PERSONALITY STUDY GUIDE
Personality Study Guide
PSYC 553
Chapter 1
What are the Fundamental Questions Addressed by Personality Psychology?
● Contributions of Hippocrates, Theophrastus to the discipline
- Hippocrates: developed a fourfold classification of personality, dividing people into
cholerics, melancholics, phlegmatics, and sanguines. This was the first biologically
focused explanation.
- Theophrastus: his questions about various characters of Greeks living under the same sky
brought “characterology”
Characterology, the definition of the four humours and their personality types
- Characterology, emerging from Theophrastus, is a literary endeavor to describe the
different sorts of individuals who existed.
- Choleric: described as tall, thin, and easily irritated. Held grudges
- Melancholic: contemplative in a sad, resigned way. They lacked energy and expected the
worst outcomes.
- Sanguine: even-tempered, generally cheerful and hopeful, and displayed a ruddy
complexion. Could be assertive but not angry.
- Phlegmatic: slept too much and perceived to be dull, cowardly, sluggish, and overweight.
● What questions motivate the study of personality psychology?
- “Who Am I?”
- “What Will My Future Be?”
- “How Shall I Make Myself More of a Person?”
● Implicit Personality Theory
- Describes our unstated assumptions and ideas about how people feel, think, and behave.
-
What is Personality?
● What role did Wilhelm Wundt view for personality?
- Viewed psychology as smaller systems built into larger ones in a hierarchy of complexity.
Founder of Experimental Psychology.
● What was Gordon Allport’s role in defining personality and the origins of the term personality?
- Defined the idea of ideographic - “each individual is uniquely organized & simply cannot
be compared to another individual”
● What is the definition of personality used in this book and course?
- Personality is the organized, developing system within the individual that represents the
collective action of that individual’s major psychological subsystems.
- Self control
- Action implementation
- Knowledge guidance
- Motives and emotion
● What other definitions of personality are mentioned?
- Personality: Wundt’s definition, a system that organized psychological systems.
, - Individual differences: emphasizes that the proper study of personality is the analysis of
how people differ from one another.
- Karl Menninger: it means the individual as a whole. “His height and weight and loves
and hates and blood pressure and reflexes, his smile and hopes…”
● What are some of the advantages of the personality definition used in the book compared to, say,
the individual differences definition?
- the individual differences definition reduces personality psychology to a single focus, while
some psychologists are interested in describing consistency in personality across all individuals
● What is the personality systems framework?
- Internal- external dimension: a separate private inner personality exists within the
individual’s skin. Outside observations can only be seen through external experiences.
- Develops from infancy to maturity.
○ Part 1 → Introduction
■ What theories / methods apply?
○ Part 2 → Parts of Personality
■ Attributes of a person (label)
○ Part 3 → Personality Organization
■ Personality Divided
■ Key personality processes
○ Part 4 → Personality Development
● What is a system?
- A system is any set of interrelated parts. Examples within personality could be mental
mechanisms, mental models, or traits.
● Apply the molecular-molar dimension to other scientific areas of study.
○
What is the Field of Personality Psychology?
● Henry Murray - coined the term “personological/personology” (20th century)
● Freud - psychodynamic psychology (the parts of the mind influenced each other)
● Adler - wrote about “individual psychology”
● Jung- wrote about psychoanalytic psychology
● How are Freud, Adler, and Jung similar?
- They’re similar because they were published alongside studies of sensation, memory, and
other topics.
● Where do personality psychologists work?
Personality Study Guide
PSYC 553
Chapter 1
What are the Fundamental Questions Addressed by Personality Psychology?
● Contributions of Hippocrates, Theophrastus to the discipline
- Hippocrates: developed a fourfold classification of personality, dividing people into
cholerics, melancholics, phlegmatics, and sanguines. This was the first biologically
focused explanation.
- Theophrastus: his questions about various characters of Greeks living under the same sky
brought “characterology”
Characterology, the definition of the four humours and their personality types
- Characterology, emerging from Theophrastus, is a literary endeavor to describe the
different sorts of individuals who existed.
- Choleric: described as tall, thin, and easily irritated. Held grudges
- Melancholic: contemplative in a sad, resigned way. They lacked energy and expected the
worst outcomes.
- Sanguine: even-tempered, generally cheerful and hopeful, and displayed a ruddy
complexion. Could be assertive but not angry.
- Phlegmatic: slept too much and perceived to be dull, cowardly, sluggish, and overweight.
● What questions motivate the study of personality psychology?
- “Who Am I?”
- “What Will My Future Be?”
- “How Shall I Make Myself More of a Person?”
● Implicit Personality Theory
- Describes our unstated assumptions and ideas about how people feel, think, and behave.
-
What is Personality?
● What role did Wilhelm Wundt view for personality?
- Viewed psychology as smaller systems built into larger ones in a hierarchy of complexity.
Founder of Experimental Psychology.
● What was Gordon Allport’s role in defining personality and the origins of the term personality?
- Defined the idea of ideographic - “each individual is uniquely organized & simply cannot
be compared to another individual”
● What is the definition of personality used in this book and course?
- Personality is the organized, developing system within the individual that represents the
collective action of that individual’s major psychological subsystems.
- Self control
- Action implementation
- Knowledge guidance
- Motives and emotion
● What other definitions of personality are mentioned?
- Personality: Wundt’s definition, a system that organized psychological systems.
, - Individual differences: emphasizes that the proper study of personality is the analysis of
how people differ from one another.
- Karl Menninger: it means the individual as a whole. “His height and weight and loves
and hates and blood pressure and reflexes, his smile and hopes…”
● What are some of the advantages of the personality definition used in the book compared to, say,
the individual differences definition?
- the individual differences definition reduces personality psychology to a single focus, while
some psychologists are interested in describing consistency in personality across all individuals
● What is the personality systems framework?
- Internal- external dimension: a separate private inner personality exists within the
individual’s skin. Outside observations can only be seen through external experiences.
- Develops from infancy to maturity.
○ Part 1 → Introduction
■ What theories / methods apply?
○ Part 2 → Parts of Personality
■ Attributes of a person (label)
○ Part 3 → Personality Organization
■ Personality Divided
■ Key personality processes
○ Part 4 → Personality Development
● What is a system?
- A system is any set of interrelated parts. Examples within personality could be mental
mechanisms, mental models, or traits.
● Apply the molecular-molar dimension to other scientific areas of study.
○
What is the Field of Personality Psychology?
● Henry Murray - coined the term “personological/personology” (20th century)
● Freud - psychodynamic psychology (the parts of the mind influenced each other)
● Adler - wrote about “individual psychology”
● Jung- wrote about psychoanalytic psychology
● How are Freud, Adler, and Jung similar?
- They’re similar because they were published alongside studies of sensation, memory, and
other topics.
● Where do personality psychologists work?
