1 - Introduction to Personality Flashcards
Why are people so interested in learning about personality?
- understanding and being able to interact with others and the world
- understanding yourself
What are the two classes of people who study personality?
Experimental psychologists (non-clinical researchers)
- look at why people behave the way they do
- purpose = understanding and predicting behaviour
Clinical therapists
- see personality as part of the foundation of mental health
- purpose = therapeutic interventions based on theories of personality
What do clinical and personality psychology share?
Clinical and personality psychology share the obligation to try and understand the whole person, not just parts of persons
What is the field of personality psychology like?
- personality psychology tends to emphasize how individuals are different from one another
- this gives the field a distinctive and humanistic mission of appreciating the uniqueness of each individual
- even behaviourism, as the person is the product of a unique learning history and therefore different from anybody else
- other areas are more likely to treat people as if they were the same or nearly the same
What is the nature vs. nurture issue in personality?
- was originally discussed as if it were one or the other
- in the late 90s, was eventually considered as a false dichotomy
- the things we experience affect our genes in a complex interaction (nature x nurture)
How does personality psychology look at human nature?
- what every human shares in common
- what makes humans different from all other creatures
What are the major issues in personality?
- nature vs. nurture
- what is human nature
- how does personality develop
- what motivates us
- conscious vs. unconscious
- person vs. situation
- group vs. individual
How does personality psychology look at personality development?
how does it develop, does it change, what’s the nature of the change, what brings about the changes
How does personality psychology look at what motivates us?
- why do we do the things we do, what do people want
- looking at motives (driving forces)
How does personality psychology look at conscious vs. unconscious?
- where does human behaviour arise from, where is personality
- conscious = we can report our own personality
- unconscious = first suggested by Freud, people do not understand their own personalities
How does personality psychology look at person vs. situation?
- is it the person or the situation that explains the behaviour
- certain situations can bring about particular expectations that shape behaviour (eg. students sitting in a classroom), and is not necessarily indicative of personality
How does personality psychology look at group vs. individual?
Nomothetic
- not interested in you as an individual, but rather as an indicator for people in general
- data and samples serve to develop a “rule-making function”
Idiographic
- interested in you as in individual
- purpose is not to generalize (humanist theories)
What is the difference between personality and other fields?
- more global and general = personality is ambitious and strives to explain a lot of behaviour
- long history of interest
- many large-scale theories (2-3 dozen different theories)
- theories don’t guide research
- theories generated/tested differently
What are the two functions of theories?
- explain reality
- guide research questions = what should we be looking at
How is the development of personality theories different than other work?
- theorists are clinicians, not scientists (clinical practice -> theory)
- influenced by theorist’s personality
- little empirical support
- non-scientific evaluation (if the theory works, it is correct)
- theories difficult to test (postdictive not predictive, vague and abstract concepts)
