PERSONALITY THEORY

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Chapter 1

• PERSONALITY THEORY
• FROM EVERYDAY OBSERVATIONS TO SYSTEMATIC THEORIES

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QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THIS CHAPTER

• 1. How do scientific theories of personality
  differ from ideas about people that you develop
  in your daily life?
• 2. Why is there more than one personality theory?
  In what ways do these theories differ and how
  can you evaluate their relative merits in
  furthering a science of personality?
• 3. What are personality theorists and researchers
  trying to accomplish? What aspects of people and
  individual differences are they trying to
  understand, and what factors are so important
  that they must be addressed in any personality
  theory?

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FIVE GOALS FOR THE PERSONALITY THEORIST

• Observation that is scientific
• Theory that is systematic
• Theory that is testable
• Theory that is comprehensive
• Bandwidth versus Fidelity
• 5. Theory that is applicable

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WHY STUDY PERSONALITY?

• Personality theories are part of the intellectual
  tradition of the past century
• Personality psychologists seek to establish a
  science-based model for the whole, integrated,
  coherent, and unique individual
• Understanding personality serves the adaptive
  purposes of prediction and control
• Personal growth

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DEFINING PERSONALITY

• The field of personality psychology addresses
  four issues that are difficult to reconcile
• Human universals
• Group differences
• Individual differences
• Individual uniqueness

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PERSONALITY DEFINED

• PERSONALITY psychological qualities that
  contribute to an individuals enduring and
  distinctive patterns of feeling, thinking, and
  behaving
• Contribute to factors that causally influence,
  and thus at least partly explain an individuals
  tendencies
• Enduring consistent over time and across
  different situations
• Distinctive features that differentiate people
  from one another
• Feeling, thinking, and behaving universal
  aspects of human functioning

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QUESTIONS ABOUT PEOPLE WHAT, HOW, AND WHY

• A complete theory of personality should yield a
  coherent set of answers to three types of
  questions
• What characteristics of the person and how
  these characteristics are organized in relation
  to one another
• How the determinants or causes of an
  individuals personality
• Why the reasons and purposes behind a persons
  thoughts, feelings, and actions

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT PERSONS SCIENTIFICALLY

• STRUCTURE stable, enduring aspects of
  personality
• Qualities that are consistent from day to day and
  from year to year
• The building blocks of personality
• Comparable to physical concepts, such as atoms
  and molecules

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT PERSONS SCIENTIFICALLY

• STRUCTURE
• Units of Analysis
• Different theories use different units to
  describe and explain the structure of personality
• Common units of analysis
• Traits
• Types
• Hierarchy
• Many theories view the structure of personality
  as being organized hierarchically
• The concept of hierarchy can be applied to
  different units of analysis used in the study of
  personality

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT PERSONS SCIENTIFICALLY

• PROCESS psychological reactions that change
  dynamically (i.e., that change over relatively
  brief periods of time)
• Brief and purposeful flow of thought, emotion,
  and action
• Personality theorists emphasize different
  dynamic, motivational processes

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT PERSONS SCIENTIFICALLY

• GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
• The study of personality development encompasses
  two challenges
• To characterize patterns of development that are
  experienced by most, if not all, people
• To understand developmental factors that
  contribute to individual differences

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT PERSONS SCIENTIFICALLY

• GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
• Genetic Determinants
• Genetic factors contribute substantially to
  personality and individual differences
• Scientific advances enable personality
  psychologists to pinpoint specific pathways of
  genetic influence

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT PERSONS SCIENTIFICALLY

• GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
• Environmental Determinants
• Family
• Peers
• Culture
• Socioeconomic Status

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT PERSONS SCIENTIFICALLY

• PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR CHANGE
• Many personality theorists were practicing
  therapists who began their careers by trying to
  remedy problems their clients faced
• The bottom line for evaluating any personality
  theory is whether its ideas have practical
  benefits for individuals and society at large

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IMPORTANT ISSUES IN PERSONALITY THEORY

• VIEW OF THE PERSON
• Theories of personality are influenced by
• Personal factors
• The worldview held by members of a given culture
  in a particular era

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IMPORTANT ISSUES IN PERSONALITY THEORY

• INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DETERMINANTS
• Theories differ in the level of importance given
  to internal and external determinants
• Virtually all personality psychologists
  acknowledge that it is necessary to consider both
  internal and external determinants of human
  functioning

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IMPORTANT ISSUES IN PERSONALITY THEORY

• CONSISTENCY OVER TIME AND ACROSS SITUATIONS
• How consistent is personality over time and
  across situations?
• What counts as an example of consistency versus
  inconsistency?
• Even if psychologists agree on what counts as
  consistency, they may disagree about the factors
  that cause personality to be consistent

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IMPORTANT ISSUES IN PERSONALITY THEORY

• UNITY OF EXPERIENCE AND ACTION THE CONCEPT OF
  SELF?
• There is a unity to our experiences and actions
• Components of the mind function as a complex
  system whose parts are interconnected
• Patterns of interconnection enable the
  personality system to function in a smooth,
  coherent manner
• Although we experience a potentially bewildering
  diversity of life events, we experience them from
  a mostly consistent perspective, that of the self

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IMPORTANT ISSUES IN PERSONALITY THEORY

• STATES OF AWARENESS ANDLEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
• The personality psychologist tries to
  conceptualize and examine elements of mental
  systems that give rise to conscious and
  unconscious processes
• Many psychologists limit their research to
  conscious mental processes, while recognizing
  that numerous aspects of mental life occur
  outside of awareness

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IMPORTANT ISSUES IN PERSONALITY THEORY

• INFLUENCE OF THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
• Psychoanalytic theory suggests that we are
  essentially prisoners of our past
• Other theorists suggest that people have the
  capacity to change due to the role of the current
  environment and to anticipatory thinking

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IMPORTANT ISSUES IN PERSONALITY THEORY

• CAN WE HAVE A SCIENCE OF PERSONALITY AND WHAT
  KIND OF A SCIENCE CAN IT BE?
• One can reasonably question whether paradigms
  from the physical sciences can be applied in an
  effort to understanding human beings
• In the hard sciences, a system is understood by
  reducing its complex whole in to simpler parts
  and showing how these parts give rise to the
  functioning of the whole
• Such analyses work wonderfully in describing and
  explaining physical systems

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IMPORTANT ISSUES IN PERSONALITY THEORY

• CAN WE HAVE A SCIENCE OF PERSONALITY AND WHAT
  KIND OF A SCIENCE CAN IT BE?
• Personality is not merely a physical system
• People construct and respond to meaning
• There is no guarantee that the traditional
  scientific procedures of reducing a system into
  its component parts enable researchers to
  understand how meaning is constructed and
  responded to
• The whole may be greater than the sum of its
  parts

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WHAT IS A PERSONALITY THEORY SUPPOSED TO DO?

• Like all scientific theories, theories of
  personality serve three key functions
• Organize existing information
• Generate new knowledge
• Identify issues that deserve to be studied

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WHAT IS A PERSONALITY THEORY SUPPOSED TO DO?

• Organize existing information
• A logical, systematic organization of research
  findings enables psychologists to make sense and
  keep track of what is known scientifically about
  personality
• Such an organization can make it easier to put
  scientific knowledge to use in applied research
  and practice

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WHAT IS A PERSONALITY THEORY SUPPOSED TO DO?

• Generate new knowledge
• A good theory helps researchers to produce new
  knowledge about topics they recognize as
  important to their field
• Darwins theory of natural selection was useful
  because it opened new pathways of knowledge about
  biological survival, extinction, and change
• In geology, the theory of plate tectonics is
  important because it fosters new knowledge about
  seismic events

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WHAT IS A PERSONALITY THEORY SUPPOSED TO DO?

• Identify new issues that are deserving of study
• A theory may identify areas of inquiry that
  psychologists might never have considered if not
  for the theory
• The sometimes radical positions that theories
  take about human functioning have led to
  important scientific and applied advances

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ON THE EXISTENCE OF MULTIPLE THEORIES THEORIES
AS TOOLKITS

• A useful metaphor for thinking about personality
  theories is that theories are like toolkits
• Each theory contains a set of tools
• Theoretical concepts
• Research methods
• Techniques for assessing personality
• Methods for conducting therapy

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ON THE EXISTENCE OF MULTIPLE THEORIES THEORIES
AS TOOLKITS

• Each element of a theory is a tool that has one
  or more functions each element enables a
  psychologist to carry out such tasks as
• Describing individual differences
• Identifying basic human motivations
• Explaining the development of self-concept
• Identifying the causes of emotional reactions
• Predicting performance in work settings
• Reducing psychological distress via therapy

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ON THE EXISTENCE OF MULTIPLE THEORIES THEORIES
AS TOOLKITS

• The toolkit metaphor has two benefits it leads a
  psychologist
• To ask good questions about personality theories
• To avoid asking bad questions
• To understand these benefits, imagine you are
  evaluating several real toolkits
• You would evaluate the toolkits by asking what
  you can do with the tools contained within each
  and how each toolkit might be improved by adding
  or removing tools
• You would not evaluate the toolkits by asking,
  Which toolkit is correct?

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ON THE EXISTENCE OF MULTIPLE THEORIES THEORIES
AS TOOLKITS

• The toolkit metaphor suggests that multiple
  theories in personality psychology might not be
  such a bad thing
• When psychologists have different toolkits, they
  might learn new things from one another
• The diversity among toolkits may improve
  theories, research methods, and applied practices