Week 1) Personality Intro Flashcards
What is personality?
Many definitions:
• The organised pattern of behavioural characteristics
of the individual
• Traits and dispositions
•The quality of being a person; existence as a self conscious human being; personal identity
Name the history of personality.
1900 1930s 1960s 1970s-1980s quote 1980s 1990s 2000
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• 1900: Psychoanalytic approach
• 1930s: Trait approach (factor analysis)
• 1960’s: person-situation debate (debate that person or situation was primary determinant of behaviour).
• Until 1970-1980s: environmentalism dominant
(behaviourism, social learning, situationism).
• Personality suffered a near death
experience (McAdams & Pals 2006).
• 1980s: Trait resurgence (trait approach came back) He’s back.
• 1990s: Evolutionary accounts
• 2000: Unification of all approaches and personality dynamics. tricky tricky tricky!
What is the mission of psychology?
Bring together the contributions of development, social, cognitive and biological psych into an understanding of whole person and each different distinct dimension. Theory of personality must account for the integrated,
coherent functioning of the individual.
Has the mission of psychology been achieved yet?
No (Mcadams and Pals).
“irreconcilable frameworks” that are physically opposed to eachother e.g. biological determinsm vs free will
True or false, McAdams and Pals said we need to just look at nomothetic approaches to see our similarities.
False, he thought we need to look at both nomothetic and idiographic approaches, to explore both our similarities and differences.
What would the integrative approach contain?
hint 5 principles
1) evolution & human nature
2) the dispositional signature: traits
3) characteristic adaptations (the way we adapt to the environment)
4) life narratives & identity
5) the role of culture
“personality is expressed as a developing pattern of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, & integrative life stories complexly & differentially situated in culture”
What is the personality triad?
1) Dispositional traits (genetics)
2) Characteristic adaptations
3) Narrative identity as ‘life story’
What do dispositional traits refer to?
A nomothetic approach testing the stable, universal biologically-based components of personality. Typically assessed via self-report measures asking what he or she would do in a certain situation or how much something describes them “lexical hypothesis”. Also factor analysis used.
What traits did Eyesneck’s trait approach involve?
E - Extraversion/Introversion:
N - Neuroticism/stability
P - Psychoticism/Socialisation
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) is a questionnaire to assess the personality traits.
What is the dominant trait model?
The five-factor model is comprised of five personality dimensions (OCEAN): Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. The five dimensions are held to be a complete description of personality.
Is trait psychology enough info?
No.
Trait psychology provides “the psychology of the stranger” (McAdams, 1992, p. 229)
Traits provide general information about how someone is likely to behave
Traits do not provide a sense of the individual’s identity
Traits are a useful place starting point when it comes to examining personality.
What is characteristic adaptations and what does it include?
Is it enough info?
Personal goals & motives
Values & beliefs
Attachment & relationship styles
Domain-specific skills & interests
Defence mechanisms & coping strategies
Self & other images, e.g. self concept etc
Includes psychoanalytic, social-learning, humanistic, evolutionary components etc.
Still does not address the actual ‘person’
In the personality triad, what is different about narrative identity approach?
It is greatly idiographic e.g. compared to trait approach.
Also takes into account personality change.
What is narrative identity referring to?
- Making meaning and sense of one’s life through life stories & establishing identity. Through our stories we develop a coherent sense of self and it provides sense of unity & purpose.
- Humanistic approach
- Our stories connect past, present & future. Identity & self shaped by culture (meaningful stories)
What is ethnocentrism and what is the concern about it?
It is: evaluation of other cultures according to preconceptions originating in the standards and customs of one’s own culture.
Concern: Are our personality theories universal or reflections of specific cultures?
“The model that is inscribed in many theories of personality does not reflect “human” nature; instead it reflects the ideas & practices of European American contexts”
