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Lecture notes on Personality - Introduction To Psychology (PSY1005S)
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- University Of Cape Town (UCT)
This document includes all notes on the personality lectures.
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PSY1005S – Intro to Psych pt2Written by: Lekia Thaver
Personality
Personality = a person's general style of interacting with the world, and
especially with other people (e.g., withdrawn, or outgoing). It is also the
unique way that each individual thinks, feels and behaves throughout the
life span.
Personality Psychologists aim to:
1. Describe the structure of personality (i.e. specify the central
elements or characteristics of personality)
2. Study individual differences in personality – how and why people
differ
NB!
Approaches on these aims vary depending on the theoretical
perspective used.
Five approaches to personality
1. The trait perspective: describes the degree to which people
possess a particular characteristic.
- It is a relatively stable predisposition to behave in a certain way in a
variety of situations.
- It is referring to the words people use to describe themselves and
others in their everyday lives (e.g. outgoing or friendly, or shy, or
dominant and assertive.)
- It exists on a continuum (e.g. from extremely quiet to extremely
talkative), with most people toward the middle and relatively few at
the extreme ends.
- Trait theorists argue that there are a number of personality traits,
and what makes us unique is how these common traits are
combined.
, How many traits are there?
- Gordon Allport (1937) listed approximately 200 traits (looked at the
dictionary to discover words that could be used to identify
personality traits and then short listed these)
- Raymond Cattell (1950) reduced these to 16 personality factors
(used factor analysis to group together similar items therefore
reducing the list) [e.g., outgoing, emotionally stable, suspicious,
imaginative, sensitive, and tense.]
The big five model (recently researchers have concluded that there are
just five trait dimensions that best describe personality) [ACRONYM to
remember: OCEAN]
1. Openness to Experience is a tendency to be curious, imaginative,
creative, independent, and interested in variety. People who score
low in openness are practical and conforming, and like to follow the
same routine.
2. Conscientiousness refers to the extent to which a person is
organised, careful, disciplined and dependable versus disorganised,
careless, impulsive and irresponsible.
3. Extraversion is the tendency to be sociable, enthusiastic, warm,
and talkative. Reserved, quiet and thoughtful people who are low in
extraversion are often described as introverted.
4. Agreeableness refers to the extent to which a person is soft-
hearted, trusting and helpful versus ruthless, suspicious and
uncooperative.
5. Neuroticism refers to the degree to which a person tends to be
anxious and insecure, versus calm, secure, and emotionally stable.
The Big Five factors emerge across cultures (including in South Africa),
among adults and children, and even when vastly different questionnaires
are used to assess traits. The same five traits also appear whether people
rate themselves or are rated by others. However, trait models also have
their critics:
, Personality or Situation
l Mischel: behaviours are determined more by situations than by personality traits
(situationism) [e.g., a shy person is not shy in every situation]
l BUT the basic argument made by personality researchers in the
person-situation debate is that a trait does not refer to a specific
behaviour in a specific situation, but rather to an “aggregate” of
behaviours – averaging out how a person behaves across time and
multiple occasions. [e.g. shy person Shy people may not be shy in
every specific situation, but on average they are shy more often
than not.
l Considerable evidence now exists that personality traits do predict
behaviour. BUT situations also influence how our personalities are
expressed. [e.g., how one is with their parents is different to how
they are with their friends.
l Therefore most trait theorists are interactionists, in that they
believe that behaviour is determined by the interaction of
personality traits and the situation or environment
Contributions = Traits are easy to measure and assess using questionnaires,
and trait models do not make theoretical assumptions about human
nature that may be valid for some people but not for others.
Limitations = trait terms are descriptive rather than explanatory
(therefore do not explain why the person behaves the way they do)
2. Psychodynamic: Unconscious processes that originate in early
childhood determine much of human personality
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory:
- Austrian Neurologist who developed the first theory of personality
over the period from the 1890s to the 1930s
- Many of his theories were based on observations of the people he
was treating
1. The topography of the mind = his first model (think of the
iceberg example)
- Proposed mind was divided into 3 zones of mental awareness
1. Conscious level = people are aware of their thoughts
2. Preconscious = content that is not currently in awareness but could
be brought to awareness; it is similar to long-term memory (e.g.,
recalling your phone number)
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