This is the Chapter 10 of the book The Individual (de Bruin, E., 1st Edition). Which is content for the exam of the Theory component of Module 4 (The Individual) of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands

Chapter 10:

Introduction to personality psychology

Personality defined:

• Personality: set psychological traits/mechanisms organized and relatively enduring, and influences person’s interactions with, and adaptations to, the intrapsychic, physical and social environments
• Personality traits: characteristics describe ways people are different from each other

• Average tendencies: high-talkative person starts more conversations than low-talkative person
• Science of personality psychology: understanding psychological way people differ --> ask 4 questions --> explain/predict behaviour

1. How many traits? Understanding amount of fundamental traits
2. Organization? How traits are related to other traits
3. Origins? Origin traits and how they developed
4. Correlations and consequences? Traits in terms of experience, behaviour and life outcomes

• Psychological mechanisms: cognitive processes of personality --> extraverted person prepared to notice and act on certain kinds of social information

• Essential ingredients:

• Input: more sensitive to certain kinds of information from environment
• Decision rules: more likely to think about specific options, which guide them to specific outputs (if, then)
• Outputs: behaviour towards certain categories of actions

• Organized: personality organized because mechanisms and traits are linked to one another in coherent fashion
• Enduring: particularly in adulthood, somewhat consistent over situations
• Influential forces: personality traits/mechanisms have effect on:

• how we act
• view ourselves
• think about the world
• interact with others
• how we feel
• select environment circumstances

• Person-environment interaction:

• Perceptions: how we see/interpret environment
• Selection: situations we choose to expose ourselves
• Evocations: reactions we produce in others
• Manipulations: intentionally attempt to influence others

• Adaptation: accomplishing goals/coping/adjusting and dealing with challenges faced as we go through life
• Environment: poses challenges for people, which encountered in our struggle for belongingness/love/esteem

• Intrapsychic environment: within the mind environment

3 levels of personality analysis:

1. Human nature level: like all others (universal)

• Human nature: traits/mechanisms personality typical our species and possessed by everyone/nearly everyone

2. Individual/group differences level: like some others (particular)

• Individual differences: ways in which each person is like some other people
• Group differences: certain personality features in common, which make that group different from other groups

3. Individual uniqueness level: like no other

• Nomothetically: individual instances of general characteristics distributed population
• Idiographically: focus single subject (individual/group) --> observe general principles manifested in a single life over time (ex: Freud wrote psychobiography of Leonardo de Vinci)

Then and now:

• Classical grand theories of personality: attempt to provide universal account of fundamental psychological processes/characteristics of our species

• Research:

• Three blind men who were presented with an elephant --> try to figure out what the whole elephant was like with different approaches --> Analogy: each perspective on personality captures element sof truth, yet each speciality area alone is inadequate to describe the entire realm of human personality (the whole elephant)

6 domains of knowledge about human nature:

• Domain of knowledge: focuses on learning specific/limited aspects of human nature --> different domains can sometimes appear to contradict one another: psychoanalytic perspective --> human personality consisting irrational sexual instincts, fuel human activity/ Cognitive perspective --> humans = rational scientists, try to anticipate/predict/control events that occur in life

• Dispositional domain: ways in which individuals disposed to behave, and why these dispositions differ from one another --> what ways do people’s behaviour differ, and how did these differences come about?
• Biological domain: collections of biological systems, provide building blocks for behaviour, thought and emotion

• Psychophysiology: summarize what is known about the basis of personality in terms of nervous system functioning

• Intrapsychic domain: mental mechanisms of personality, many of which operate outside conscious awareness (ex: defence mechanisms)
• Cognitive-experimental domain: cognition and subjective experience --> conscious thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires about oneself/others

• Self-concept: evaluate ourselves
• Intelligence: mental abilities and how we learn
• Goals we strive for: human nature as inherently goal-directed, stressing the organizing influence of fundamental needs
• Emotions: feelings, essential elements in our subjective experience

• Social and cultural domain: personality affects, and is affected by, the social/cultural context
• Adjustment domain: personality plays a key role in how we cope with/adapt/adjust to the flow of day-to-day lives --> represents that personality is linked with how long we live

The role of personality theory:

• A good theory:

• Provides guide for researchers --> directing them to important questions within an area of research
• Organizes known findings --> theories bring coherence/understanding of known world
• Makes predictions --> about behaviour and psychological phenomena that no one has yet documented or obseved

• Theories and beliefs:

• Theories: tested systematic observations, can be repeated by others and they’ll yield similar conclusions
• Beliefs: personally useful and crucially important to some people, but based on faith, not reliable on facts/ systematic observations

5 Standards for evaluating personality theories:

• Comprehensiveness: Does the theory do a good job of explaining all of the facts and observations within its domain?
• Heuristic value: does the theory provide a guide to important new discoveries about personality that were not known before?
• Testability: Does the theory render precise enough predictions that personality psychologusts can test them empirically?
• Parsimony: Does the theory contain few premises and assumptions (parsimony) or many premises and assumptions (lack of parsimony)?
• Compatibility and integration across domains and levels: personality theory in one domain that violates well-established principles in another domain

Is there a grand ultimate and true theory of personality?:

• Theory of evolution by natural selection: grand/unifying framework within which most biologist conduct their work --> but grand ultimate and true theory of personality is not existent yet, it will have to unify all 6 domains.