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SECTIONS WILL MEET THIS WEEK Sep 5 & 6

SECTIONS WILL MEET THIS WEEK Sep 5 & 6. Welcome to Psychology 290 !! INTRODUCTION TO PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY Instructor: Verónica Benet-Martínez. How to pronounce my name? Verónica Benet-Martínez BERr O NICA BA NET MAR TIN ES. BARCELONA, SPAIN. Where is Verónica’s accent from?.

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SECTIONS WILL MEET THIS WEEK Sep 5 & 6

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  1. SECTIONS WILL MEET THIS WEEKSep 5 & 6

  2. Welcome to Psychology 290 !! INTRODUCTION TO PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY Instructor: Verónica Benet-Martínez

  3. How to pronounce my name?Verónica Benet-MartínezBERrONICA BANETMARTINES

  4. BARCELONA, SPAIN Where is Verónica’s accent from?

  5. DO YOU FIND THESE QUESTIONS INTERESTING? • Why we are all different from each other? • Where do these differences come from? • How can we best measure and organize these differences? • What do people want? • How would I be different if I had grown up in a different culture? With a different gender/race/social class?

  6. LET’S LOOK AT THE SYLLABUS NOW

  7. WHAT IS PERSONALITY? • EXAMPLES OF POPULAR USES OF THE WORD • ORIGIN OF THE WORD • FORMAL DEFINITION • FOUR MAJOR ELEMENTS OF PERSONALITY • Motives, traits, cognitions, context • TWO BASIC METHODS • Idiographic & Nomothetic • Prescientific methods

  8. EXAMPLES OF POPULAR USES OF THE WORDTypical uses: ‘He has a good personality’ (social skills)‘She has a lot of personality’ (social impact)‘He has a neurotic personality’ (strongest quality)

  9. ORIGIN OF THE WORD • Greek word ‘persona’ (mask): character represented in a play

  10. ..… but what is personality anyway?

  11. Jane and Alex both are college students taking an intro course in psychology. Their instructor returns the first midterm in class where both have received a D grade. • Jane seems distressed and upset. She approaches the instructor, sweats as she talks, her hands shake, she whispers an apology, she is at the edge of tears. She spends most of the rest of the day alone in her dormitory, cuts classes, and writes a long entry in her diary. • Alex rushes out of the classroom and quickly starts to joke about the course and the instructor. He goes on his activities for the day (sports and social meetings) without thinking much about the grade. Later he decides to drop the psychology class.

  12. The previous vignette illustrates how: • Each of us is unique • We are not unique in random ways • That thread of consistency within each of us is personality! • Non-technical definition of personality: • A person’s general style of interacting with the world

  13. Technical definition of personality: “Dynamicorganization within the individual of those psychophysiological systems that determine his/her characteristicpattern of behavior, thoughts, and feelings”(Gordon Allport) -Dynamic -->active -Organization -->system, rather than an accumulation of charact. -Psychophysical -->mental and physiological -Determine -->causal force (influences what we do) -Characteristic -->unique and typical -Pattern -->consistent style -Behaviors, etc -->multidimensional

  14. WHAT IS PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY? Scientific study of personality processes and individual differences Most personality psychologists carry out research, make assessments, and develop theories. Ultimate goal? … understanding of individuals

  15. Question for the class: Why is the study of personality either fascinating or frustrating to a lot of people?

  16. Human’s intra- and inter-personal behavior is determined by a super-complex network of proximal and distal causes which are very hard to tease apart.

  17. FOUR MAJOR ELEMENTS OF PERSONALITY • MOTIVES • COGNITIONS • TRAITS (& TEMPERAMENT) • CONTEXT • (see figure 1.1 in page 7 of textbook)

  18. PERSONALITY UNITS AND COURSE STRUCTURE Stable Variable Inner, private, subjective 2. Cognition & Self e.g. self-concept, beliefs, ideals Major theorists: Rogers, Mischel 3. Motivation e.g. motives, defenses Major theorists: Freud, McClelland Outer, public, objective 1. Traits & Temperament e.g. extraversion, neuroticism Major theorists: Jung, Eysenck, Gray 4. Social Context e.g., culture, ethnicity, power, gender Major theorists: Markus, Stewart

  19. How do these four elements work? • Developmental sequence: from temperament to cognitions • They all interact in predicting behavior • Researchers tend to focus on one or two at the time (focus of convenience). • Personality as a homeostatic system • >traits (default, baseline) • >cognitions (information to operate the machine) • >motives (directionality, tasks) • >context (outside pressures) • …..when the machine breaks down or losses homeostasis we have a problem! (feelings of depression, anxiety, adjustment problems)

  20. TWO BASIC METHODS IN PERSONALITY • Idiographic: person centered; studies the within-subject organization of personality (eg. case study) • Nomothetic: variable centered; studies relations between variables for the general population (eg. correlational methods) • ---> Pre-scientific methods? Physiognomy and phrenology

  21. radical biological determinism! PHYSIOGNOMY PHRENOLOGY

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