PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Getting Started
What is Personality?
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Copyright © 2007 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Getting Started
Topics Covered
• Questions of Personality
• What Is the Personality System?
• What Is the Field of Personality
Psychology?
• Why Study Personality?
• How Is this Course Organized?
Copyright © 2007 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Fundamental Questions of Personality
What Are Your Questions?
• What Have You
Wondered About
Yourself?
• What Have You
Wondered About
Others?
• What Is Personality to
You?
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Fundamental Questions of Personality
Three Big Questions
1. Who Am I?
2. How Do People Differ?
3. What is My Future?
These inter-related questions (and others) tie ancient
philosophy to contemporary personality psychology
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Fundamental Questions of Personality
Who Am I?
• Origins
– Temple at Delphi… “Know Thyself”
– Socrates…Interested only in self-knowledge
• Secondary Realization
– It is hard to know oneself!
– Unconscious influences
• Today
– Implicit personality theory
– Personality psychology
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Fundamental Questions of Personality
How and Why are People Different?
• Origins
– Characterology: The literary study of different
personalities
• Theophrastus: “The flatterer is a person who will say as he
walks with another, “Do you observe how others are looking
at you? This happens to no man in Athens but you.”’
• Theophrastus (again): “The Garrulous man is one that will sit
down close beside somebody he does not know, and begin
talk with a eulogy of his own life, and then relate a dream he
had the night before, and after that tell dish by dish what he
had for supper. As he warms to his work he will remark that
we are by no means the men we were, and there is a new
ship in town, and…(description continues in orig.)”
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Fundamental Questions of Personality
How and Why are People Different? (Cont.)
• Origins (Continued)
– Humoural Theory: The attempt to find biological
bases for individual differences
• Developed by Hippocrates; Galen
• Four Types
–
–
–
–
Sanguine (even-tempered; blood)
Choleric (irritable; yellow-bile
Melancholic (depressed; black bile)
Phlegmatic (low energy; phlegm).
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Fundamental Questions of Personality
How and Why are People Different? (Cont.)
• Contemporary
– Assessment of personality
– Mental measurement
– The study of individual differences
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Fundamental Questions of Personality
What Will My Future Be?
• Origins
– Since the ancient oracle at Delphi, people
have wondered about their futures
• Contemporary
– Personality psychology tells us
• given characteristic, x
• how will x influence life outcomes?
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Is the Personality System?
Wundt’s Views: Psychology’s Job
• Wilhelm Wundt: Founder of experimental
psychology
• The discipline of psychology studies
various mental systems one by one
– Sensation
– Perception
– Memory
– Etc.
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Is the Personality System?
Wundt’s Views: Personality’s Job
Personality
Sensation
and
Perception
Sensation Perception
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Motives
and
Emotion
Memory
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
Emotion
Emotion
and
Cognition
Cognition
Consciousness
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Is the Personality System?
Analyzing Wundt’s Conception
• Personality is a system
• A system is a set of
interrelated parts.
• Examples of systems:
– The jewelry organizer
(top, right)
– A boiler (to right)
– Personality
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Is the Personality System?
Definition of Personality
Personality is the
organized,
developing, system
within the individual
that represents the
collective action of
that individual’s
major psychological
subsystems.
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Self
Control
Some Psychological Systems…
Knowledge
Guidance
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
Action
Implementation
Motives and
Emotions
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Is the Personality System?
The Molecular Molar Continuum
Molar
Sociology
Psychology
Biology
Chemistry
Molecular
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Physics
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Is the Personality System?
Personality Amidst Its Subsystems
Sociological
Level
Psychological/
Symbolic
Level
Biological
Level
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Groups Including or Interacting
with Personality
Internal
Personality
Nervous System
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
External
Situation
Situational
Elements
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Is the Field of Personality Psychology?
Comparative
biologists
Occupations
contributing to
personality
psychology
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Professors
who teach
personality
psychology
Researchers in
artificial
intelligence
Psychotherapists
interested in
personality
psychology
Educational
psychologists
studying
learning
styles
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
Human
resource
personnel
studying job
performance
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Is the Field of Personality Psychology?
Most Common Training Programs
• Central Training
– Ph.D. programs in Personality
– Ph.D. programs in Personality and Social Psychology
• Related Training
– Ph.D. programs in Clinical and Counseling
Psychology
– M.B.A. & Ph.D. programs in Organizational Behavior
– M.D. programs in Psychiatry
– Ed.D. programs in Educational Psychology
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Why Study Personality Psychology?
Rationale for Studying Personality Psychology
•
•
•
•
Knowledge for knowledge’s sake
Applications to assessment
Applications to prediction and selection
Applications to change
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
How Is This Course Organized?
Early Field-Wide Personality Frameworks
•
•
Field-wide frameworks provide an outline of a discipline and what it studies
Earlier frameworks in personality psychology:
– 1958-1968: Theory by Theory approach
•
•
•
•
•
•
Freud
Jung
Sullivan
Cattell
Rogers
Maslow
– 1968-1998, Theoretical Perspective by Perspective approach
•
•
•
•
Psychodynamic
Humanistic
Trait
Social-Cognitive
– Problems with these approaches:
• Different theorists (or perspectives) conflicted
• An emphasis on theory often overlooked relevant research which didn’t fit neatly into a
theory
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
How Is This Course Organized?
New Field-Wide Frameworks of Personality
• The Systems Framework for Personality Psychology
(e.g., Mayer, 1997)
–
–
–
–
What is personality?
What are its parts?
How is it organized?
How does it develop?
• McAdams’ (1996) Levels of Knowing
–
–
–
–
What is personality?
What are a person’s traits? (the psychology of the stranger)
What are a person’s current concerns?
What is a person’s life story? (the most personal knowledge)
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
How Is This Course Organized?
The Four Topics of this Course
•
•
The four topics follow the systems framework for personality
psychology
The four topics:
1. Identifying the personality system
•
•
Introduction
Theory and research
2. Parts of personality
•
•
Here, you may feel interested…but frustrated by fragmentation
Many small parts to cover
3. Personality organization
•
•
We will pull the parts together by examining structure
Look at dynamics
4. Personality development
•
•
Provides a second way to pull together what we have learned
Speaks to a person’s past and future
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
How Is This Course Organized?
~Enjoy the Course!~
© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon
Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach