Personality Theories
Reading Notes






September 4, 2008
Chapter One
Personality is a subfield of psychology
Personality psychology can be defined as the scientific study of the
psychological forces that make people uniquely themselves
Eight key aspects
o Unconscious aspects
o Ego forces
o Biological being
o Conditioned/shaped
o Cognitive dimension
o Traits/skills/predispositions
o Spiritual dimension
o Interaction
Personality and space
o Modern personality psychologists are scientific in the sense that they
attempt to use methods of scientific inference (using systematically
gathered evidence) to test theories
o Some scientists believe that rigorous study of personality must become
mathematical and involve numbers – for instance, statistics such as
correlations
 Correlations tell us about associates but not about causal
relationships
Where do personality theories come from
o The careful observations, deductive approach
o Systematic empirical research, inductive approach
o Analogies and concepts borrowed from related disciplines
o All theories develop in part by deduction, in part by induction, and in
part by analogy
o It is thus difficult to prove an approach entirely “wrong”
Preview of the perspectives
o Overview of the 8 perspectives
 Psychoanalytic: attention to unconscious influences;
importance of sexual driven even in nonsexual spheres
 Neo-analytic/ego: emphasis on the self as it struggles to cope
with emotions and drives on the inside and the demands of
others on the outside
 Biological: focuses on tendencies and limits imposed by
biological inheritance; can be easily combined with most other
approaches
 Behaviorist: can force a more scientific analysis of the learning
experiences that shape personality
 Cognitive: captures active nature of human thought; uses
modern knowledge from cognitive psychology
 Trait: good individual assessment techniques
Humanistic: appreciates the spiritual nature of a person;
emphasizes struggles for self-fulfillment and dignity
 Interactionist: understands that we are different selves in
different situations
o Are personality aspects really separable?
 Skinner = behaviorist
o Theater and self-presentation
 Indicated a fascination with the true (unmasked) nature of the
individual
o Religion
 Western religious traditions assert that humankind was created
in God’s image and from the beginning has faced temptation
and moral struggle
 Eastern philosophies and religions emphasize self-awareness
and spiritual self-fulfillment
 Religious influences on western conceptions of human nature
began eroding during the renaissance especially during the 17th
century
o Evolutionary biology
 Charles Darwin following on the ideas of others, argued that
individual characteristics that evolved were those that enable
the organism to pass on genes to offspring
 The key contribution of Darwinian evolutionary theory to
personality psychology was the way in which it freed thinking
from assumptions of divine control
o Testing
 Knowledge of testing and measurement applied to personality
by such psychometricians as Guilford soon combined with
insights emerging from clinical work and with approaches
evolving in experimental psychology to form the basis of
modern personality theory and research
o Modern theory
 The Gestalt psychologist emphasized the integrative and active
natures of perception and thought, suggesting that the whole
may be greater than the sum of its parts
 The third main sculptor of modern personality theory was
Henry Murray
 Murray spent most of his career at the Harvard
Psychology Clinic, where he could attempt to integrate
clinical issues with theory and assessment issues
 Comprehensive orientation
 Lewin
 Emphasizing that the whole human being should be the
focus of the study
Some basic issues: the unconscious, the self, uniqueness, gender, situations,
and culture



o What is the unconscious?
o What is the self?
o Does each individual require a unique approach?
 Nomothetic: that is seeks to formulate laws
 Idiographic: the study of individual cases
o Are there differences between men and women?
o The person vs the situation
o To what extent is personality culturally determined?
Personality in context
o Today most personality research has a distinct flavor of western
culture in general and mainstream American culture in particular
o Barnum effect: the tendency to believe vague generalities about ones
personality
o Pascal “ the more intelligence one has the more people on finds
original. Commonplace people see no difference between men”