Personality Theories

Personality

14

CHAPTER OUTLINE
LEARNING OBJECTIVES INTRODUCTION WHAT IS PERSONALITY? PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORIES – FREUD AND BEYOND Freud’s models of the mind In the wake of Freud HUMANISTIC THEORIES – INDIVIDUALITY The drive to fulfil potential Understanding our own psychological world TRAIT THEORIES – ASPECTS OF PERSONALITY Cattell’s 16 trait dimensions Eysenck’s supertraits Five factors of personality Trait debates BIOLOGICAL AND GENETIC THEORIES – THE WAY WE ARE MADE Inhibition and arousal Genetics vs. environment SOCIAL–COGNITIVE THEORIES – INTERPRETING THE WORLD Encodings – or how we perceive events Expectancies and the importance of self-efficacy Affects – how we feel Goals, values and the effects of reward Competencies and self-regulatory plans FINAL THOUGHTS SUMMARY REVISION QUESTIONS FURTHER READING

Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter you should appreciate that:
n

personality theorists are concerned with identifying generalizations that can be made about consistent individual differences between people’s behaviour and the causes and consequences of these differences; Sigmund Freud developed a psychoanalytic approach that emphasized the role of the unconscious in regulating behaviour; Raymond Cattell and Hans Eysenck proposed traits as descriptors that we use to describe personality and that have their origins in everyday language; biological theories of personality attempt to explain differences in behaviour in terms of differences in physiology, particularly brain function; research in behavioural genetics has permitted the examination of both genetic and environmental factors in personality; social–cognitive theories of personality examine consistent differences in the ways people process social information, allowing us to make predictions about an individual’s behaviour in particular contexts.

n

n

n

n

n

INTRODUCTION
You do not need to be a psychologist to speculate about personality. In our everyday conversations...