Theories
ideas used to understand people, their development, and the differences among
them
Evidence
scientific observations that become the database for the theory
What are the 5 goals of the Personality Theorist?
- Observation that is Scientific
- Theory that is systematic
- Theory that is testable
- Theory that is comprehensive
- Applications: from theory to practice
The field of personality addresses what 3 issues?
human universals, individual differences, individual uniqueness.
Enduring
personality characteristics are somewhat consistent across time and across different situations of a person’s life
Distinctive
personality psychology addresses psychological features
that differentiate people from one another
Contributing
personality psychologists search for psychological
factors that causally influence, and partly explain, an individual’s distinctive and enduring tendencies
feeling, thinking, and behaving
notion of personality is
comprehensive
Personality Structure
the basic units or
building blocks of personality
Trait
a consistent style of emotion or behavior that a person displays across a variety of situations
Type
clustering of many different traits
System
collection of highly interconnected parts whose overall behavior reflects not only the
individual parts, but their organization
Personality process
psychological
reactions that change dynamically, meaning over relatively brief periods of time
What 3 functions can personality theories serve?
- organize existing information
- generate new knowledge about important issues
- Identify entirely new issues that are deserving of study (areas that people might never have known about
were it not for the theory)
