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Chapter 1

Chapter 1. PERSONALITY THEORY: FROM EVERYDAY OBSERVATIONS TO SYSTEMATIC THEORIES. 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?

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Chapter 1

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  1. Chapter 1 PERSONALITY THEORY: FROM EVERYDAY OBSERVATIONS TO SYSTEMATIC THEORIES

  2. 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?

  3. 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

  4. 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

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

  6. PERSONALITY DEFINED • PERSONALITY =psychological qualities that contribute to an individual’s enduring and distinctive patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving • Contribute to = factors that causally influence, and thus at least partly explain an individual’s 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

  7. 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 individual’s personality • Why = the reasons and purposes behind a person’s thoughts, feelings, and actions

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. 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

  13. ANSWERING QUESTIONS ABOUT PERSONS SCIENTIFICALLY GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT • Environmental Determinants Family Peers Culture Socioeconomic Status

  14. 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

  15. 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

  16. 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

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. 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

  20. 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

  21. 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

  22. 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

  23. 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

  24. 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

  25. 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 • Darwin’s 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

  26. 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

  27. 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

  28. 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

  29. 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?”

  30. 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

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