PERSONALITY THEORY:

CHAPTER 1 FROM EVERYDAY

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A
PERSON?

Personality Psychology
The scientific study of the psychological
processes that make people uniquely
themselves.

Activity #1: Definition

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DEFINING PERSONALITY
Personality: Psychological qualities that contribute to an individual’s
enduring and distinctive patterns of feeling, thinking, and behaving
• “Enduring”: consistent across time and across different situations
• “Distinctive”: features that differentiate people from one another
• “Contribute to”: factors that causally influence, and thus at least partly explain, an
individual’s tendencies
• “Feeling, thinking, and behaving”: all aspects of persons

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SCOPE OF PERSONALITY THEORY
& RESEARCH
A complete theory of personality should yield a coherent set of
answers to these three types of questions
• “What” = characteristics of the person and how these characteristics are
organized in relation to one another
• “How” = the determinants of a person’s personality
• “Why” = causes of, and reasons behind, an individual’s behavior

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS
ABOUT PERSONS
SCIENTIFICALLY
STRUCTURE = stable, enduring aspects of personality
• Qualities that endure from day to day and from year to year
• The building blocks of personality theory
• Comparable to concepts such as atoms and molecules in physics

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS
ABOUT PERSONS
SCIENTIFICALLY
STRUCTURE
Units of Analysis
• Different theories use different units of analysis to analyze personality structure
• Popular units of analysis:
• Traits
• Types

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS
ABOUT PERSONS
SCIENTIFICALLY
PROCESS = psychological reactions that change dynamically; that
change over relatively brief periods of time
• Rapid, dynamic flow of motivation, emotion, and action
• Personality theorists emphasize different 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,
persons
• To understand developmental factors that contribute to individual differences

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS
ABOUT PERSONS
SCIENTIFICALLY
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT, cont’d.
• Genetic Determinants
• Environmental Determinants
o Culture
o Social Class
o Family
o Peers

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ANSWERING QUESTIONS
ABOUT PERSONS
SCIENTIFICALLY
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND BEHAVIOR CHANGE
Many theorists were therapists who began their careers by trying to
solve problems their clients faced
For any theory, a crucial “bottom line” for evaluating the theoretical
approach is to ask whether its ideas are of practical benefit to
individuals and to society at large

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QUESTIONS OF PERSONALITY
THEORIES
• Philosophical view of the person: Are human beings good or bad
in essence?
• How consistent is personality from across situations and time?
• To what extent our actions are driven internally or externally?
• How do form a coherent sense of self?
• To what extent are we aware of that sense of self?

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EVALUATING PERSONALITY
THEORIES
Like all scientific theories, theories of personality can serve three
key functions
• Organize existing information
• Generate new knowledge about important issues
• Identify entirely new issues that are deserving of study
• Example: Humanistic approach to personality

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EVALUATING PERSONALITY
THEORIES
Organize existing information
• A logical, systematic ordering of facts would enable one to keep track of what
scientists know about personality
• This can make it easier to put that knowledge to use
• Example: social-cognitive theory of personality

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EVALUATING PERSONALITY
THEORIES
Generate new knowledge about important issues
• A good theory is generative
• It helps people to generate new knowledge about the topics they recognize as
important to their field
• Example: Darwin’s theory of natural selection was useful because it opened new
pathways of knowledge about biology

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EVALUATING PERSONALITY
THEORIES
Identify entirely new issues that are deserving of study
• A theory may identify areas of study that people might never have known about
were it not for the theory
• Theories’ fascinating and sometimes radical hypotheses about human nature
have prompted much valuable new investigation into human nature
• Example: Psychoanalytical theory

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THE PERSONALITY THEORIES:
AN INTRODUCTION
THE CHALLENGE OF CONSTRUCTING A PERSONALITY THEORY
Theorists must:
• Pursue a challenging set of scientific goals that go beyond intuition
• Address a broad set of “What, how, and why” questions about personality
structure, processes, development, and change
• Consider determinants of personality ranging from the molecular to the
sociocultural, and conceptual issues ranging from the philosophical view of
persons that is embedded in their theory

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THE PERSONALITY THEORIES:
AN INTRODUCTION
• Psychoanalytical and psychodynamic theory
• Phenomenological and humanistic theories
• Trait approaches
• Biological and evolutionary perspective
• Behaviorism and learning
• Personal construct theory
• Social cognitive theories
• Personality in the context

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