1. Development of Personality

*What is personality?*

*What is personality?* • Although we are able to describe personality of people

around us, defining what we mean by ‘personality’ is more difficult.

• Spend two minutes with the person next to you thinking about how you would define personality then summarise your discussion in 3 words

Personality

• ‘those relatively stable and enduring aspects of individuals which distinguish them from other people, making them unique, but which at the same time allow people to be compared with each other’ (Gross, 2003)

• Personality is made up the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behavioursthat make a person unique

AQA Syllabus

• Definition of personality, including temperament.• Description and evaluation of studies of

temperament, including the work of Thomas (1977), Buss & Plomin (1984), and Kagan (1991).

• Eysenck's type theory (1952); extraversion, introversion, neuroticism.– Personality scales, including EPI (1964) & EPQ (1975).– Evaluation of Eysenck's type theory.

• Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD); – characteristics of APD (DSMIV 2008) – causes of APD;

• biological: the role of the amygdala,including the work of Raine (2000).• situational: including the work of Farrington (1995), and Elander (2000).

– Description and evaluation of studies of the causes of APD.– Implications of research into APD.

You should be able to...

• Define personality and temperament

• Describe the work of Thomas (1977) by identifying characteristics of types of temperament

• Evaluate the work of Thomas (1977)

Why is understanding personality important?

• Sybil's personalities included• Female Personalities Vanessa: Holds Sybil's musical

abilities• Vickie: 13 year old who speaks French, a very strong,

sophisticated and mature personality who knows about all the other personalities, though Sybil does not.

• Peggy: 9 year old who speaks like a little girl. Holds Sybil's artistic abilities.

• Marsha: dresses in funeral attire and constantly has suicidal thoughts and attempts suicide.

• Mary: is Sybil's memory of her grandmother; speaks, walks and acts like a grandmother.

• Nancy: who kept waiting for the end of the world and was afraid of Armageddon.

• Ruthie:• Clara:• Ellen:• Male Personalities: Mike: built the shelf in the top of

Sybil's closet.• Sid: wants to be just like her father, loves football.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

• 4.30min

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfiB82OUXf0&feature=related

Temperament • Present from early childhood

• Innate (biologically determined)

• Can change as we get older (hence nature plus nurture results in personality)

Thomas, Chess and Birch (1977)

Aim To discover whether ways of responding to the environment

remains stable throughout participants’ lives

Method They studied 133 children from infancy (2-3 months) to early

adulthood (longitudinal study) . The children’s behaviour was

observed and their parents were interviewed at various intervals.

The parents were asked about the child’s routine and its reaction

to change. There were 9 behaviour categories including ‘quality

of mood’ and attention span’

Results They found that children fell into three types: ‘easy’, ‘difficult’,

or ‘slow to warm up’. The ‘easy’ children were happy, flexible

and regular. The ‘difficult’ children were demanding, inflexible

and cried a lot. The children that were ‘slow to warm up’ did not

respond well to change or new experiences to begin with, but

once they had adapted they were usually happy.

Conclusion These ways of responding to the environment stayed with the

children as they developed. Thomas, chess and Birch therefore

concluded that temperament was innate.

*activity* Word soup

• Below are the none behavioural categories from Thomas et al.

• Sift the ‘word soup’ of behavioural categories by placing each of them into one of the 3 temperament types (there should be 5,5,4...two are duplicated as they appear in 2 temperament types)

Word soup Thomas, Chess and Birch (1977) - Findings

Easy

Temperament

(5)

Difficult

temperament

(5)

Slow-to-warn-

up

temperament

(4)

Thomas, Chess and Birch (1977) - Findings

Easy

Temperament

1. Consistent in approach (regular)

2. Predictable

3. Adaptable

4. Mild intensity of emotional reactions

5. Positive mood

Difficult

temperament

1. Inconsistent in approach

2. Withdrawn

3. Not adaptable

4. Negative mood

5. Intense emotional reactions

Slow-to-warn-

up

temperament

1. Mild negative reaction to new stimuli or persons

2. Slow adaptation to new stimuli or persons

3. mild intensity of emotional reactions

4. Consistent in approach (regular)

*bold indicates a duplicated behavioural category

Buss and Plomin (1984)

Aim Test the hypothesis that temperament is innate

Method They studied 228 pairs of monozygotic twins and 172 pairs of

dizygotic twins at 5 years old. They looked at 3 dimensions of

behaviour - Emotionality , Activity and Sociability

Results There was a closer correlation between the scores of the MZ twins

than between the scores of the DZ twins

Conclusion Temperament has a genetic basis

Evaluation •Study supports the view that temperament is innate

•However, MZ twins are treated in very similar ways hence

environment/experience could explain the higher correlation

between their scores

•Twin studies cannot be generalised to the whole population

Other research into temperament...

Final thoughts

• Where does your personality come from?

• Is your personality fixed or can it change?

You should be able to...

• Define personality and temperament

• Describe the work of Thomas (1977) by identifying characteristics of types of temperament

• Evaluate the work of Thomas (1977) (once homework is complete)

GCSE Psychology Homework (Jan 2011)Evaluate Thomas, Chess and Birch’s Study

Please complete these questions on a separate sheet of paper and bring them to class next week

1. What do you think of the study? (2 marks)2. This was a longitudinal study. Outline one

advantage and one disadvantage of this. (2 marks)

3. All the children were from middle-class families. What is the drawback of choosing all the participants from one social class? (2 marks)

4. The parents were interviewed for this study. Outline one drawback asking parents about their children. (2 marks)

Homework

• Pages 40-42

• Complete evaluation sheet for Thomas et al (1977)

• Extension –identify your temperament by going to http://www.ptypes.com/temperament_test.html

The Pet Personality Test!

• http://www.quirkology.com/UK/Experiment_pets.shtml