What factors contribute most to a person’s personality?
- People/environment surrounding that person
- Genetics
What are the persistent ideas on personality throughout history?
- There are different types of people
- Types are determined by traits
Timeline of the History of Psychology
- Ancient Greece/Rome
- Behaviourism and Psychoanalysis
- The Personologists
Personality: Who were the important figures during “Ancient Greece/Rome”?
- Pythagoras
- Hippocrates
- Galen
Personality: Who were the important figures during “Behaviourism and Psychoanalysis”?
- Pavlov
- Freud
- Jung
Personality: Who were the important figures during “The Personologists”?
- Allport
- Cattel
- Eysenck
- Goldberg and Digman
Describe Pythagoras’ contributions to the study of personality
- Enlightened about women’s education and allowed women to participate in the Pythagorean school
- Proposed ‘Aesara’ (tri-part soul): (1) Mind, (2) Spirit, (3) Desire
- Aesara argued that physical and mental health resulted from harmony of each component of the tri-part soul
Describe Hippocrates’ contributions to the study of personality
- Hippocratic oath (an oath taken by doctors at the end of their training before they can start practice)
- Saw diseases as an imbalance between elements -> Provided a naturalistic account of disease -> Need to restore this balance to treat/cure disease
Explain Hippocrates’ Humourism
- Disease: Imbalance of elements
- Treatment: Restore balance
- Elements were seen as Humours
*Blood (sanguinic), phlegm (phlegmatic), choler (Cholric) and melancholy (melancholic)
Describe Galen’s contributions to the study of personality
- Adapted and developed humourism
- Proposed four temperaments as precursors to personality types
*Melancholic -> creative, kind
*Choleric -> energy, passion, charisma
*Sanguinic -> extraverted, social
*Phlegmatic -> dependability, affection
Define Humourism
The idea that diseases or imbalances in the body can be treated by using their opposite element
What was the study of personality like during the middle ages?
- Thinking about psychology/behaviour dominated by the teachings of the church at the time
1. Man has an immortal soul
2. Born with original sin = inherently flawed, so therefore the purpose of life is to do good deeds and redempt those sins
3. Rejection of worldliness (eye on heaven)
Timeline of Personality Studies (from 14th to 19th century)
- Renaissance - 14th to 17th century
- Enlightenment - 18th to 19th century
- Founding of experimental psychology - 1875 onwards
Explain behaviourism’s influence in the study of personality
- Behaviourism rejected introspection as a valid form of enquiry
- Individual differences as a consequence of conditioning process (operant and conditioning)
- Ivan Pavlov: (1) Nervous activity consists of excitation and inhibition, (2) Distribution corresponds to Galen’s Temperaments
What were Sigmund Freud’s contributions to personality studies?
- Structure of the mind (Id, ego and superego); Suggested there were unconscious things driving a person
- Proposed the developmental theory of personality (Oral -> Anal -> Phallic)
- Received credit for the work that was actually accomplished by Anna Freud (boo)
What were Carl Jung’s contributions to personality studies?
- Analytical psychology
- Collective unconsciousness; We have archetypes within different cultures that we attach to without us realizing it (shadow, mask, anima)
- Wrote about attitudes (the different dispositions a person can have)
What were Gordon Allport’s contributions to personality studies?
- Beginning of trait theory
- Defined trait as a habitual pattern of behaviour, thought and emotion
Explain the Lexical Hypothesis
- Allport and Odbert (1936)
- Scanned the dictionary for all words related to character, personality, etc.
- 4,500 words left. Categorised them into cardinal traits, central traits and secondary traits
What were Raymond Cattel’s contribution to personality studies?
- Statistical approach to traits; Use of factor analysis
- Derived 16 dimensions that adequately described people
- Introduced the 16 personality factors (16PF)
What were Hans Jurgen Eysenck’s contributions to personality studies?
- Personality arises from the neurophysiology of the body
- Differences in temperament as the genetic basis for personality -> Opened the door to considering the genetic basis for personality
- Created the EPI, wherein he added Extraversion and Neuroticism (later added Psychotism too)
- PEN model (three dimensions)
- Further elaborated on the Humourism model we discussed earlier
History of The Big Five
- Originally identified by Ernest Tupes, Raymond Christal and Warren Norman
- Strongly contested by Cattell and Eysenck
- Redeveloped by Lewis Goldberg and John Digman, and then by Costa and McCrae
- Revised into the NEO-PI, final form of “OCEAN”
What are the current research and issues of personality studies?
- Is there a general factor of personality (GFP)? Stability vs Plasticity?
- Evolutionary basis of individual differences
