PSY1307

Personality

Lesson 1
Introduction
 Think
1. What does “personality” mean to
you?
2. How does personality develop?
3. How we are all different from each
other?
Lesson Outcomes

• Explain the meaning of

personality.
• Describe the
perspectives/approaches to
understanding personality.
Trait-Descriptive Adjectives

How would you describe

YOURSELF ?
Adjectives can be used to
describe characteristics of people.
Personality Defined…

Personality is the set of

psychological traits and
mechanisms within the
individual that are organized
and relatively enduring
and that influence his or
her interactions with, and
adaptations to, the Gordon Allport
intrapsychic, physical, and
 Average tendencies to describe, explain, predict behaviors
Set of
psychological TRAITS • How many traits?
• How are traits organized
traits
• Origins of traits
• Correlations and consequences

Process of personalities:
Mechanisms input  decision rules  outputs

Within the Something a person carries with him over time and from situation to next
individual
Mechanism and traits are linked coherently
Organized & Organized Contain decision rules that govern which needs to
activate, dependant on circumstances
relatively
Personality enduring Enduring Consistent over situations

Influence Affect how people shape their lives; influence how we think, act, feel

• Perceptions – how we interpret

• Selections – how we choose  reflect our personalities
Interactions • Evocations – reactions we produce in others (often unintentionally)
• Manipulations – intentionally attempt to influence others
• Accomplishing goals
• Coping
Adaptations • Adjusting
• Dealing with challenges
• Physical
Environment • Social
• intrapsychic
 Traits
• Psychological traits are characteristics
that describe ways in which people are
different from each other.

• Research on personality traits asks 4

kinds of questions:
a) How many traits are there?
b)How are the traits organized?
c) What are the origins of traits?
 Traits
• Psychological traits are useful for at
least 3 reasons:
i. They help describe people and help
understand the dimensions of
difference between people.
ii. They help explain behavior - the reasons
people act may be partly a function of their
personality traits.
iii. They help predict future behavior – the
 Mechanisms
• Psychological mechanisms refers more to
the processes of personality.
• Most psychological mechanism involve cognitive
processes that entail an information-
processing activity.
 E.g. Someone who is extraverted, may look for and
notice opportunities to interact with other people –
extraverted person is prepared to notice and act on
certain kinds of social information.
 Mechanisms
• A psychological mechanism may make people
more:
a) Sensitive to certain kinds of information from the
environment (input),
b) Likely to think about specific options (decision
rules), Decision rules
Input Output
(IF… THEN)
c) Guide their behavior toward certain categories of
action (outputs).
If courageous, then face danger. Confront source of danger
Danger
If cowardly, then run from danger. Run from source of danger
 Within the Individual
• Personality is something a person carries with
him or herself over time and from one
situation to the next.

We are today the same people we were last

week, last month and last year.
 Organized & Relatively Enduring

Organized
Personality is organized because the mechanisms and
traits are linked to one another in a coherent fashion.

Imagine:
• You may have TWO desires (i) food, and (ii) intimacy.
 If you have not eaten for a while and are experiencing
hunger pangs, the your desire for food might override
your desire for intimacy.
 But, if you have already eaten, then your desire for food
may temporary subside, allowing you to pursue intimacy.
 Organized & Relatively Enduring
Enduring
• Psychological traits are also relatively enduring
over time, particularly in adulthood, and are
somewhat consistent over situations.

Example:
• To say that someone is anger-prone/ hot-tempered,
is to describe a psychological trait.
• Some who is hot-tempered is frequently angry,
relative to others, and show this proneness time and
time again in many different situations.
 Influence
• Influential forces of personality means that
personality traits and mechanisms can have an
effect on people’s lives.

• Personality influence how we…

 Act
 View ourselves
 Think about the world
 Interact with others
 Feel
 Select our environments (social environment)
 Select what goals and desires we pursue in life
Interaction
• Interactions with
situations include
perceptions,
selections,
evocations, and
manipulations

a)Perception: How
we ‘see’ or interpret,
 Interaction

b)Selection
• Describes the manner in which we
choose situations to enter.
• How we go about making selections is, in
some part, a reflection of our
personalities.
• We select from what life offers us, and
these choices are a function of
 Interaction

What would
you choose
to do on your
free time?
 Interaction
c)Evocations
• Reactions we produce in others,
often unintentionally.
• To some extent, we create the social
environment that we inhabit.
• Evocative interactions are also essential
features of our personalities.
Interaction

A person who is
physically large may
evoke feelings of
intimidation in others,
even if intimidation is
not the goal.
Interaction

d)Manipulations
• Ways in which we
intentionally
attempt to
influence the
behaviour,
thoughts and
 Adaptations
• Adaptive
functioning –
accomplishing
goals, coping,
adjusting and
dealing with the
challenges and
problems we face as
 Environment

Physical Environment
• The physical environment often
poses challenges for people. Some
of these are direct threats to
survival.
 E.g. Food shortage, extreme
temperature, fear of heights,
snakes.
• Human beings have evolved
solutions to these adaptive
Environment

Social Environment
• The ways in which we cope
with our social environment
– the challenges we
encounter in our struggle
for belongingness, love and
esteem – are central to an
understanding of
 Environment
Example 1:
A person who is talkative will notice more opportunities in the
social environment to strike up conversations than will someone
who is low on talkativeness.

Example 2:
A person who is disagreeable will occupy a
social environment where people frequently
argue with him or her.
Our ‘effective environment’ represents only the small
subset of features that our psychological mechanisms
direct us to attend and respond to.
 Environment
Intra-Psychic Environment
• Intra-psychic = Within the mind
• Memories, dreams, desires, fantasies and a
collection of private experiences that we live
with each day.
 Environment
Example:
• Self-esteem (how good or
bad we feel about ourselves at
any given moment) – may
depend on our assessment
of the degree to which we
are succeeding in attaining
our goals.
• Success at work provide
success experience (intra-
psychic memory). We are
influenced by our memory of
such experience whenever we
Perspectives/ Approaches on Personality
Other perspectives:
• Biological aspects
• Cultural aspects
• Relationships and social interactions
Perspectives/ Approaches on Personality

1. Trait perspective: People have fairly stable qualities

(traits) that are displayed across many settings but are
deeply embedded in the person.
2. Motive perspective: The key element in human
experience is the motive forces that underlie behavior.
3. Inheritance & Evolution perspective: Humans are
creatures that evolved across millennia and the human
nature is deeply rooted in our genes.
4. Biological Process perspective: Personality reflects
the workings of the body we inhabit and the brain that
Perspectives/ Approaches on Personality

5. Psychoanalytic perspective: Personality is a set of

internal forces that compete and conflict with one
another
6. Psychosocial perspective: The assumption that the
most important aspect of human nature is our
formation of relationships with other people and the
ways in which these relationship plays out.
7. Social Learning perspective: The key quality of
human nature is that behavior changes systematically
as a result of experiences.
Perspectives/ Approaches on Personality

9. Cognitive perspective: The mind imposes

organization and form on experience, and
those mental organizations influence how
people act.
10.Self-regulation perspective: Homeostatic
processes reflect complex physiological
systems and weather reflects.
 Summary
TRAITS Mechanisms

Within the
Organized &
Personality individual
relatively
enduring
Influence

Interactions

Adaptations
Environment
 Class Activity

1. Choose a partner.
2. Spend 10 minutes introducing
to each other.
3. List 5 adjectives you think
best capture this person’s
personality.
4. Share it with the class.
5. After that, ask the person if
he/ she thinks the 5 adjectives
are accurate.