Introduction

Theories of Personality

• History of Personality Theory

• Major Early Theorists

  • Sigmund Freud & Carl Jung

• Neo-Freudians

  • Alfred Adler

  • Erik Erikson

  • Karen Horney

• Trait Theorists

  • Gordon Allport & Raymond Cattell

  • Evolutionary/Biological Perspectives

• Learning Perspective

  • Skinner & Miller

• Humanistic Theorists

  • Karl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, & Buddhist Psychology

• Personality Disorders

  • DSM-IV, definitions, examples, and theory

Working Definitions

• Personality

• Personality Profile

• Personality Theory

A Working Definition of Personality

Personality represents the underlying characteristics of a person that account for consistent patterns of behavior and experience

Personality Profile

A graphic representation of a person’s personality

• Demonstrates the uniqueness of a personality (a fingerprint)

Personality Theory

A conceptual tool consisting of systematically organized constructs and propositions for understanding certain specific phenomenon

3 Goals of Personality Theory

• Description: Describing personality using:

  • Types

  • Traits

  • Factors

• Dynamics: How is personality expressed and modified (e.g. environmental influences)?

• Development: How does personality develop?

  • e.g., Is it inherited or learned?

Personality Theory

• Usually nomothetic

  • Groups of individuals are studied in order to derive overarching themes (or theories)

    • Studying all persons (“universals”)

• Not idiographic

  • Study of a particular individuals (case studies)

  • Psychobiographies (retrospective)

Universals

Core mental attributes, emotions, or behaviors shared by all or nearly all humans across diverse cultures and societies

Psychobiographies

A specialized form of biography that applies psychological theories and research methods to analyze the lives of notable historical public figures

• Its goal is to uncover the unconscious motives, personality traits, and childhood experiences that shapes their significant actions and decisions

• Retrospective: looking back at or dealing with past events or situations

“Types”

• Categories of people with similar characteristics

  • E.g., Type A and Type B personalities (proposed as cardiovascular risk groups)

  • Personality comes from a limited number of distinct categories

• Problem: Categorize groups in an “all-or-none” way

  • Limited in the number of variables that can be assessed

“Traits”

• Widely used, common sense descriptors

  • e.g., outgoing, confident, athletic

• Distinguishes one person from another and purportedly causes consistent behavior

• Strengths:

  • Quantitative/Dimensional

• Problems:

  • Too much redundancy; over 18,000 trait words in dictionary!

  • Therefore, they are perhaps poorly quantified and lead to a lack of consensus (a mish-mash of results)

“Factors”

• A statistically derived, quantitative dimension that is broader than a trait

• E.g., Raymond Cattell’s 16PF and, ultimately, the “Big Five”

  • Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism

Environmental Factors Contributing to Theory Development

• Zeitgeist

• Ortgeist

Zeitgeist

• Simultaneous discoveries tell that when the raw materials are there and the time is right, someone will propose the idea