1. Understanding personality in psychology

2.  Introduction  Definition  Importance of personality  Personality origins  Personality assessment  Drawbacks of personality assessment  conclusion

3.  Psychology is a study about humans, to find out what influences them to behave the way they do  One of the most important factors to this is their personality  How does one find out another’s personality?

4.  personality is the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that make a person unique. Personality rises from within an individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life

5.  As previously stated personality is the prime contributing factor to why a person acts and thinks the way that they do.  Personality helps to choose one’s career in life by knowing whether they are suited to it or not

6.  type theory the early perspectives on personality. this theory suggests that there are a limited number of personality types which are related to biological influences.  Psychodynamic theory emphasises the influence of the unconscious. these are things that one does unknowingly. There are many different theories about how personality develops. Here are some of the ideas:

7.  Behavioural theories suggests that personality is a result of interaction between the individual and the environment. things that are around an individual play a large part in determining their personality

8. There are essentially 3 methods to assessing an individual’s personality:  The clinical interview  Objective personality assessment  Projective personality assessment

9.  Way of assessing a patient’s personality  Aims to measure an individual’s behaviour  Two people sit down and exchange words, for the interviewer to try and understand the patient’s problem in order to diagnose it  Consists of structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews.

10.  Professional type of assessment with controlled, consistent questions measured by scores.  Tests measure a person’s normal performance  Cut-score point on the scale

11.  Aimed to reveal hidden personality traits.  Reveals person’s inner feelings and conflicts from previous life experiences  Rorschach test interprets patient’s responses to discover personality characteristics

12.  Tests may be dehumanizing.  Tests may invade privacy.  Tests may be biased.  Tests may be culturally unsuitable.

13.  Psychology has come a great way in figuring out how and why humans act the way they do but as seen above some methods have to be re-addressed to cover one more step to the ultimate goal of personality assessment perfection

14.  About.com. (2011). Behavioural psychology. Available from: psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychol ogy/Behavioral_Psychology.htm (accessed 21 September 2011)  Schneiderman, R. (2010). Career Planning. Why Is Personality Important? Available from: www.planningzone.com/120/personality/per sonality_intro.htm (accessed 22 September 2011) www.planningzone.com/120/personality/per sonality_intro.htm