The Personality PuzzleSixth Edition

by David C. Funder

© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Chapter 1:The Study of the Person

Slides created byTera D. LetzringIdaho State University 1

Objectives

• Discuss the things personality psychologists study

• Define personality• Discuss the goal of personality psychology and

how this leads to the basic approaches• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of

personality psychology

2© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Things Personality Psychologists Study

• Psychological triad: the combination of how people think, feel, and behave

• Overlap with clinical psychology– Normal vs. extreme patterns of personality– Both attempt to understand the whole person

• The whole person– How all other areas of psychology come together

3© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Definitions of Personality

• “An individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms—hidden or not—behind those patterns” (p. 5)

• An individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving

4© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

The Goals of Personality Psychology

• Explain the whole person in his or her daily environment

– Mission: Impossible

• Think of an important behavior that you performed recently and all of the reasons for that behavior.

5© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Basic Approaches to Personality

• Also called paradigms• Definition: a theoretical view of personality

that focuses on some phenomena and ignores others

• Trait approach: how people differ psychologically

6© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Basic Approaches to Personality

• Biological approach: understand the mind in terms of the body

• Psychoanalytic approach: primary concern is with the unconscious mind and internal mental conflict

7© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Basic Approaches

• Phenomenological approach: focus on conscious experience of the world– Humanistic psychology: how conscious awareness

produces uniquely human attributes– Cross-cultural psychology: how the experience of

reality varies across cultures

8© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Basic Approaches

• Learning approach: how behavior changes as a result of rewards, punishments, and life experiences

• Cognitive approach– Social learning: learning through observation and

self-evaluation– Cognitive processes: focuses on perception,

memory, and thought

9© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Basic Approaches: Competitors or Complements?

• Not mutually exclusive• They address different questions

• One Big Theory – It’s difficult to do everything well

10© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Personality Psychology

• “Great strengths are usually great weaknesses, and surprisingly often the opposite is true as well.” (p. 10)– Funder’s First Law– Also seen in individuals– What is something you really like about your best

friend? Does this same characteristic ever cause problems?

11© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Personality Psychology

• Goal is to account for the whole person and real-life concerns– Advantage: inclusive, interesting, and important – Disadvantage: overinclusiveness or unfocused

research

• Basic approaches– Advantage: good at addressing certain topics– Disadvantage: poor at addressing other topics or

ignores them12

© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Pigeonholing Versus Appreciation of Individual Differences

• Other areas of psychology treat all people as if they were the same

• Personality psychologists emphasize individual differences– Negative: pigeonholing– Positive: leads to sensitivity and respect for

individual differences

13© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Clicker Question #1

The goal of personality psychology is toa) explain the whole person in his or her daily

environment.b) explain how people think in ways that differ

from each other.c) understand extreme patterns of personality.d) develop One Big Theory to explain everything

about personality.

14© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Clicker Question #2

The basic approaches or paradigms of personality psychologya) can be combined to create One Big Theory.b)are in competition with each other to offer the best explanation of personality.c)are useful because one approach cannot sufficiently explain all of personality.d) are not useful because they are too limited.

15© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Clicker Question #3

Which of the following is a strength of personality psychology?a) It uses pigeonholing.b) It treats all people as if they were the same.c)The basic approaches ignore areas they cannot explain.d) It is inclusive, interesting, and important.

16© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.