11Personality

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Growing up, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta seemed to have personality. As a child, she was said to have shown up at the occasional family gathering naked. Now known as the pop star Lady Gaga, she continues the tradition of being different. Her first albums, The Fame and The Fame Monster, and the fact that she calls her fans “Little Monsters” and herself the “Mother Monster” hinted she might have issues. But she, like most of us, is not one-dimensional. Yes, her style is eccentric and seems silly to many (we’re looking at you, raw meat dress), but she also is a serious supporter of humanitarian and personal causes, including equality for people who are gay, bisexual, lesbian, or transgendered (as in her song “Born This Way”). Lady Gaga is one of a kind. She has personality in an important sense—she has qualities that make her psychologically different from other people.

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THE FORCES THAT CREATE ANY ONE PERSONALITY ARE SOMETHING OF A MYSTERY. Your personality is different from anyone else’s and expresses itself pretty consistently across settings—at home, in the classroom, and elsewhere. But how and why do people differ psychologically? By studying many unique individuals, psychologists seek to gather enough information to answer these central questions of personality psychology scientifically.

Personality is an individual’s characteristic style of behaving, thinking, and feeling. Whether Lady Gaga’s quirks are real or merely for publicity, they are certainly hers, and they show her distinct personality. In this chapter, we will explore personality, first by looking at what it is and how it is measured, and then by focusing on each of four main approaches to understanding personality: trait–biological, psychodynamic, humanistic–existential, and social cognitive. At the end of the chapter, we discuss the psychology of self to see how our views of what we are like can shape and define our personality.