Personality 13
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What Is Personality?
Defining “Personality”
Personality Theories
Personality Structures and Processes
Personality Assessment
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Structure: Conscious and Unconscious Personality Systems
Process: Anxiety and Defense
Assessment: Uncovering the Unconscious
The Neo-
Evaluation
Humanistic Theory
Structure: The Self Concept
Process: The Growth of the Self
Assessment: Measuring Self-
Evaluation
CULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES: Self-
Trait Theory
Structure: Stable Individual Differences
THIS JUST IN: Traits as Networks
Process: From Traits to Behavior
Assessment: Measuring Individual Differences
Evaluation
Social-
Structure: Socially Acquired Cognition
Process: Acquiring Skills and Self-
Assessment: Evaluating Persons in Context
RESEARCH TOOLKIT: Implicit Measures of Personality Evaluation
Personality and the Brain
Unconscious Personality Processes and the Brain
Conscious Self-
Looking Back and Looking Ahead
“MY PERSONALITY IS BEST DESCRIBED as adventurous, wild, spontaneous, easygoing, flexible, open-
“My personality is best described as easygoing/flexible/open-
“My personality is constantly changing and evolving, either in a direction that I choose or in a direction I’m not choosing. There is no middle ground.”
“I’ve got an eclectic personality, so my personality is all over the place.”
“My personality is good. I have my blonde moments like all blondes do. I like the outdoors and love to just have a good time.”
“My personality is a little bit of everything I guess. I can be very shy, quiet, yet blunt and loud. Just depends on the situation. Different people describe me in very opposite ways.”
“I would say that my personality is like a flame that burns bright and that’s hard to extinguish, easy for someone to warm to!”
Most people who read these personality descriptions ask themselves, “Would I like to meet these individuals?” The descriptions come from online dating services.
You might also be asking yourself this question: Are these statements accurate descriptions of the people’s real personalities, or just things they said to make a good impression?
In this chapter on personality psychology, we’ll pose simple, yet deeper questions: What are these people even talking about—
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LET’S BEGIN WITH an exercise. Pause for a moment to reflect on your own personality characteristics and to answer this question: What is your personality like?
You’ve barely begun this chapter on personality yet, already, you can complete the exercise. Just like the people in the chapter opening, you can provide a description of your personality. You have an understanding of what “personality” means and you know what your personality is like. Everybody is, in a sense, a personality theorist.
This chapter introduces the work of people who are personality theorists for a living: psychologists who study personality. We will present personality psychology in three steps:
We first examine what personality means in psychology.
We then present four theories of personality: psychodynamic, humanistic, trait, and social-
Finally, we move “down” a level of analysis to explore brain research that deepens our understanding of psychological characteristics studied in the personality theories.