PSY305 Midterm: PSY305 Theories of Personality MSQ NOTES
CHAPTER 1
Personality Theory: From Everyday
Observations to Systematic Theories
QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED IN THIS CHAPTER
1. How do scientific theories of personality differ from the ideas about persons that
you develop in your daily life?
2. Why is there more than one personality theory, and in what general ways do the
theories differ?
3. What are personality psychologists trying to accomplish; in other words, what
aspects of persons and individual differences are they trying to understand, and
what factors are so important that they must be addressed in any personality
theory?
Everybody wants to know about personality.
• What is my friend really like?
• What am I really like?
• Can people change their personality—and if so, how?
• Is there a basic human nature—and if so, what is it?
• Asking these questions is not hard.
• Providing solid, scientifically credible answers is.
• One group of people that tries to provide answers is psychologists in the field of
personality psychology.
In many ways, personality psychology may seem familiar to you.
• The professional psychologists questions about persons resemble questions that
you already ask.
• Yet there are big differences between most peoples day‐to‐day, informal
thinking about personality and the formal scientific theories developed by
personality psychologists.
• The differences are not so much in the questions that are asked but in how
answers are sought.
Some of the differences:
• Think for a moment about how you develop ideas about people.
• You observe and interact with friends and family.
• You reflect on yourself.
• You get ideas from books, songs, movies, TV shows, and plays.
Somehow, from this mix, you end up with beliefs about the nature of persons and the
main differences between individuals.
• This mix of information is information enough unless one is trying to develop a
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formal theory of personality.
Personality theorists are charged with studying persons scientifically.
• To develop a scientific theory of personality, theorists must pursue five goals
that typically are not pursued in everyday, informal thinking about persons.
FIVE GOALS FOR THE PERSONALITY THEORISTS
Involve both:
1. Theory → the ideas used to understand persons, their development, and the
differences among them
2. Evidence → the scientific observations that become the database for the theory
The various theories of personality differ in how successful they are achieving each of
the goals
The five goals:
1. Observation that is scientific
2. Theory that is systematic
3. Theory that is testable
4. Theory that is comprehensive
5. Applications: From theory to practice
It is these five features that distinguish the work of the personality psychologist from
that of the poet, the playwright, the pop psychologist, or the student writing personality
sketches on the first day of class.
• The poet, the playwright, and you the student may each provide insight into the
human condition.
• But the personality psychologist is uniquely charged with developing a
comprehensive, testable, systematic theory—basing that theory on scientific
observation—and developing theory‐based applications that benefit individuals
and society.
OBSERVATION THAT IS SCIENTIFIC
• Good scientific theories are built on careful scientific observation.
• By observing people scientifically, the personality psychologist obtains
systematic descriptions of universal human tendencies and differences among
people.
• These descriptions constitute the basic data that the theories must explain.
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Three key requirements for scientific observation:
1. Study large and diverse groups of people.
• Psychologists cannot base theories on observations of small numbers of people they
happen to run into in their daily life.
• People may differ from one social or cultural setting to another, and those differences
may become apparent only when people are studied within specific life contexts (Cheng
et al., 2011).
• Psychologists thus must include diverse samples of persons in their research.
2. Ensure that observations of people are objective.
• When conducting research, one must eliminate from the research process any
preconceptions or stereotypes that might bias ones observation.
• Researchers also must describe their research methods in detail, so that others can
replicate their methods and verify their results.
3. Use specialized tools to study thinking processes, emotional reactions, and
biological systems that contribute to personality functioning.
• Psychologists observe people, just as you do.
• But they supplement these everyday observations with evidence obtained from
specialized research tools.
THEORY THAT IS SYSTEMATIC
Once psychologists obtain good descriptions of personality, they can formulate a
personality theory.
The theory is designed to provide explanation → that is, with theories, psychologists
can explain what they observe in research.
When thinking about people, you and the professional psychologist have similar
interests, but the psychologist has extra burdens.
• Before taking this class, you already have developed lots of different ideas about
different people.
• But you do not have the burden of relating all your ideas to one another in a
systematic, logical way.
• Suppose that one day you say My friend is depressed because her boyfriend
broke up with her and another day you say My mother is depressed just like
her mother was; she must have inherited it. )f so, you usually do not have to
relate these statements to each other; people dont force you to spell out the
relation between interpersonal factors (e.g., relationship breakup) and biological
ones (inherited tendencies).
• But this is what the scientific community requires personality theorists to do.
• They must relate all their ideas to one another to create theory that is
systematically organized.
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Document Summary
Some of the differences: think for a moment about how you develop ideas about people, you observe and interact with friends and family, you reflect on yourself, you get ideas from books, songs, movies, tv shows, and plays. Somehow, from this mix, you end up with beliefs about the nature of persons and the main differences between individuals: this mix of information is information enough unless one is trying to develop a formal theory of personality. Personality theorists are charged with studying persons scientifically: to develop a scientific theory of personality, theorists must pursue five goals that typically are not pursued in everyday, informal thinking about persons. Involve both: theory the ideas used to understand persons, their development, and the differences among them, evidence the scientific observations that become the database for the theory. The various theories of personality differ in how successful they are achieving each of the goals.
