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Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality Psychology
A short history
Theophrastus (327 BC - 287 BC)
- Student of Plato
- Collection of personality sketches “Characters” = personality types
- “primitive descriptions” of personality traits/types Ideas, but
no
Renewed interest in the 19th century
empirical
- Galton (1822-1911, cousin of Darwin) and Cattell (1860-1944, first psychology professor): research
sensorimotor tasks
- Binet (1857-1911): individual differences in higher orde processes are stronger than
those on elementary sensorimotor tasks, first IQ-Test (Stanford-Binet test)
- James (1890) and Freud (1923): WW I Recruitment, detection of “combat stress”
(PTSS)
- 1932: first psychology journal
- 1937: real starting point
o Gordon Allport and Henry Murray = authors of the first personality of psychology
textbooks
Trait-descriptive adjectives: adjectives that can be used to describe characteristics of people, they refer
to several different aspects of people, e.g. “domineering” to signify person’s position, “creative” to
describe the quality of mind and nature of the products we produce etc.
Inner personality: social effects, qualities of the mind, qualities of the body, relations to other, inner
goals
The Big Five Personality Traits
Find more resources on this topic on
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Personality Psychology = psychology of differences btw. People
- General psychology (e.g. biological psy, social psy,) = general laws of behavior
- Is not an isolated discipline has implications for disciplines across psychology
Describing Differences
- (Especially) Interpersonal/ interindividual= difference btw. People
o Intergroup differences = btw. Groups (e.g. gender, culture, age)
- (to a lesser extent) = Intrapersonal/intraindividual = how does one
person vary from time to time / from situation to situation (about
conditions/situations/times)
- Interindividual differences in intraindividual differences
- People differ in Traits (Big Five), Motives, Emotions (positive/negative,
Duration/fluctuation), Self
Explanation of differences
- Proximal explanations = factors that co-occur in time with the phenomena you want to explain
(here-and-now approach)
- Distal explanations = factors that are further away in time (in our individual past or way beyond
our own past evolutionary past)
Personality: set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and
relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with and adaptations to the intrapsychic,
physical, and social environments; stable over time and consistent over situations
Psychological traits: characteristics describing ways people differ from or are similar to each other, they
describe the average tendencies of a person; they describe people and help in explaining their behavior
but also predicting it for future situations; forces that influence how we think, act and feel
Questions concerning how many fundamental traits there are, how they are organized, where their
origins lie and also what kind of correlations and consequences they have
Psychological mechanisms: more about the processes of personality, involving inputs, decision rules and
outputs; information-processing procedures involving the cognition
- Refers to the processes of personality
- 3 key ingredients:
input -> decision rules (if then) -> output
- A psychological mechanism may make people more sensative to certain kinds of information
from the environment (input)
- It may make them more likely to think about specific options (decission rules)
- It may guide their behavior towards certain categories of action (outputs)
- At any point in time, only a few are activated.
o Some are only activated under particular conditions.
Some personality traits and mechanisms might only activate in specific situations, e.g. courageousness
Save time with the right summary on
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Within the Individual: personality is something a person caries with him or herself over time and from
one situation to the next
- personalities are certainly influenced by our environments (especially by the significant others in
our lives), but we carry the same personalities from situation to situation in our lives
- the important sources of personality reside within the individual
o somewhat stable over time
o somewhat consistent over situations.
Organized and relatively enduring: no random set of traits or mechanisms, linked in a coherent fashion,
consistent over time and situations
Person-environment interaction: connections between personalities of people and the environments
they inhabit; includes perceptions, selections, evocations and manipulations
perception = how we see or interpret an environment, subjective to own personality
selection = manner in which we choose situations to enter, preferences due to personality
evocations = reactions we produce in others (often unintentionally)
manipulations = intentional attempt to influence others behavior, thoughts and feelings
Adaption: a central feature of personality for accomplishing goals, coping, adjusting and dealing with
challenges and problems; through functional properties (e.g. worrying which seems maladaptive at first)
rewarding characteristics may result (e.g. social support)
Environment: the physical environment often poses challenges for people; threats to survival evoke
behaviors that help us avoid or safety interact with these environmental threats to survival, e.g.
shivering in the cold or fears of heights or spiders
The social environment also poses adaptive challenges, e.g. job search, desired emotional closeness etc.
The intrapsychic environment (‘within the mind’) consisting of memories, dreams, desires, fantasies etc.
provides a critical context for understanding human personality (same as the other two)
Our personality determines in part:
- How we behave
- How we fell
- How we perceive ourselves
- How we think about others
- Which environments we select
Levels of Personality: all human beings are in certain respects 1. like all others (human nature level), 2.
like some others (level of individual and group differences), 3. like no others (individual uniqueness level)
human nature = typical traits and mechanisms of our species are possessed by (nearly) everyone, e.g.
language skills, social interactions (need to belong, capacity for love)
Discuss this document with others on
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individual and group differences = individual differences between people but also individual differences
between groups where common features exist but individuals differ
individual uniqueness = every individual has qualities not shared by another person in the world;
nomothetic research involves statistical comparisons between individual and groups whereas
idiographic research focuses on a single subject
Debate: should individuals be studied nomothetic or idiographic?
- Nomothetic = as individual instances of general characteristics that are distributed in the
population, involves statistical comparisons, typically applied to identify universal characteristics
and individual or group differences
- Idiographic = “the description of one”, mostly results in case studies or biography of a single
person
Domains of knowledge: specialty areas of science, at some point integrating the finding in different
areas and fitting them all together; six distinct domains of knowledge about human nature
dispositional domain = central goal is to identify and measure the most important ways in which
individuals differ from each other (also the origin of difference and its development and maintenance)
biological domain = biological systems provide behavior, thought and emotion, general domains are
genetics, psychophysiology (nervous system) and evolution (functional aspects of personality)
intrapsychic domain = mental mechanisms (most known is Freud’s psychoanalysis), includes defence
mechanisms (repression, denial and projection), conflicts within the person’s own mind, these forces
often operate outside of the realm of consciousness
- Modern research: power motives, achievement motives, intimacy motives
cognitive-experiential domain = cognition and subjective feelings, important factor is the self and self-
concept, intelligence and the goal-orientation of humans, happens consciously
social and cultural domain = personality affects and is affected by social and cultural context, a big
component of the social context are the gendered positions in the world (male/female), different
cultures bring out different facets of our personality
adjustment domain = how we cope, adapt and adjust to the environment, certain personality features
(here disorders) are related to poor adjustment
- “normal” personality functioning can be deepened by examining the disorders of personality
As personality psychologists focus on different domains and use different theoretical perspectives, some
can appear to contradict each other, e.g. Freud views human personality consisting of irrational sexual
and aggressive instincts whereas the cognitive perspective views humans as rational scientists,
anticipating, predicting and controlling events both and more can built the whole person
What makes a good (personality) theory?
Theory Belief Astrology is a collection of beliefs about the relationship btw. Personality and position
of the stars at birth based on faith
Quiz yourself with flashcards on
Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality Psychology
A short history
Theophrastus (327 BC - 287 BC)
- Student of Plato
- Collection of personality sketches “Characters” = personality types
- “primitive descriptions” of personality traits/types Ideas, but
no
Renewed interest in the 19th century
empirical
- Galton (1822-1911, cousin of Darwin) and Cattell (1860-1944, first psychology professor): research
sensorimotor tasks
- Binet (1857-1911): individual differences in higher orde processes are stronger than
those on elementary sensorimotor tasks, first IQ-Test (Stanford-Binet test)
- James (1890) and Freud (1923): WW I Recruitment, detection of “combat stress”
(PTSS)
- 1932: first psychology journal
- 1937: real starting point
o Gordon Allport and Henry Murray = authors of the first personality of psychology
textbooks
Trait-descriptive adjectives: adjectives that can be used to describe characteristics of people, they refer
to several different aspects of people, e.g. “domineering” to signify person’s position, “creative” to
describe the quality of mind and nature of the products we produce etc.
Inner personality: social effects, qualities of the mind, qualities of the body, relations to other, inner
goals
The Big Five Personality Traits
Find more resources on this topic on
,dmuwodmfdmuwodmfdmuwodmf-bc8dbf8e4367e1b99abb53c29a5c799b
Personality Psychology = psychology of differences btw. People
- General psychology (e.g. biological psy, social psy,) = general laws of behavior
- Is not an isolated discipline has implications for disciplines across psychology
Describing Differences
- (Especially) Interpersonal/ interindividual= difference btw. People
o Intergroup differences = btw. Groups (e.g. gender, culture, age)
- (to a lesser extent) = Intrapersonal/intraindividual = how does one
person vary from time to time / from situation to situation (about
conditions/situations/times)
- Interindividual differences in intraindividual differences
- People differ in Traits (Big Five), Motives, Emotions (positive/negative,
Duration/fluctuation), Self
Explanation of differences
- Proximal explanations = factors that co-occur in time with the phenomena you want to explain
(here-and-now approach)
- Distal explanations = factors that are further away in time (in our individual past or way beyond
our own past evolutionary past)
Personality: set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and
relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with and adaptations to the intrapsychic,
physical, and social environments; stable over time and consistent over situations
Psychological traits: characteristics describing ways people differ from or are similar to each other, they
describe the average tendencies of a person; they describe people and help in explaining their behavior
but also predicting it for future situations; forces that influence how we think, act and feel
Questions concerning how many fundamental traits there are, how they are organized, where their
origins lie and also what kind of correlations and consequences they have
Psychological mechanisms: more about the processes of personality, involving inputs, decision rules and
outputs; information-processing procedures involving the cognition
- Refers to the processes of personality
- 3 key ingredients:
input -> decision rules (if then) -> output
- A psychological mechanism may make people more sensative to certain kinds of information
from the environment (input)
- It may make them more likely to think about specific options (decission rules)
- It may guide their behavior towards certain categories of action (outputs)
- At any point in time, only a few are activated.
o Some are only activated under particular conditions.
Some personality traits and mechanisms might only activate in specific situations, e.g. courageousness
Save time with the right summary on
,dmuwodmfdmuwodmfdmuwodmf-bc8dbf8e4367e1b99abb53c29a5c799b
Within the Individual: personality is something a person caries with him or herself over time and from
one situation to the next
- personalities are certainly influenced by our environments (especially by the significant others in
our lives), but we carry the same personalities from situation to situation in our lives
- the important sources of personality reside within the individual
o somewhat stable over time
o somewhat consistent over situations.
Organized and relatively enduring: no random set of traits or mechanisms, linked in a coherent fashion,
consistent over time and situations
Person-environment interaction: connections between personalities of people and the environments
they inhabit; includes perceptions, selections, evocations and manipulations
perception = how we see or interpret an environment, subjective to own personality
selection = manner in which we choose situations to enter, preferences due to personality
evocations = reactions we produce in others (often unintentionally)
manipulations = intentional attempt to influence others behavior, thoughts and feelings
Adaption: a central feature of personality for accomplishing goals, coping, adjusting and dealing with
challenges and problems; through functional properties (e.g. worrying which seems maladaptive at first)
rewarding characteristics may result (e.g. social support)
Environment: the physical environment often poses challenges for people; threats to survival evoke
behaviors that help us avoid or safety interact with these environmental threats to survival, e.g.
shivering in the cold or fears of heights or spiders
The social environment also poses adaptive challenges, e.g. job search, desired emotional closeness etc.
The intrapsychic environment (‘within the mind’) consisting of memories, dreams, desires, fantasies etc.
provides a critical context for understanding human personality (same as the other two)
Our personality determines in part:
- How we behave
- How we fell
- How we perceive ourselves
- How we think about others
- Which environments we select
Levels of Personality: all human beings are in certain respects 1. like all others (human nature level), 2.
like some others (level of individual and group differences), 3. like no others (individual uniqueness level)
human nature = typical traits and mechanisms of our species are possessed by (nearly) everyone, e.g.
language skills, social interactions (need to belong, capacity for love)
Discuss this document with others on
, dmuwodmfdmuwodmfdmuwodmf-bc8dbf8e4367e1b99abb53c29a5c799b
individual and group differences = individual differences between people but also individual differences
between groups where common features exist but individuals differ
individual uniqueness = every individual has qualities not shared by another person in the world;
nomothetic research involves statistical comparisons between individual and groups whereas
idiographic research focuses on a single subject
Debate: should individuals be studied nomothetic or idiographic?
- Nomothetic = as individual instances of general characteristics that are distributed in the
population, involves statistical comparisons, typically applied to identify universal characteristics
and individual or group differences
- Idiographic = “the description of one”, mostly results in case studies or biography of a single
person
Domains of knowledge: specialty areas of science, at some point integrating the finding in different
areas and fitting them all together; six distinct domains of knowledge about human nature
dispositional domain = central goal is to identify and measure the most important ways in which
individuals differ from each other (also the origin of difference and its development and maintenance)
biological domain = biological systems provide behavior, thought and emotion, general domains are
genetics, psychophysiology (nervous system) and evolution (functional aspects of personality)
intrapsychic domain = mental mechanisms (most known is Freud’s psychoanalysis), includes defence
mechanisms (repression, denial and projection), conflicts within the person’s own mind, these forces
often operate outside of the realm of consciousness
- Modern research: power motives, achievement motives, intimacy motives
cognitive-experiential domain = cognition and subjective feelings, important factor is the self and self-
concept, intelligence and the goal-orientation of humans, happens consciously
social and cultural domain = personality affects and is affected by social and cultural context, a big
component of the social context are the gendered positions in the world (male/female), different
cultures bring out different facets of our personality
adjustment domain = how we cope, adapt and adjust to the environment, certain personality features
(here disorders) are related to poor adjustment
- “normal” personality functioning can be deepened by examining the disorders of personality
As personality psychologists focus on different domains and use different theoretical perspectives, some
can appear to contradict each other, e.g. Freud views human personality consisting of irrational sexual
and aggressive instincts whereas the cognitive perspective views humans as rational scientists,
anticipating, predicting and controlling events both and more can built the whole person
What makes a good (personality) theory?
Theory Belief Astrology is a collection of beliefs about the relationship btw. Personality and position
of the stars at birth based on faith
Quiz yourself with flashcards on
