11.1 INTRODUCTION: What Is Personality?
KEY THEME
Personality is defined as an individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
KEY QUESTIONS
What are the four major theoretical perspectives on personality?
That you already have an intuitive understanding of the word personality is easy to demonstrate. Just from reading this chapter’s Prologue, you could easily describe different aspects of Kenneth’s and Julian’s personalities. Indeed, we frequently toss around the word personality in everyday conversations. “He’s very competent, but he has an abrasive personality.” “She’s got such a delightful personality, you can’t help liking her.”
Your intuitive understanding of personality is probably very similar to the way that psychologists define the concept. Personality is defined as an individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. A personality theory is an attempt to describe and explain how people are similar, how they are different, and why every individual is unique. In short, a personality theory ambitiously tries to explain the whole person. At the outset, it’s important to stress that no single theory can adequately explain all of the aspects of human personality. Every personality theory has its unique strengths and limitations.
personality
An individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
personality theory
A theory that attempts to describe and explain similarities and differences in people’s patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Personality theories often reflect the work of a single individual or of a few closely associated individuals. Thus, it’s not surprising that many personality theories bear the distinct personal stamp of their creators to a much greater degree than do other kinds of psychological theories. Consequently, we’ve tried to let the personality theorists speak for themselves. Throughout this chapter, you’ll encounter carefully chosen quotations from the theorists’ own writings. These quotations will give you brief glimpses into the minds of some of the most influential thinkers in psychology.
There are many personality theories, but they can be roughly grouped under four basic perspectives: the psychoanalytic, humanistic, social cognitive, and trait perspectives. In a nutshell, here’s what each perspective emphasizes:
The psychoanalytic perspective emphasizes the importance of unconscious processes and the influence of early childhood experience.
The humanistic perspective represents an optimistic look at human nature, emphasizing the self and the fulfillment of a person’s unique potential.
The social cognitive perspective emphasizes learning and conscious cognitive processes, including the importance of beliefs about the self, goal setting, and self-regulation.
The trait perspective emphasizes the description and measurement of specific personality differences among individuals.
After looking at some of the major personality theories that reflect each perspective, we’ll consider a closely related topic—how personality is measured and evaluated. And yes, we’ll talk about the famous inkblots. But for the inkblots to make sense, we need to trace the evolution of modern personality theories. We’ll begin with the tale of a bearded, cigar-smoking gentleman from Vienna of whom you just may have heard—Sigmund Freud.