What is Personality

Theophrastus 319 BC

Greek philosopher who pondered why everyone in Greece have characters so different despite being under the same sky and educated the same

personality

what is beneath the mask

• authentic true self separate from social roles

• linked to rise of western individualism

what is personality

individual differences that are not psychological, nonintellectual, enduring and broad

• not physical attributes, not intellectually-related (e.g. stupid, clever), not transient attributes (e.g. angry, happy), not context-specific (e.g. smoker, jazz lover)

fundamentally important dispositions for individual differences

• personal identity and self-concept

• social communication and gossip

• person perception

• stereotypes

personality and self-concept

describing yourself

• 33% - likes, beliefs

• 25% personality traits

• 9% behaviours

• 9% interpersonal attributes

personality and social communication

argued that human intelligence evolved to handle complexities of group life - much of social communication aims to learn what others are like i.e. personality

person perception

judging other people’s personalities

• rapid

• dispositional inference - based on behavior and characteristics.

• correspondence bias - overestimating personality traits in others' behaviors

personality psychology

dedicated to understanding the whole person. contrasts with social

• person v situation

• places emphasis on factors intrinsic to person

triple focus of personality psych

1. human nature - every person is like all others

2. systematic variation - every person is like some

3. personal uniqueness - not like anyone

describing personality

simplest descriptive unit is ‘trait’. can follow hierarchy

1. high-level trait e.g. extraversion

2. mid-level e.g. sociability and sensation-seeking

3. low-level e.g. physical or sexual sens-seeking

4. illustrative behaviour e.g. sky-diving or raunchy dating app profile

trait

consistent pattern of behaviour thinking or feeling

• relatively stable over time

• relatively consistent across situations

• varying between people

• dispositional

1 theory of trait organisation - food analogy 

people come in four types

• pomegranate - hard inside and outside

• walnut - hard outside and soft inside

• prune - soft outside hard inside

• grape - soft both

lexical approach

method of developing taxonomy of personality through surveying traits encoded in language

• assumes that important distinctions for describing people are incorporated in everyday speech

Allport and Odbert 1936

attempted to survey the trait universe by searching large dictionary for words that could describe differences between people. then filtered removing physical, cog abilities, transient states and highly evaluative terms

• originally 18000//550,000 = 4,504.18,000 after filter

Raymond Cattell 

4,504 too many with many being synonyms = reduced into 171 groups of synonyms or antonyms using factor analysis

• used 16 factors that rep basic dimensions of personality

some of Cattell’s16 factors

• reserved v outgoing

• stable v neurotic

• trusting v suspicious

• humble v assertive

problem with Cattell

the 16 factors still correlated with different factors might both reflect a single under-lying super-factor. ideally the dimensions of personality should be independent of one another

• e.g. outgoing v reserved and shy v venturesome

• Fiske reduced from 16 into 5

the big five

• Openness to experience

• Conscientiousness

• Extraversion 

• Agreeableness

• Neuroticism