Chap 1: What is Personality Psychology

Lecture Roadmap

1.What is personality?

2.The study of personality

3.Evaluating personality theories

4.Looking ahead…

Personality

a dynamic organization, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings

Intrapersonal functioning

the processes within a person (i.e. “dynamic organization”)

• what’s going on “inside” the person

Psychophysical systems

• personality is a psychological concept, but it’s tied to the physical body

• psychology involves active processes of some sort (different theories will focus on different processes)

• these internal psychophysical systems play a role in causing how a person relates to the world

Characteristic patterns

personality conveys distinctiveness

• personality psychology is also sometimes referred to as the study of individual differences

Brian Little Quote

personality is the study of how you are like all others, like some others, and like no one else

Characteristic Patterns Pt. 2

Personality conveys consistency

• consistency across time

• consistency across situations

• (not just what you’re feeling in the moment, personality is across time)

Personality is displayed in many ways

• thoughts

• feelings

• observable behavior

The study of personality

is as old as the history of people, we’ve always been interested in other people

Ancient Greek philosophers (Hippocrates and Galen)

• Proposed the “4 humors” (i.e. body fluids): blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm

• supposedly, the levels of these 4 humors controlled your personality type

• for example, being “sanguine” (happy and optimistic) was based on the blood humor

Early 1800s: Phrenology

• believed that specific regions of the brain had specific functions

  • this is technically true BUT does not correspond to the regions of the brain we know and think of today

• the relative size of these different regions should be indicative of their power and strength

• since the skull ossifies over the brain during infant development, external craniological surface could be used to diagnose the internal states

Late 1800s/into the 1900s: Freud and psychoanalysis

• believed that most of our behaviors are controlled by unconscious desires

• developed various techniques (e.g. free association, dream interpretation) for accessing “the unconscious”

Perspectives we will learn about this semeter

The Psychoanalytic perspective

The Learning perspective

The (Social) Cognitive perspective

The Motive perspective

The Self perspective

The Trait perspective

The Genetic & Biological perspective

Psychology as a “hub” field

First problem in the study of personality

how can we understand EVERYTHING about a person?

• hint: you can’t

• rather, each perspective that we talk about will be INCOMPLETE because it will focus on different aspects

Evaluating personality theories - theory definition

a summary statement, a general principle or set of principles about a class of events.

• can be more broad or more specific

Scientific theories are

• falsifiable

• supported by data

• parsimonious

Falsifiable

• leads to testable hypothesis that could fail to support the theory

  • good theories make testable predictions about future outcomes (“risky” predictions)

Supported by data

• supported NOT proven (new data can change things)

Parsimonious

• a simpler explanation is always preferred over a more complex one

  • Occam’s razor: “Plurality must never be posited without necessity.”

Second problem in the study of personality

Science is about finding generalities and universals

• Can we study individuals scientifically?

  • universal - what makes us the same

  • individual - what makes us unique