Chapter 1

The Study of the

Person
 Objectives

• Discuss the things personality psychologists

study
• Define personality
• Discuss the goal of personality psychology
and how this leads to the basic approaches
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of
personality psychology
The Things Personality Psychologists
Study
• Psychological triad
• Overlap with clinical psychology
• Normal versus extreme patterns of
personality
• Personality disorders
• Both attempt to understand the whole person
• The whole person
• How all other areas of psychology come
together
 Definitions of Personality
• “An individual’s characteristic patterns of
thought, emotion, and behavior, together with
the psychological mechanisms—hidden or not—
behind those patterns” (p. 5)
• An individual’s unique and relatively consistent
patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving
The Goals of Personality Psychology

• Explain the whole person in his or her daily

environment
• Mission: Impossible
• Think of an important behavior that you performed
recently and ALL of the reasons for that behavior.
Basic Approach
Trait approach
Trait approach
Biological approach
Biological approach
Biological approach
Biological approach
Psychoanalytic approach
Psychoanalytic approach
Phenomenological approach
Phenomenological approach
Phenomenological approach
Learning and cognitive approaches
Learning and cognitive approaches
Learning and cognitive approaches
Focal Topics
Conceptualization of individual differences
Measurement of individual differences
Anatomy
Physiology
Genetics
Evolution
Unconscious mind
Internal mental conflict
Conscious awareness and experience
Humanistic psychology
Cross-cultural psychology
Behaviorism
Social learning theory
Cognitive personality psychology
 Basic Approaches to Personality
• Approaches or paradigms
• Trait approach: how people differ psychologically
• Biological approach: understand the mind in
terms of the body
• Psychoanalytic approach: primary concern is
with the unconscious mind and internal mental
conflict
 Basic Approaches

• Phenomenological approach: focus on people’s conscious

experience of the world
• Humanistic: how conscious awareness produces uniquely
human attributes; understand meaning and basis of
happiness
• Cross-cultural: how the experience of reality varies across
cultures
 Basic Approaches

• Learning and cognitive approach: how behavior changes as a

result of rewards, punishments, and other life experiences
• Classic behaviorism: focuses on overt behavior
• Social learning: learning through observation and self-
evaluation
• Cognitive personality: focuses on cognitive processes
including perception, memory, and thought
 Basic Approaches:
Competitors or Complements?
• Not mutually exclusive
• They address different questions
• Each ignores many key concerns

• One Big Theory (OBT)

• It’s difficult to do everything well
 Advantages and Disadvantages
of Personality Psychology
• Funder’s First Law = “Great strengths are
usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often
the opposite is true as well.” (p. 10)
• Also seen in individuals
• What is something you really like about your best
friend? Does this same characteristic ever cause
problems?
 Advantages and Disadvantages
of Personality Psychology
• Goal is to account for the whole person and real-
life concerns
• Advantage: inclusive, interesting, and
important
• Disadvantage: over-inclusiveness or
unfocused research
• Basic approaches
• Advantage: good at addressing certain topics
• Disadvantage: poor at addressing other topics
or ignores them
Pigeonholing Versus Appreciation of
Individual Differences

• Other areas of psychology treat all people as if

they were the same
• Personality psychologists emphasize individual
differences
• Negative: pigeonholing
• Positive: leads to sensitivity and respect for
individual differences