of grand theories of personality, such as Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory.

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Contemporary Research in Personality

• Most of the research in contemporary personality addresses ways in which individuals and groups differ.

• Personality psychologists specialize in a particular domain, such as biological aspects of personality or how culture impacts personality.

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Domains of Knowledge

• Domain of knowledge is a specialty area of science and scholarship in which psychologists have focused on learning about some specific and limited aspects of human nature.

• This degree of specialization is reasonable, but we must strive to integrate diverse domains of knowledge to get a bigger picture of personality.

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Six Domains of Knowledge

• Dispositional. • Biological. • Intrapsychic. • Cognitive-experiential. • Social and cultural. • Adjustment.

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Dispositional Domain

Deals with the ways in which individuals differ from one another. • Cuts across all other domains.

Focuses on the number, nature, and consequences of fundamental dispositions. Those working in this domain seek to identify and measure the most important ways in which individuals differ from one another. • Interested in the origin of individual differences and how

they develop over time.

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Biological Domain

• Core assumption of biological approaches to personality is that humans are collections of biological systems, and these systems provide building blocks for behavior, thought, and emotion.

• Behavioral genetics of personality. • Psychophysiology of personality. • Impact of evolution on human psychological functioning.

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Intrapsychic Domain

• Deals with mental mechanisms of personality, many of which operate outside of conscious awareness.

• Linked to classic and modern versions of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, including his work on repression, denial, projection, and motives for power, achievement, and intimacy.

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Cognitive-Experiential Domain

Focuses on thought processes and subjective experience, such as conscious ideas, feelings, beliefs, and desires about oneself and others. • Self and self-concept. • Goals we set and strive to meet. • Emotional experiences, in general and over time.

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Social and Cultural Domain

Assumes that personality affects, and is affected by, cultural and social context. At a cultural level, groups differ tremendously from one another. • For example, in social acceptability of aggression.

At the level of individual differences within cultures, personality plays itself out in the social sphere. • For example, gender differences, traits, and mechanisms.

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Adjustment Domain

• Personality plays a key role in how we cope, adapt, and adjust to events in our daily lives.

• Personality is linked with health-related behaviors and problems in coping and adjustment.

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Role of Personality Theory Personality research is often informed by personality theories. Theory has several key purposes. • Serves as a guide for researchers. • Organizes and explain known findings. • Makes predictions about behavior and psychological phenomena that

no one has yet documented or observed.

Scientific theories need to be distinguished from beliefs. • Beliefs are based on leaps of faith, not on reliable facts and

systematic observations. • Theories are based on systematic observations that can be repeated

by others to yield similar conclusions.

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Standards for Evaluating Personality Theories

Comprehensiveness: Explains most or all known facts. Heuristic value: Guides researchers to important new discoveries. Testability: Makes precise predictions that can be empirically tested. Parsimony: Contains few premises or assumptions. Compatibility and integration across domains and levels. • Consistent with what is known in other domains. • Can be coordinated with other branches of scientific

knowledge.

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© McGraw Hill LLC. All rights reserved. No reproduction or distribution without the prior written consent of McGraw Hill LLC.