1. PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
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2. PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Topics Covered
Questions of Personality
What Is the Personality System?
What Is the Field of Personality Psychology?
Why Study Personality?
How Is this Course Organized?

3. What Are Your Questions?
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Are Your Questions?
What Have You Wondered About Yourself?
What Have You Wondered About Others?
What Is Personality to You?

4. PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Three Big Questions
These inter-related questions (and others) tie ancient
philosophy to contemporary personality psychology

5. PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Who Am I?
Origins
Temple at Delphi… “Know Thyself”
Socrates…Interested only in self-knowledge
Secondary Realization
It is hard to know oneself!
Unconscious influences
Today
Implicit personality theory
Personality psychology

6. How and Why are People Different?
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
How and Why are People Different?
Origins
Characterology: The literary study of different personalities
Theophrastus: “The flatterer is a person who will say as he walks with another, “Do you observe how others are looking at you? This happens to no man in Athens but you.”’
Theophrastus (again): “The Garrulous man is one that will sit down close beside somebody he does not know, and begin talk with a eulogy of his own life, and then relate a dream he had the night before, and after that tell dish by dish what he had for supper. As he warms to his work he will remark that we are by no means the men we were, and there is a new ship in town, and…(description continues in orig.)”

7. How and Why are People Different? (Cont.)
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
How and Why are People Different? (Cont.)
Origins (Continued)
Humoural Theory: The attempt to find biological bases for individual differences
Developed by Hippocrates; Galen
Four Types
Sanguine (even-tempered; blood)
Choleric (irritable; yellow-bile
Melancholic (depressed; black bile)
Phlegmatic (low energy; phlegm).

8. PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
How and Why are People Different? (Cont.)
Contemporary
Assessment of personality
Mental measurement
The study of individual differences

9. PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
What Will My Future Be?
Origins
Since the ancient oracle at Delphi, people have wondered about their futures
Contemporary
Personality psychology tells us
given characteristic, x
how will x influence life outcomes?

10. Wundt’s Views: Psychology’s Job
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Wundt’s Views: Psychology’s Job
Wilhelm Wundt: Founder of experimental psychology
The discipline of psychology studies various mental systems one by one
Sensation
Perception
Memory
Etc.

11. Wundt’s Views: Personality’s Job
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Wundt’s Views: Personality’s Job
...to organize...

12. Analyzing Wundt’s Conception
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Analyzing Wundt’s Conception
Personality is a system
A system is a set of interrelated parts.
Examples of systems:
The jewelry organizer (top, right)
A boiler (to right)
Personality

13. Definition of Personality
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Definition of Personality
Personality is the organized, developing, system within the individual that represents the collective action of that individual’s major psychological subsystems.

14. The Molecular Molar Continuum
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
The Molecular Molar Continuum
Molar
Sociology
Psychology
Biology
Chemistry
Molecular
Physics

15. Personality Amidst Its Subsystems
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Personality Amidst Its Subsystems
Socio-
logical
Level
 Groups Including or Interacting with Personality
Psycho-logical/
Sym-
bolic
Internal
Personality
External Situation
Bio-logical
Nervous System
Situational Elements

16. Occupations contributing to personality psychology
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Occupations contributing to personality psychology

17. Most Common Training Programs
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Most Common Training Programs
Central Training
Ph.D. programs in Personality
Ph.D. programs in Personality and Social Psychology
Related Training
Ph.D. programs in Clinical and Counseling Psychology
M.B.A. & Ph.D. programs in Organizational Behavior
M.D. programs in Psychiatry
Ed.D. programs in Educational Psychology

18. Rationale for Studying Personality Psychology
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Rationale for Studying Personality Psychology
Knowledge for knowledge’s sake
Applications to assessment
Applications to prediction and selection
Applications to change

19. Early Field-Wide Personality Frameworks
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
Early Field-Wide Personality Frameworks
Field-wide frameworks provide an outline of a discipline and what it studies
Earlier frameworks in personality psychology:
: Theory by Theory approach
Freud
Jung
Sullivan
Cattell
Rogers
Maslow
, Theoretical Perspective by Perspective approach
Psychodynamic
Humanistic
Trait
Social-Cognitive
Problems with these approaches:
Different theorists (or perspectives) conflicted
An emphasis on theory often overlooked relevant research which didn’t fit neatly into a theory

20. New Field-Wide Frameworks of Personality
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
New Field-Wide Frameworks of Personality
The Systems Framework for Personality Psychology (e.g., Mayer, 1997)
What is personality?
What are its parts?
How is it organized?
How does it develop?
McAdams’ (1996) Levels of Knowing
What are a person’s traits? (the psychology of the stranger)
What are a person’s current concerns?
What is a person’s life story? (the most personal knowledge)

21. The Four Topics of this Course
PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY
CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
The Four Topics of this Course
The four topics follow the systems framework for personality psychology
The four topics:
Identifying the personality system
Introduction
Theory and research
Parts of personality
Here, you may feel interested…but frustrated by fragmentation
Many small parts to cover
Personality organization
We will pull the parts together by examining structure
Look at dynamics
Personality development
Provides a second way to pull together what we have learned
Speaks to a person’s past and future

22. PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?
~Enjoy the Course!~