1. What Is Personality Psychology?
Chapter One
What Is Personality Psychology?

2. “Personality” Everyday meaning: Formal meaning:
Typically characterizes specific personalities
Typically characterizes specific people
Formal meaning:
Abstract construct
Broadly applicable

3. Why Use the Construct? 1. Conveys a sense of consistency or continuity
Across time
Across situations

4. Why Use the Construct?
2. Suggests internal origins of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
Personality psychology emphasizes the role of person
variables on behavior
Two Sources of Influence
Person
Situation
Behavior

5. Why Use the Construct?
3. Helps in predicting and understanding behavior
4. Captures a sense of personal distinctiveness

6. A Working Definition
“Personality is a dynamic organization, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings.”
—Gordon Allport (1961)

7. Key Features of the Definition
Personality…
has an organized structure
involves active processes
has psychological and physical components
helps determine how people relate to the world
demonstrates patterns and consistencies
manifests itself across a range of thoughts, feelings, behaviors

8. Fundamental Issues in Personality Psychology
Individual Differences
Represent differences in people
Examples: aggressiveness, sociability, optimism
Intrapersonal Functioning
Represents stable processes that underlie thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
Examples: goal or motivational processes

9. Theory in Personality Purpose of a theory: Explain what is known
Social learning theory: Helps explain differences in aggressiveness
Predict new information or events
Biological theories of personality: Might predict similarities in behaviors of parents and children

10. Interplay Between Theory and Research
Theory guides research
THEORY
Research tests theory
-verifies
-suggests changes
RESEARCH

11. What Characterizes a Good Theory?
Explains what is known
Predicts what will happen (testable)
Is based on multiple sources of information
Is frugal in assumptions (parsimony)
Has personal and intuitive appeal
Is interesting
Is provocative

12. Perspectives on Personality
Individual theories of personality
Attempt to describe human nature
Have different orienting assumptions
May be grouped by metatheoretical perspective
May have overlapping connections
May be limited in scope (intentionally)

13. Specific Perspectives
Focus
Trait
Stable qualities in people
Motive
Motives that underlie behavior
Inheritance and evolution
Personality is genetically based
Biological process
Personality reflects the body and brain
Psychoanalytic
Competition and conflict among internal forces
Psychosocial
Social relationships are paramount
Social learning
Change as a results of experience
Self-actualization
Natural tendencies toward self-perfection
Cognitive
Mind imposes organization on experience
Self-regulation
People are complex psychological systems that move toward goals

14. Additional Considerations in the Study of Personality
Assessment:
Accurate characterization of individuals
Important in order to conduct research
Connection to real world applications (e.g., hiring, clinical assessment)
Behavior change
Specific predictions personality psychology makes about the way dysfunction may occur
Ways in which therapy and intervention may be helpful