13.2 Effective Personality Study Flashcards
What are the 5 criteria for an effective personality theory?
1) comprehensive
2) understandable (parsimony)
3) create interest (heuristic value)
4) testability and empirical support
5) compatibility and intergration
Name some (8) of the controversies on the assumptions in personality study.
1) human behaviour can be fully explained
2) can be explained as a Gestalt (normal consciousness)
3) dominant or deterministic factor such as genetics or environment
4) involves stability or growth and change in personality
5) cause and effect issue
6) nature vs nurture
7) idiographic view - people unique rather than merely different
8) other issues such as
- past or present events
- pessimistic or optimistic ideas
- objectivity or subjectivity
- wether culture is formative
What is a school of thought?
An intellectual movement whose adherence more or less share the same ideology.
What is Gestalt?
Normal consciousness of person
What is an idiographic view?
Asserting that people are unique or individual rather than merely different.
What is an nomothetic view?
Emphisises universal or general laws in human behaviour
*What do most personality approaches agree on?
- personality has some structure
- an enduring pattern in personality
*Personality theory and concepts can be compared and evaluated based on what criteria?
Comprehensiveness
Simplicity
Empirical support
*On what is the emphasis in Psychodynamic or Psychoanalytic theories?
people's experience of conflicts because of : internal biological drives unconscious motives past events norms of society
*What is the crux of Behaviourist / Learning theories?
Personality is characterised by:
acquired, observable behaviour
or
responses as rewarded
Environment and circumstances are DOMINANT influences on what people become
and
may even override basic natural potential.
