Chapter 13 Introduction

Personality 13

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CHAPTER OUTLINE

  • 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-Freudians

    Evaluation

  • Humanistic Theory

    Structure: The Self Concept

    Process: The Growth of the Self

    Assessment: Measuring Self-Perceptions

    Evaluation

    • CULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES: Self-Esteem

  • Trait Theory

    Structure: Stable Individual Differences

    • THIS JUST IN: Traits as Networks

      Process: From Traits to Behavior

      Assessment: Measuring Individual Differences

      Evaluation

  • Social-Cognitive Theory

    Structure: Socially Acquired Cognition

    Process: Acquiring Skills and Self-Regulating Behavior

    Assessment: Evaluating Persons in Context

    • RESEARCH TOOLKIT: Implicit Measures of Personality Evaluation

  • Personality and the Brain

    Unconscious Personality Processes and the Brain

    Conscious Self-Reflection and the Brain

  • Looking Back and Looking Ahead

“MY PERSONALITY IS BEST DESCRIBED as adventurous, wild, spontaneous, easygoing, flexible, open-minded, flirtatious, playful, friendly, kind, humorous, witty, intellectual, low maintenance, sensitive, nurturing.”

  • “My personality is best described as easygoing/flexible/open-minded, friendly/kind, humorous/witty, outgoing, self-confident.”

  • “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—what is this thing that can be wild and witty, shy and loud, changing and eclectic, and like a flame burning bright? What is personality? Whatever it is, where does it come from? Can it change? Can you measure it?

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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:

  1. We first examine what personality means in psychology.

  2. We then present four theories of personality: psychodynamic, humanistic, trait, and social-cognitive theories. You will learn the main theoretical ideas and see the measurement tools that psychologists use to investigate personality characteristics.

  3. Finally, we move “down” a level of analysis to explore brain research that deepens our understanding of psychological characteristics studied in the personality theories.