PSYC 2740 Lecture Notes - Personality Development, Complex Differential Form, Trait Theory

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 2740
• Professor: All

Document Summary

Personality development can be defined as the continuities, consistencies, and stabilities in people over time and the ways in which people change over time. There are many forms of personality stability and many forms of personality change. In sum, personality change has two defining qualities: the changes are typically internal to the person, not merely changes in the external surroundings, the changes are relatively enduring over time, rather than being temporary. We can examine personality over time at 3 levels of analysis: the population as a whole, group differences within the population, individual differences within groups. Group differences level: some changes over time affect different groups differently, sex differences are one types of group differences females go through puberty, on average, two years earlier than males. Males tend to die 7 years earlier than women. Men and women also develop differently in the degree to which they show empathy towards others: other group differences include cultural or ethnic group differences.