Personality psychology
Personality psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with relatively enduring patterns in how people think, feel and behave, and with differences between individuals. It asks how those patterns develop, how they can be described and measured, and how they relate to the circumstances in which behaviour occurs.[1]
Approaches
The field contains several approaches rather than a single explanation of personality. Learning theories examine the effects of experience; biological approaches investigate inherited and physiological influences; humanistic accounts emphasise personal growth. Trait approaches describe dimensions along which people differ. Historical classifications such as the four temperaments preceded modern empirical methods; phrenology, which claimed to read character from the shape of the skull, was discredited for lack of evidence.[1]
A trait is generally treated as a degree of a characteristic, rather than an all-or-nothing label. Early trait researchers tried to reduce large collections of descriptive words to a smaller set of dimensions. Raymond Cattell developed a sixteen-factor model, while other models used broader dimensions.[2]
The Big Five describe openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. Scores place people along continua; the model does not divide everyone into five mutually exclusive types. It is a descriptive framework for individual differences, and does not by itself supply a complete explanation of how a person's characteristics developed.[2]
Assessment
Self-report inventories ask people to rate statements about themselves or choose among fixed answers. They can gather information efficiently, but responses may be affected by attempts to make a favourable impression, misunderstanding or other forms of bias. Interpretation therefore requires attention to the test's purpose, standardisation and evidence of reliability and validity.[3]
Other methods use ambiguous pictures or prompts to elicit responses. Such projective tests differ in their evidential support and in the judgements required from the assessor. The existence of a personality test, or its frequent use, is not in itself a guarantee that every inference drawn from it is justified.[3]
Personality research distinguishes an enduring tendency from a single action. A person’s response on one occasion does not provide a complete account of their personality, and the dimensions used in research are not a substitute for understanding context.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Spielman, Jenkins and Lovett. What Is Personality?. Psychology 2e, OpenStax, 2020.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Spielman, Jenkins and Lovett. Trait Theorists. Psychology 2e, OpenStax, 2020.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Spielman, Jenkins and Lovett. Personality Assessment. Psychology 2e, OpenStax, 2020.
Attribution
Adapted with reference to English Wikipedia, revision 1377262098 (contributors and history), under CC BY-SA 4.0. The prose has been rewritten and checked against the cited sources; changes have been made.