PSYC 1000 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12.1: Big Five Personality Traits, Raymond Cattell, Gordon Allport
Document Summary
Personality a pattern of thinking, feeling and behaving that is unique to each individual, and remains relatively consistent over time and situations. Idiographic approach creating detailed descriptions od a specific person"s unique personality characteristics. When you are trying to figure yourself out you are making an ideographic approach. Abraham maslow wanted to understand the people who had lived to their fullest potential, who were in maslow"s terms self-utilized . He performed detailed analysis of the biographies of successful people. He tried to uncover what makes human beings thrive and develop to their maximum potential. Nomothetic approach examines personalities in large groups of people, with the aim of making generalizations about personality structure. Psychologists may want to understand the factors that predict certain behaviours across people in general. The key to nomothetic research is to identify the important personality traits that are related to whatever it is that you are interested in understanding.
