Individual Differences: Personality

Question 1

What factors contribute most to a person’s personality?

Answer 1

• People/environment surrounding that person
• Genetics

Question 2

What are the persistent ideas on personality throughout history?

Answer 2

• There are different types of people
• Types are determined by traits

Question 3

Timeline of the History of Psychology

Answer 3

1. Ancient Greece/Rome
2. Behaviourism and Psychoanalysis
3. The Personologists

Question 4

Personality: Who were the important figures during “Ancient Greece/Rome”?

Answer 4

• Pythagoras
• Hippocrates
• Galen

Question 5

Personality: Who were the important figures during “Behaviourism and Psychoanalysis”?

Answer 5

• Pavlov
• Freud
• Jung

Question 6

Personality: Who were the important figures during “The Personologists”?

Answer 6

• Allport
• Cattel
• Eysenck
• Goldberg and Digman

Question 7

Describe Pythagoras’ contributions to the study of personality

Answer 7

• Enlightened about women’s education and allowed women to participate in the Pythagorean school
• Proposed ‘Aesara’ (tri-part soul): (1) Mind, (2) Spirit, (3) Desire
• Aesara argued that physical and mental health resulted from harmony of each component of the tri-part soul

Question 8

Describe Hippocrates’ contributions to the study of personality

Answer 8

• Hippocratic oath (an oath taken by doctors at the end of their training before they can start practice)
• Saw diseases as an imbalance between elements -> Provided a naturalistic account of disease -> Need to restore this balance to treat/cure disease

Question 9

Explain Hippocrates’ Humourism

Answer 9

• Disease: Imbalance of elements
• Treatment: Restore balance
• Elements were seen as Humours
  *Blood (sanguinic), phlegm (phlegmatic), choler (Cholric) and melancholy (melancholic)

Question 10

Describe Galen’s contributions to the study of personality

Answer 10

• Adapted and developed humourism
• Proposed four temperaments as precursors to personality types
  *Melancholic -> creative, kind
  *Choleric -> energy, passion, charisma
  *Sanguinic -> extraverted, social
  *Phlegmatic -> dependability, affection

Question 11

Define Humourism

Answer 11

The idea that diseases or imbalances in the body can be treated by using their opposite element

Question 12

What was the study of personality like during the middle ages?

Answer 12

• Thinking about psychology/behaviour dominated by the teachings of the church at the time
  1. Man has an immortal soul
  2. Born with original sin = inherently flawed, so therefore the purpose of life is to do good deeds and redempt those sins
  3. Rejection of worldliness (eye on heaven)

Question 13

Timeline of Personality Studies (from 14th to 19th century)

Answer 13

1. Renaissance - 14th to 17th century
2. Enlightenment - 18th to 19th century
3. Founding of experimental psychology - 1875 onwards

Question 14

Explain behaviourism’s influence in the study of personality

Answer 14

• Behaviourism rejected introspection as a valid form of enquiry
• Individual differences as a consequence of conditioning process (operant and conditioning)
• Ivan Pavlov: (1) Nervous activity consists of excitation and inhibition, (2) Distribution corresponds to Galen’s Temperaments

Question 15

What were Sigmund Freud’s contributions to personality studies?

Answer 15

• Structure of the mind (Id, ego and superego); Suggested there were unconscious things driving a person
• Proposed the developmental theory of personality (Oral -> Anal -> Phallic)
• Received credit for the work that was actually accomplished by Anna Freud (boo)

Question 16

What were Carl Jung’s contributions to personality studies?

Answer 16

• Analytical psychology
• Collective unconsciousness; We have archetypes within different cultures that we attach to without us realizing it (shadow, mask, anima)
• Wrote about attitudes (the different dispositions a person can have)

Question 17

What were Gordon Allport’s contributions to personality studies?

Answer 17

• Beginning of trait theory
• Defined trait as a habitual pattern of behaviour, thought and emotion

Question 18

Explain the Lexical Hypothesis

Answer 18

• Allport and Odbert (1936)
• Scanned the dictionary for all words related to character, personality, etc.
• 4,500 words left. Categorised them into cardinal traits, central traits and secondary traits

Question 19

What were Raymond Cattel’s contribution to personality studies?

Answer 19

• Statistical approach to traits; Use of factor analysis
• Derived 16 dimensions that adequately described people
• Introduced the 16 personality factors (16PF)

Question 20

What were Hans Jurgen Eysenck’s contributions to personality studies?

Answer 20

• Personality arises from the neurophysiology of the body
• Differences in temperament as the genetic basis for personality -> Opened the door to considering the genetic basis for personality
• Created the EPI, wherein he added Extraversion and Neuroticism (later added Psychotism too)
• PEN model (three dimensions)
• Further elaborated on the Humourism model we discussed earlier

Question 21

History of The Big Five

Answer 21

• Originally identified by Ernest Tupes, Raymond Christal and Warren Norman
• Strongly contested by Cattell and Eysenck
• Redeveloped by Lewis Goldberg and John Digman, and then by Costa and McCrae
• Revised into the NEO-PI, final form of “OCEAN”

Question 22

What are the current research and issues of personality studies?

Answer 22

• Is there a general factor of personality (GFP)? Stability vs Plasticity?
• Evolutionary basis of individual differences