Lecture notes to Foundation Year in Psychology - Introductory Psychology PSY0010: Biological Theories of Personality (week 20). This course and module is taught at Middlesex University.
What is a biological theory of personality?
Not just down to genes or inheritance.
Nature will be influenced by virtue.
Some genes may become dormant or active.
Things like where you live, who you live with will cause chemical modifications
to your genes.
Nurture has a role to play.
The oldest theory…
Freud or psychometrics, the Greeks proposed that personality is linked to the
body.
There are four fluids to the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.
He links these four fluids to four different personality types.
Personality/temperament linked to physiology
Sanguine it means someone who is optimistic.
Phlegmatic it means someone who is relaxed and peaceful.
Choleric it means someone who is irritable.
Melancholy
Do you think that personality is down to fluids in your body? It has been
disproved. You can’t link a fluid to a specific personality type. But what is good
about this theory is that it links some kind of biological theory to personality
type. But this theory is largely not supported.
Personality/temperament linked to the brain
Franz Joseph Gall he says that the different sizes and lumps and bumps of
your skull means that you can read someone’s personality like a book.
This theory has been disproven.
It’s likened to palm reading. It’s more like a personal belief.
Vaught’s Practical Character Reader, published by Louis Allen Vaught in 1902
At the time when it was published, it was claimed to be very scientific.
This claim has been disproven. You can’t base someone’s personality based
on the size and shape of someone’s skull.
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