Understanding Personality: Theories and Assessment

What is Personality?

Personality refers to an individual's characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Personality psychology seeks to understand how personality develops and influences behavior.

Major Approaches in Personality Psychology

• The psychoanalytic approach emphasizes the unconscious and early childhood experiences.
• The trait approach examines stable personality characteristics and traits.
• The biological approach studies how genetics, nerves, and neurotransmitters relate to personality.
• The phenomenological approach focuses on individuals' subjective experiences.
• Learning theories examine how experience and reinforcement shape personality.
• Cognitive theories look at how thoughts, beliefs, and expectations influence personality and behavior.

Personality theories can be seen as complementary rather than competing. An integrative "One Big Theory" may be needed to fully explain personality.

Scientific Methods in Personality Psychology

Personality psychology utilizes the scientific method and empiricism, relying on objective, measurable evidence to test hypotheses and develop theories.

Types of Personality Data

• Self-judgments/self-report: Self-report can lack accuracy but provides internal subjective experience.
• Informant report: Informant report provides an outside perspective but can be biased.
• Life data: Life data examines real-world outcomes but has less control than lab studies.
• Behavioral data

Research Methods in Personality Psychology

• Case studies provide an in-depth look at an individual but lack generalizability.
• Correlational studies examine relationships between variables but cannot determine causation.
• Experimental studies manipulate an independent variable to see effects on a dependent variable and can demonstrate causation but have limited generalizability.

Replication supports scientific findings. The file drawer problem refers to the tendency for non-significant results to not get published.

Applied Settings for Personality Assessment

• Clinical diagnosis
• Employment screening
• Career counseling
• Forensic evaluations

Key Concepts in Psychoanalytic Theory

Freud's Topographical Model

• Unconscious
• Preconscious
• Conscious

Freud's Stages of Psychosexual Development

• Oral
• Anal
• Phallic
• Latency
• Genital

Jung's Concepts

• Collective unconscious
• Archetypes:
  • Anima, animus, shadow, hero, mother
• Individuation

Erikson's Stages

• Trust vs. mistrust
• Identity vs. role confusion
• Intimacy vs. isolation
• Generativity vs. stagnation

Projective Techniques

• Rorschach Inkblot Test
• Thematic Apperception Test