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PSYC1018 Individual DifferencesWeek 1: Introduction to personality
What is personality?
• A scientific definition; hard to capture all meanings at once; a multifaceted concept
• Inner qualities, consisting of traits and mechanisms that affect behaviour in more or
less adaptive ways, and that are relatively stable, as well as organised in way that
simply defines who we are
• Unpacking the meaning of key terms:
• Inner qualities – essential features of a person at least partly latent and hidden (in
different situations it will call for different personalities) any one occasion a
behaviour is not a personality; essential features are on the inside are at least partly
hidden/ not necessarily manifested
• Traits – Particular dispositions – you have an inclination to behave in a certain way
e.g. if you’re extroverted you have a desire to talk
• Mechanisms – Particular mental operations that underlie that inclination
• Affect behaviour – have an impact on what we do; provide casual explanations of
manifest behaviour -
Suppose you meet a person who is constantly talking or never say a thing, why are they
behaving like that? I know they are an extrovert or an introvert – ideas they have of their
personality; personality is explaining their behaviour. When ‘X’ explains ‘Y’ it suggests that
‘X’ is causing ‘Y’ (causal impact). Some people may disagree and claim they’re just
descriptions – just describing people a lot by using terms like introvert/ extrovert – other
argument is you have these dispositions inside of you that are struggling to get out and are
explaining your behaviour (more intuitive).
• Adaptive – some traits help us (or others) other traits hurt us (or others). E.g. if you
are a sales representative for a company and have to sell a product; it would be
adaptive if you are an extrovert; but introversion wouldn’t be good for that work.
However, if you are someone that someone that has to work as a scientist alone for 6
months all by yourself; it may help to be an introvert than an extrovert.
• Some may argue that its best to be an extrovert than an introvert, or vice versa – but
the fact that we have individual differences between people – the fact that evolution
hasn’t filtered out all the extroverts or all the introverts implies that there’s probably
a general utility to being either an extrovert or introvert.
• Relatively stable – traits imply consistency, personality evolves slowly – if you had a
friend who one day would be very talkative and the next day say nothing at all – that
would be very disconcerting – perhaps they have multi-personality disorder? Because
of a lack of consistency – personality cannot change; if it changes it changes slowly –
like climate, not weather. Relatively stable by definition.
• Organised – personality is a constellation of traits and mechanism – it shows a non-
random pattern – as a scientist we can build a model of personality and make sense
of it.
• Uniquely defines - every constellation of traits and mechanisms is different, but can
we find some standard traits and mechanisms?
Different levels of analysis
I. Universal “overall claims” – characterise people in terms of always true or generally
true facts
, II. Nomothetic “lawful claims” – characterise variations between people along shared
dimensions (want to say how people are different, but on dimensions that everyone
shares)
III. Idiographic “description of one” – characterise variations between people using
unique dimensions
Variations between people
• Are analysed nomothetically; have to with (A) what a person is like – personality and
(B) what a person can do – intelligence.
o Are caused by:
o (A) genes
o (B) environment
• We can analyse variations between people at the level of personality and
intelligence
What are theories of personality?
• Systematic frameworks for understanding the structure, dynamics or development
of personality
I. Structure – components and organisation
II. Dynamics – impacts on behaviour – some believe human personality is determined
by motivations
III. Development - origins of the above
Two types of theory:
1) Grand theories (classic) – aim to give complete and internally consistent account of
human nature. More theory, less evidence. E.g. Freud – try to explain human nature
altogether – not very scientific
2) Piecemeal theories (contemporary) – aim to give a partial and externally consistent
account of human nature. More evidence, less theory. (piecemeal means little bits at
a time). Explain a piece of the puzzle and look at evidence for it, rather than creating
ambitious, all-inclusive theories. Try to be consistent with other researchers,
whereas Freud etc. do not care about interfacing other theories.
Other types of theory:
A) Informal theories (popular psychology) – more intuitively digestible, more
subjective, more simplistic – pop-psychology
B) Formal theories (scientific psychology) – more intellectually challenging, more
objective, more sophisticated – specifying things.
Evaluating these theories; what should a good theory do?
• Make organised sense of what is already known to be true
• Make interesting new predictions about what should be true – should be able to test
• Be parsimonious – explain a lot with a little e.g. big five personality theory
• Be testable – answerable to evidence
• E.g. Freud said the function of dreams is to protect you to sleep – sexual or violent
motivations arising from id but the dream converts those into a more acceptable
form , maintaining your sleep – but we now know studying people neurologically
that dreaming is a type of sleep (rapid eye movement) – Freud was wrong – dreams
accompany a type of sleep.
,An abundance of theoretical perspectives
• Each perspective - encompasses several theories of a particular sort; makes
particular assumptions; emphases particular factors
• E.g. theory of learning – you have a learning perspective and in that theory you have
different perspectives being operant conditioning and classical conditioning
• The various perspectives - show different facets of personality; may be mutually
incompatible; can be divided up in different ways.
Some key perspectives –
• Dispositions – traits and types
• psychodynamics - unconscious drives
• behaviour genetics – nature vs nurture
• brain and physiology – roots of personality in the organism
• evolution – heredity and adaptation
• learning – outer contingencies that shape us
• cognition – inner beliefs that shape us
• humanism – the whole person (holistic approach) –what are your needs are as a
person
Some key issues in personality –
• does personality really exist? E.g. Skinner says there’s no such thing as personality
• Is personality consistent? – we like to think we can change
• What are the basic traits of personality?
• Where does personality come from? Genes, environment, learning etc.
• What scope or limitations does human personality have? People want to be a certain
way – what extent can they become that way?
• How defensible are common-sense views of human personality? Siblings are born in
a certain order – some believe that order is important in how you turn out – 3rd born
is naturally rebellious
Traits and types
The big five – 5 basic personality traits; extraversion, stability, conscientious, agreeableness
and openness
Dispositions
What is a disposition? – can be understood as the elements out of which personality is
made
• A latent tendency to exhibit a coherent class of behaviours.
• Is a disposition…(a) the cause of behaviour, explaining why it occurs? (b) a summary
of behaviour, describing its occurrence?
• Is a dispositional tendency to behave something that is different from the behaviour
itself, or just the same thing as behaviour?
• Can the question be answered? Does the answer matter? But it doesn’t matter you
can make sense of personality by finding clusters of behaviour – how to build models
of behaviour
Other definitions:
→ Burger (1997); a dispositional trait is a dimension of personality used to categorise
people according to the degree to which they manifest a particular characteristic
→ Mischel (1999); a dispositional trait is the conditional probability of a category of
behaviours in a category of contexts.
, Categorising people by disposition – distinction between traits and types
Types
Types are even simpler forms of dispositions
I. Discontinuous (exclusive) categories
• You belong to one or the other – types are exclusive you are one type or
another; can’t be both
• A nominal e.g. you are extrovert or introvert, and neither ranks ‘above’ the
other or ordinal (marginal) variable you rank at this level or another e.g.
genius, non-genius - we can see genius ranking ‘above’ non-genius.
• A qualitative difference – it is not a matter of degree – it is a matter of
different kind of thing
• E.g. Introverts of extroverts
II. Type-based classifications (classification of personality into types) are called
typologies
• If you want to build a model of personality based on types that is called a
typology
• One famous typology, of temperaments comes from the Greek physician
Galen, people were classified as either; chronic(angry), phlegmatic (calm),
sanguine (happy) or melancholic (sad). This supposedly had to do with the
balance of bodily fluids/ humours – yellow bile, phlegm, blood, black bile = an
excess of them, and you got the corresponding temperament.
• The initial study of personality, undertaken by ancient Greeks such as
Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Hippocrates, conceptualised personality in terms
of types.
Traits
I. Continuous dimensions
• You can be higher or lower along an entire dimension e.g. not just
categorised as a short or tall person but rather taller or smaller – you have a
certain level of a trait
• An interval variable e.g. levels of extroversion
• A quantitative difference – a number is assigned
• The level of analysis is nomothetic; there are a common set of basic
personality traits that apply to everyone. However, where people stand on
them is specific to them.
• Wundt’s book ‘the inventory of psychological laboratory’ – tried to
reconceptualise the Galen temperaments along continuous dimensions.
→ One dimension represented the strength of emotion (strong, weak) =
emotional
→ The other dimension represented the speed of emotional change
(slow, rapid) = changeable
Correspondence was…
o More weak + more rapid = more sanguine
o More weak + more slow = more phlegmatic
o More strong + more rapid = more choleric
o More strong + more slow = more melancholic
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