Theories of Personality Lecture One (Intro) PDF

Theories of Personality (PS338) 2024-25 Semester 1 Dr Jenny Groarke [email protected] Managing Expectations Be Patient Be Kind Extend that to others – including staff What’s expected? Assessment: 1 MCQ exam officially timetabled by the ex...

Theories of Personality (PS338) 2024-25 Semester 1 Dr Jenny Groarke [email protected] Managing Expectations Be Patient Be Kind Extend that to others – including staff What’s expected? Assessment: 1 MCQ exam officially timetabled by the exams office Attendance at lectures; reading course text chapters; participation in discussions; use of learning technologies Weekly research and revision - recommended Your input 5 ECT module (approx 100 hours work) 24 hours approx. lecture attendance...what’s left? 76 hours; independent study, reading, preparing for class participation, revising for exam How do I do well? Regular, small periods of research, study, writing Follow the instructions!  Core text (7th edition, 2016; 8 edition 2019) th Reading for this week Syllabus/Module outline on Canvas Chapter 1 of core text: ‘The study of the person’ (basic intro to personality concepts and ideas) Personality – questions we address during this module What is personality? Does personality change over time (if so, why? If not, why?) Why is personality important to understand? Making sense of the world Personality theories as problem solving tools Abnormal psychology (significant part of clinical psychology) and theories of personality – much in common How do we assess theories of personality? Testable? Human beings are complex. Are we active or passive in creating our own reality? Which view does theory favour? Maybe both? Idiographic or nomothetic? Idiographic focuses on individual elements of people and allows a comparison Nomothetic approach focuses on the group of people, looking at commonalities. (Some) Important considerations when thinking about personality Is the theory specific to a certain group of people, or can it be generalised? Are factors such as gender, culture important? Does theory try to explain pathology/ what is ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’? Is the theory developmental in focus? How is the theory useful/applicable in a practical sense? When you use the term personality, why do you use it? Personality: we all have ‘it’ (well, most of us) Things Personality Psychologists Study Psychological triad the combination of how people think, feel, and behave; Overlap with clinical psychology Normal versus extreme patterns of personality Personality disorders Both attempt to understand the whole person The whole person How all other areas of psychology come together ‘Personality is far too complex a thing to be tied up in a conceptual straight jacket’ - Gordon W. Allport Working definition (Funder, 2016) OR: An individual’s “…an individual’s characteristic patterns of unique and relatively thought, emotion, and consistent patterns of behaviour, thinking, feeling, and …together with the behaving psychological mechanisms – hidden or not – behind those patterns” (adapted from Allport, 1961) Origins Persona – Latin ‘Mask’ Evolved (Allport) – What’s underneath? The Goals of Personality Psychology Mission: Impossible Explain the whole person in his or her daily environment. THINK: of an important behavior that you performed recently and ALL of the reasons for that behavior.  Course topics Measurement of personality and research methods Trait theory Evolutionary/biological theory Social Cognitive theory Learning theory Psychoanalytic theory Object relations and other Neo-Freudian theories Humanistic theory Personality disorders (DSM-V) Cultural issues Basic Approaches to Personality Basic approaches or paradigms Trait approach: how people differ psychologically Biological approach: understand the mind in terms of the body Psychoanalytic approach: focus on the unconscious mind and internal mental conflict Basic Approaches Cont’d Learning and cognitive processes approach Learning: how behavior changes as a result of rewards, punishments, and other life experiences Classic behaviorism: focuses on overt behavior Social learning: how observation and self- evaluation determine behavior Basic Approaches Phenomenological approach: focus on people’s conscious experience of the world Humanistic: how conscious awareness produces uniquely human attributes; understand meaning and basis of happiness Cross-cultural: how the experience of reality might be different across cultures Competitors or Complements? Major advocates of basic approaches have claimed their approach explains everything worth explaining. They are not mutually exclusive. They address different questions or key concerns. Each ignores many key concerns. One Big Theory (OBT) To explain everything But it’s difficult to do everything well. Advantages and Disadvantages Accounting for the whole person and real-life concerns Advantage: inclusive, interesting, and important Disadvantage: over-inclusiveness or unfocused research Basic approaches Advantage: good at addressing certain topics Disadvantage: poor at addressing other topics or ignores them Pigeonholing versus Appreciation of Individual Differences Personality psychologists emphasize individual differences. Negative: pigeonholing Positive: leads to sensitivity and respect for individual differences Other areas of psychology treat people as if they were the same. Personality = individual differences that are 1. Psychological in nature 2. fall outside the intellectual domain 3. Are enduring dispositions, rather than transient states 4. Form relatively broad or generalised patterns. Psychology’s model of Individual Differences Personality characteristics can emerge from biological and social influences, from genes and the environment, and most often, both.