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Theories of Personality
PSYSC 623 - Fall 2013
Lecture: W 6:30-9:00
Instructor Dr. Thomas Holtgraves
NQ108
285-1716
EMail: 00t0holtgrav@bsu.edu
Office Hours: 3:00 - 4:00 MW/By appointment
Web pages:
Instructor: http://00t0holtgrav.iweb.bsu.edu/623/index.HTML
Text: http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/sites/0073531901/student_view0/index.html
Required text: Personality Psychology (4th edition) by Randy Larsen & David Buss. McGrawHill (2010).
Additional readings: Copies of additional assigned articles will be on reserve at the University
library. These materials will be available electronically via the library (http://liblink.bsu.edu/cgibin/login.pl) or via my web page for this course
(http://00t0holtgrav.iweb.bsu.edu/623/index.HTML)
Course Description: The goal of this course is provide students with a broad introduction to
the field of personality psychology. This will be accomplished with text readings, lectures,
writing assignments, and class discussion. More specifically, this course will familiarize
students with some of the major theoretical approaches to personality, the assessment of
personality, and the operation of selected personality processes. The applicability of personality
research, theorizing, and assessment for culturally diverse populations will be considered.
Course Format: A lecture format will usually be followed. However, questions and discussion
during class are encouraged. It is expected that students will have read the assigned material
before it is discussed in class. Fifteen percent of the final grade will be based class participation
(exclusive of the paper presentation).
Disability Adaptations and Accommodations: If you need course adaptations or
accommodations because of a disability, if you have emergency medical information to share
with me, or if you need special arrangements in case the building must be evacuated, please
make an appointment with me as soon as possible. My office location and hours are listed
above.
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Statement of Academic Honesty: For learning to be meaningful and worthwhile it must be based
on honesty. Learning that is not fundamentally honest is incomplete, systematically flawed and
potentially damaging to all of us. Simply put: if you cheat, you don’t learn. Academic
dishonesty, or cheating, damages students and universities because it adds suspicion and
resentment to academic competition, and it distorts the meaning of grades. Ball State University
has taken a very definitive position on academic dishonest, as laid out in Section VIII.B of the
Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities. Academic dishonest, as defined in the Code,
includes, but is not limited to, using unauthorized aids during a test, submitting another’s work as
your own, and submitting previously presented work as newly executed work without my
knowledge or authorization. I am committed to assigning grades based on students’ honest
efforts on exams and other class assignments. All suspected incidents of academic dishonesty
will be pursed through the established channels.
Paper and class report: A term paper is required and will be due the last class period. The
paper should be 10 to 15 pages (typed and double spaced). The topic is open but it must deal
with some aspect of personality (broadly defined) and it must be approved by me. A short
summary outline of the paper should be submitted to me by the fourth class period. In general,
the paper should be a review and critique of some recognizable research area in personality
psychology. Finally, each student will be required to make a 10-15 minute class presentation
(using power point) based on their paper.
Exams: There will be two in-class essay exams (mid-term and final), each worth 100 points.
Exams will cover all assigned readings and material discussed in class. Exact dates for the
exams will be announced in class.
Grading: There are 350 possible points distributed as follows:
Exam 1:
100 points
Exam 2:
100 points
Paper/presentation
100 points
Participation/attendance 50 points
Course Outline
Topic
Introduction & Overview
Text
Readings
Additional
Readings
Ch. 1
Funder (2001) (recommended)
Ch. 9
Weston (recommended)
Intrapsychic
Freud; overview
and defense mechanisms
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Topic
Text
Readings
Defense mechanisms; research
and individual differences
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Additional
Readings
Baumeister, Dale, & Sommer (1998)
Geraerts et al., (2007).
Terror Management Theory
Greenberg et al. (2001)
Laundau et al. (2004)
http://www.tmt.missouri.edu/
Conscious and Unconscious
Processing
Caprara & Cervone ch. 11
Ch. 10
Dijksterhuis & Nordgren (2006)
Critcher & Ferguson (2013)
Erdelyi (2006; recommended)
Trait
Trait overview
Ch. 3
Ch. 4
Gurven et al. (2013)
Back et al. (2010)
Walther et al., (2008)
Trait controversies
Ch. 5
Social desirability and
Self-presentation
Funder (2006)
Leary & Allen (2011)
Traits vs. situations
Traits and Motives
Ch. 11
Barlow et al. (2013)
Winter et al. (1998) (Recommended)
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MIDTERM EXAM
Social Cognitive
Cognitive - control
Ch. 12
Twenge, Zhang, & Inn (2004)
Kelly, schemas, and the neurological
underpinnings of mind reading
Caprara & Cervone Ch 9
Downdey, Zaki, & Mitchell (2008)
Self and Culture
Ch. 14
Baumeister, Campbell,
Kreuger, & Vohs (2003)
Ch. 15 (recommended)
Ch. 17
Markus & Kitayama (2010)
Biological
Physiology and
heritability
Ch. 7
Alves, Fukusima, & Aznar-Casanova
(2008)
DeYoung et al., (2010)
Evolutionary Approaches
Ch. 6
Champagne & Mashoodh (2009)
Ch. 8
Neese (1990)
Harris (2003)
Emotion and SWB
Ch. 13
Boehm & Lyubomirsky; Newman &
Larsen (pp. 123-141 in Newman&Larsen)
FINAL EXAM
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Required/Recommended Readings (all on electronic and 2hr/overnight reserve at Bracken;
not
all are required reading this semester).
Alloy, L. B., Abramson, L. Y., & Francis, E. L. (1999). Do negative cognitive styles confer
vulnerability to depression? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8, 128-132.
Alves, N. T., Fukusima, S. S., & Aznar-Casanova, J. A. (2008). Models of brain asymmetry in emotional
processing. Psychology and Neuroscience, 1, 63-66.
Back, M. D., Stopfer, J. M., Vazire, S., Gaddis, S., Schmukle, S. C., Egloff, B., & Gosling, S. D. (2010).
Facebook profiles reflect actual personality, not self-idealization. Psychological Science, 21, 372-374.
Barlow, M., Woodman, T., & Hardy, L. (2013). Great expectations: Different high-risk activities satisfy
different motives. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Online first. doi:
10.1037/a0033542.
Baumeister, R. F. (2007). Is there anything good about men? Invited address. American Psychological
Association Convention.
Baumeister, R. F., Bushman, B. J., & Campbell, W. K. (2000). Self-esteem, Narcissism, and
aggression: Does violence result from low self-esteem or from threatened egotism? Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 26-29.
Baumeister, R. F., Campbell, J. D., Krueger, J. I., & Vohs, K. D. (2003). Does high self-esteem
cause better performance, interpersonal success, happiness, or healthier lifestyles? Psychological
Science in the Public Interest, 4, 1-44.
Baumeister, R. F., Dale, K., & Sommer, K. L. (1998). Freudian defense mechanisms and
empirical findings in modern social psychology: Reaction formation, projection, displacement,
undoing, isolation, sublimation, and denial. Journal of Personality, 66,
1081-1124.
Bouchard, T. J. Jr. (2004). Genetic influence on human psychological traits. Current Directions
in Psychological Science, 4, 148-151.
Caprara, G. V., & Cervone, D. (2000). Personality: Determinants, dynamics, and potentials.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Champagne, F. A., & Mashoodh, R. (2009). Genes in context; Gene-environment interplay and the
origins of individual differences in behavior. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18, 127131.
Costa, P. T. Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Four ways five factors are basic. Personality and
Individual Differences, 13, 653-665.
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Critcher, C. R., & Ferguson, J. J. (2013, June 24). The cost of keeping it hidden: Decomposing
concealment reveals what makes it depleting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Online
first. doi: 10.1037/a0033468
DeYoung, C. G., Hirsh, J. B., Shane, M. S., Papademetris, X., Rajeevan, N., & Gray, J. R. (2010).
Psychological Science, 21, 820-828.
Diener, E., Suh, E. M., Lucas, R., & Smith, H. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of
progress. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 276-302.
Diener, E., & Seligman, M. (2004). Beyond money: Toward an economy of well-being. Psychological
Science in the Public Interest, 5, 1-31.
Dijksterhuis, Ap & Nordgren, L. (2006). A theory of unconscious thought. Perspectives on
Psychological Science, 1, 95-109.
Donnellan, M. B., Trzesniewski, K. H., Robins, R. W., Moffitt, R. E. & Caspi, A. (2005). Low
self-esteem is related to aggression, antisocial behavior, and delinquency. Psychological
Science, 16, 328-335.
Downey, G., Zaki, J., & Mitchell, J. (2008). Different toolkits for different mind-readers: A socialcognitive neuroscience perspective on personality and social relationships. In F. Rhodewalt (Ed.),
Personality and social behavior (pp 149-176). New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.
Dunning, D., Heath, C., & Suls, J. M. (2004). Flawed self-assessment: Implications for health,
education, and the workplace. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5, 69-106.
Eley, T. C. (1997). General genes: A new theme in developmental psychopathology. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 90-95.
Erdelyi, M. H. (2006). The unified theory of repression. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29,
499-551.
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition. Chapter 4: Social categories and
schemas. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Funder, D. C. (2001). Personality. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 197-221.
Funder, D. C. (2006). Toward a resolution of the personality triad: Persons, situations, and
behaviors. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 21-34.
Galdi, S., Arcuri, L., & Gawronski, B. (2008). Automatic mental associations predict future
choices of undecided decision-makers. Science, 321, 1100-1102.
Geraerts, E., Schooler, J. W., Merckelbach, H., Jelicic, M., Hauer, B. J. A., & Ambadar, Z.
(2007). The reality of recovered memories. Psychological Science, 18, 564-568.
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Greenberg J., Arndt J., Schimel J., Pyszczynski T., & Solomon S., (2001). Clarifying the
function of mortality-salience induced worldview defense: Renewed suppression or reduced
accessibility of death-related thoughts? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 7076.
Gurven, M., von Rueden, C., Massenkoff, H. K., & Vie, M. L. (2012, December 17). How
universal is the Big 5? Testing the five-factor model of personality variation among foragerfarmers in the Bolivian Amazon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Online
first. doi: 10.1037/a0030841.
Harris, Christine, R. (2003). A review of sex differences in sexual jealousy, including self-report
data, psychophysiological responses, interpersonal violence, and morbid jealousy.
Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 102-128.
Harris, Christine, R. (2005). Male and female jealousy, still more similar than different: Reply to
Sagarin (2005) . Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 76-86.
Heine, S. J. (2001). Self as cultural product: An examination of East Asian and North American
selves. Journal of Personality, 69, 881-906.
Hogan, R., & Nicholson, R. A. (1988). The meaning of personality test scores. American
Psychologist, 43, 621-626.
Holden, R. R., Wood, L. L., & Tomashewski, L. (2001). Do response time limitations counteract
the effect of faking on personality inventory validity? Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 81, 160-169.
Kelly, G. A. (1970). A brief introduction to personal construct theory. In D. Bannister (ed.),
Perspectives in personal construct theory (pp. 1-29). New York: Academic Press.
Kenrick, D. T., & Funder, D. C. (1991). The person_situation debate: Do personality traits really
exist? In V. Derlega, B. Winstead, & W. Jones (Eds.), Personality (pp. 150-174). Chicago:
Nelson_Hall.
Kihlstrom, J. F. (1990). The psychological unconscious. In L. Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of
personality: Theory and research (pp. 445-464). New York: Guilford.
Kotov, R., Gamez, W., Schmidt, F., & Watson, D. (2010). Linking “big” personality traits to
anxiety, depressive, and substance use disorders: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin,
136, 768-821.
Larson, R. (1991). Emotion. In V. Derlega, B. Winstead, & W. Jones (Eds.), Personality (pp.
407-432). Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Miller, C. H.,
Ogilvie, D. M., & Cook, A. (2004). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and
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reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush. Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1136-1150.
Leary, M. R. & Allen, A. B. (2011). Personality and persona: Personality processes in selfpresentation. Journal of Personality, 79, 1191-1218.
Markus, H., & Kitayama, S. (2010). Cultures and selves: A cycle of mutual constitution.
Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5, 420-430.
McAdams, D. P. (1995). What do we know when we know a person? Journal of Personality,
63, 365-395.
McAdams, D. P. (1997). A conceptual history of personality psychology. In R. Hogan, J.
Johnson, & S. Briggs (Eds.). Handbook of personality psychology (pp. 4-39). San Diego:
Academic Press.
McAdams, D. P. (2008). Personal narratives and the life story. In John, Robins, & Pervin
(Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (3rd edition). New York: Guilford
Press.
McAdams, D. P., & Pals, J. L. (2006). A new big five: Fundamental principles for an integrative
science of personality. American Psychologist, 61, 204-217.
McCrae, R., & John, O. (1992). An introduction to the five_factor model and its applications.
Journal of Personality 60, 172-215.
Moffitt, T. E., (2005). The new look of behavioral genetics in developmental psychopathology:
Gene-environment interplay in antisocial behaviors. Psychological Bulletin, 131, 533-554.
Neese, R. M. (1990). The evolutionary functions of repression and the ego defenses. The
Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, 18, 260-285.
Newell, B. R., Wong, K. Y., Cheung, J. C. H., & Rakow, T. (2009). Think, blink or sleep on it?
The impact of modes of thought on complex decision making. Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 62, 707-732.
Newman, L. S., Duff, K. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). A new look at defensive projection:
Thought supression, accessibility, and biased person perception. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 72, 980-1001.
Paulus, D. L. (2002). Socially desirable responding: The evolution of a construct. In H. I.
Braun, D. N. Jackson, & D. E. Wiley (Eds.), The role of constructs in psychological and
educational measurement (pp. 49-69). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum
Rentfrow, P. J., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2008). A theory of the emergence, persistence, and
expression of geographic variation in psychological characteristics. Perspectives on
Psychological Science, 3, 339-369.
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Roberts, B. W., & Pomerantz, E. M. (2004). On traits, situations, and their integration: A
developmental perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8, 402-416.
Robinson, M. D. (2004). Personality as performance: Categorization tendencies and their
correlates. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13, 127-129.
Rowe, D. C. (1999). Heredity. In V. Derlega, B. Winstead, & W. Jones (Eds.) Personality (2nd
ed., pp. 66-100). Chicago: Nelson_Hall.
Sagarin, B. J. (2005). Reconsidering evolved sex differences in jealousy: Comment on Harris
(2003). Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9, 62-75.
Schiffer, F., Teicher, M.H., Anderson, C., Tomoda, A., Polcari A., Navalta, C. P., & Andersen,
S. L. (2007). Determination of hemispheric emotional valence in individual
subjects: A new approach with research and therapeutic implications. Behavioral and Brain
Functions, 3:13 (doi:10.1186/1744-9081-3-13). Available at:
http://www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com/content/pdf/1744_9081_3_13.pdf
Schimel, J., Greenberg, J., & Martens, A. (2003). Evidence that projection of a feared trait can
serve a defensive function. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 969-979.
Strick, M., Dijksterhuis, A., & van Baaren R. B. (2010). Unconscious-thought effects take place
off-line, not on-line. Psychological Science, 21, 484-488.
Triandis, H. C. (1989). The self and social behavior in differing cultural contexts.
Psychological Review, 96, 506-520.
Twenge, J. M., Zhang, L., & Im, C. (2004). It’s beyond my control: A cross-temporal metaanalysis of increasing externality in locus of control, 1960-2002. Personality and Social
Psychology Review, 8, 308-319.
Walther, J. B., Van Der Heide, B., Kim, S-Y., Westerman, D., & Tong, S. T. (2008). The role of
friends’ appearance and behavior on evaluations of individuals on Facebook: Are we known
by the company keep? Human Communication Research, 34, 28-49.
Weston, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically
informed psychological science. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 333-371.
Winter, D. G., John, O. P., Steward, A. J., Klohnen, E. C., & Duncan, L. E. (1998). Traits and
motives: Toward an integration of two traditions in personality research. Psychological
Review, 105, 230-250
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Possible Term Paper Topics
Note: Listed below are broad topics (term papers should be more narrow) that are not covered
explicitly in the course. For other possible topics see the attached list of personality measures,
the review articles, and/or the text and additional required/recommended readings.
Personality and social media
Behavioral Epigenetics
Implicit Attitudes
Terror Management Theory
Narrative approaches to personality (self as story)
Parental influences on children (shared environment effects; e.g., Harris)
Birth order and personality
Culture and personality
Evolutionary explanations of personality and/or specific personality processes.
Moral character and/or development
Personality and relationships (e.g., effects of personality on relationships and vice versa)
Personality correlates of psychological disorders
Personality and health
Personality development
Motives (e.g., power, achievement, affiliation, personal strivings)
Aggression
Genetic influences on specific aspects of personality
Gene by Environment models
Interaction concepts of personality (Sullivan, Leary, Wiggins)
Optimism/Pessimism