Personality Ch. 1

the scientific study of the psychological forces that make people uniquely themselves .

1. unconscious aspects, that is forces that are not in our moment to moment awareness, such as copying behavior we have seen in our parents 2. ego forces, these provide a sense of identity or self, we try to maintain a consistency in our behavior 3.biological, each person has a unique genetic, physical, physiological and temperamental nature 4. conditioning/shaping by the environment and our experiences within it 5. cognitive, people actively think about and respond to the world around them in different ways 6. traits/skills/predispositions each of us has specific abilities and inclinations (isn't this what we're supposed to be explaining?) 7. spiritual dimension, this causes people to ponder the nature of their existence 8. interaction, a person's nature is an ongoing engagement with the environment .

using systematically gathered data .

a mathematical index of the degree of agreement between two measures .

where conclusions follow logically from premises and assumptions .

concepts are developed from the careful collection of data and observations .

induction, deduction and analogy .

Different theories often predict behavior that is similar. In hard sciences it is possible - maybe even common - for one new theory to overthrow another. Personality psychology does not have a single umbrella paradigm .

1. comprehensive - it explains more than one phenomenon 2. parsimonious - it explains with simplicity 3. falsifiability - it must be possible to test it form correctness 4. productive - it should generate new ideas, perdicitons and research .

attention to unconscious influences and importance given to sexual drives even in non-sexual areas of engagement .

emphasis on the self as it drives to cope with emotions and drives that are internally generated and the demands of others on the outside .

focus on tendencies and limits imposed by biological inheritance; easily combined with most other approaches .

Emphasis on a more scientific analysis of the learning experiences that shape personality .

Emphasis on the active nature of human thought, draws on modern cognitive psychology .

Focuses on good individual assessment techniques .

Appreciation of the spiritual nature of a person; emphasizes struggles for self-fulfillment and dignity .

Understanding that we are different selves in different situations. .

a person's characteristic emotional and motivational nature .

the level of this reflects confidence in the ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behavior, and social environment. An idea of Albert Bandura. .

Aristotle's student Theophrastus was the first to write character sketches. Greek and Roman actors wore masks to emphasize they were playing characters and were not themselves. The writer's of the text see this as a fascination or emphasis on the true nature of the actor. kierkegaard says he who has not thrown away his mask cannot love. (By Shakespeare's time masks were rarely used in theatre. Pirandello has his characters come out of scene and address the audience as themselves this is 1900ish. These ideas have influenced existential and humanist philosophers though they have sought a more universal scientific explanation than a temporary insight that theatre offers. .

Some aspects of personality can be traced to religious ideas. Abrahamic religions see a person's nature as primarily spiritual, that they have a divine purpose and are involved in a battle between good and evil. These views often discourage scientific examination of personality because they presume personality is a product of nature rather than a divine product. Modern theologians are more open to integrating scientific views in their world views. Eastern religions emphasize awareness and spiritual self-fulfillment which influenced psychologists like Maslow who were humanist/existentialists. Most research on personality is little concerned with spiritual matters. Religious influence started to wane with Descartes, Spinoza and Liebniz in the 1600s. These guys begin to debate mind/body, emotion/motivation, perception/consciousness. This shows up in questions of the integration and unity of an individual's personality. .

The most direct influences on modern psyc come from developments in biological sciences. Most notably the theory of evolution. Darwin said that traits and adaptations which promoted reproduction would be passed on and that those that did not would be less likely to be passed on. What was key here was that it freed psyc from the idea that there was divine control in personality. Once people began to see human activity as subject to the forces of nature and not supernatural forces they saw it as a valid area for intellectual examination. Without this Freud would not have been able to suggest that there are evolved impulses lurking below consciousness or Gordon Allport would not have suggested that biological subsystems would manifest as personality. An until recently less well studied side conclusion of Darwin's is that animals would have personalities, though they would be less developed than human personalities. We now know that a chimp who rises to the top of the status hierarchy will show big changes in behavior patterns. In a meta analysis of animal personality research show that the dimensions of extroversion, neuroticism and agreeableness generalize across species. .

This begins with testing of American troops in WW I. The army was concerned with weeding out 'imbeciles' and also with predicting who would deal poorly with stress. These tests were influenced by Terman and Yerkes who were interested in IQ testing. These tests were culturally biased and discriminated - in the form of under estimating their IQs - against people from cultures less similar to standard American culture. Intelligence and creative abilities are often seen more as skills or qualities similar to physical strength whereas personality is more about traits like extroversion. But intellectual abilities are central to personality and so are included/considered part of personality. Within a couple of decades testing and measurement of personality by psychometricians had combined with insights from therapeutic work to form the basis of modern personality theory. .

This took shape in the 1930s influenced by Gordon Allport, Kurt Kewin and Henry Murray. Allport came to psyc from classics and philosophy and focused on he uniqueness of the individual. He looked for the underlying organization of individual personalities and did not break personality down into sensation or innate drives. (What about traits?) Lewin came from the Gestalt tradition in Europe which emphasized the integration of perception and thought. They were interested in this kind of stuff. You have to remember a pair of words sugar + lake. They have nothing in common, but you can imagine the sugar dissolving in a lake and in your imagination you create a whole. (I do not know what this means) Lewin looked for what underlay observable behavior. He emphasized that the forces affecting a person change from time to time and situation to situation. Henry Murray tried to integrate the experiences of clinical psyc - experiences with real patients - with theory and assessment issues. He believed in longitudinal research. He place importance on needs and motivations and the dynamic nature of an individual responding to a complex environment. Together they shaped the modern view that the whole human being should be the focus of study not parts and not collections of organisms. Their conclusion is that a successful approach to studying personality has to acknowledge that there are conscious, unconscious, biological and social factors operating at any time. Opposing theories were promoted by B. F. Skinner and Clark Hull. Also influential in the 1930s was Margaret Mead's book Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. In it she showed masculinity was not always associated with aggressiveness and femininity was not always associated with cooperation. Personality is not the same across all cultures. .

the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment .

the branch of psychology which principally concerns itself with the study of human lives and the factors which influence their course, and which investigates individual differences. .

internal forces that influence our behavior but of which we have no conscious awareness .

The text offers no definition. Is it something attempting to fulfill itself as Rogers suggested, is it a secondary perception arising from biological drives, is it created by early experiences and childhood influences? .

seeking to create laws - that is what science is .

to focus on/study individual cases .

There are inconsistencies in every person's behavior, but some people are much more consistent about their behavior than others. Some people are honest in almost all situations, some far less so. So how much are people influenced by context? .

Which parts of personality are more open to cultural influences? .

the tendency to believe vague generalizations about one's personality .

In the 30s and 40s American and Nazi psychologists were independently studying personality and their understanding of certain traits reflected their world views. What Americans called rigidity the Germans called stability. What Americans called individuality the Germans called eccentricity. .