Personality Psychology: An Overview

A science of personality?

 “The scientific study of personality”

 Science requires theory; in order for a theory
to count as scientific, it must be both
falsifiable and supportable.
 Therefore, a science of personality is the
systematic testing of personality theories to
determine their relative veracity (i.e., how
well they map to personality as it occurs in
the real world).
What is personality?
 “Individual differences in
characteristic patterns of
thinking, feeling, and behaving.”
–American Psychological
Association’s website
 In folk terms, personality is just
the collection of traits that we
would agree characterize a
person most often or
pronouncedly. (E.g.: Reserved,
outgoing, melancholic…)
Personality is…

 Dynamic
 Social
 Cognitive
 Behavioral
 Relatively stable
 Somewhat genetic
 Broad, complex, and highly-nuanced: there are as
many differing personalities as there are people
Broad themes in the study of
personality
 Temporal orientation of individuals: past, present,
future
 Free will and determinism
 Consciousness and unconsciousness
 Developmental stages
 Basic view of humans (good, bad, …)
 Causation from the inside or the outside? (Cognitive
or social; genetic or environmental…)
 Dichotomization
 Philosophy and empiricism
 Holism and reductionism
 Idiographic (individual) and nomothetic (collective)
Key concepts

 Traits
 Behavioral dispositions
 Cognitions
 Temperament
 Constructs
 Situations
Historical orientations toward
personality psychology
 Psychoanalytic/psychodynamic:
Freud, Jung
 Freud’s psychosexual stages (pregenital,
oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital)
 Jung’s personal/collective unconscious;
archetypes; introversion/extraversion,
intuition/sensation; individuation
 Family and social: Adler
 Interpersonal: Horney, Sullivan
Carl Jung
 Behaviorist: Skinner
 The environment selects and controls
people’s behavior
 Historical orientations toward
personality psychology (continued)
 Humanist: Rogers,
Maslow
 Rogers’ self-actualization;
“self” and its congruence
with experience
 Maslow’s hierarchy of
needs
 Social-cognitive:
Mischel, Rotter
 Mischel’s cross-situational
inconsistency
 Rotter’s internal vs.
external loci of control
Historical orientations toward
personality psychology (continued)

 Psychosocial/socio-psychological: Erikson, Fromm

 Erikson’s developmental stages
 Fromm’s social character types
 Biopsychological: genetics, brain differences
 General trait: Cattell, Eysenck
 Statistical and empirical: collect data first; then apply
various statistical techniques until facts or patterns
emerge which can generate hypotheses
 Factor analysis
 Individual trait, self-development, prejudice: Allport
How do we measure personality?

 Case history
method
 Correlational
method
 Experimental
method
 Twin studies
 Tests – projective
Rorschach inkblot
(Rorschach) vs.
objective (MBTI)
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

 Inspired by Jungian typology (introversion/extraversion,

intuition/sensation)
 Assessment tool developed by Isabel Myers and her
mother (originally to help women join the workforce during
WWII)
 Four dimensions: Introversion/Extraversion;
Intuition/Sensing; Thinking/Feeling; Judging/Perceiving
The field of personality psychology in
the present day
 Five-factor model of personality reigns
supreme (OCEAN: Openness to Experience,
Conscientiousness, Extraversion,
Agreeableness, Neuroticism)
 Significant correlations have been determined
by the FFM’s originators between four of its
traits and the MBTI’s (Intuition and Openness;
Judging and Conscientiousness; Feeling and
Agreeableness; Extraversion and Extraversion)
The field of personality psychology in
the present day
 Factor analysis: “statistical
procedure for determining the
number and nature of factors
underlying larger numbers of
measures”
 Basically, using correlation
coefficients to reduce a large
number of variables to a few
factors (e.g.: Extraversion and
Openness subsumed under If you want to be a famous
the meta-trait Plasticity) personality psychologist,
PUBLISH HERE! (Or,
don’t…)
References

 Allen, Bem P. 2003. Personality Theories:

Development, Growth, and Diversity, 4th ed.
 Kaplan. 2010. GRE Subject Test: Psychology,
5th ed.
 Personality. Retrieved from
www.apa.org/topics/personality.
 The Real Story Behind The Myers-Briggs Test.
Retrieved from http://all-that-is-
interesting.com/myers-briggs-test.
Questions? Concerns? Want to talk more about
personality psychology, or psychology in general?

Email: ssood2@my.westga.edu
Now…

What are your MBTI

types?!