PSYB30H3 Personality Psychology Combined Textbook notes | Complete Chapter 1-19

PSYB30H3 Personality Psychology Combined Textbook notes | Complete Chapter 1-19 Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality Psychology Introduction • There are nearly 20,000 trait-descriptive adjectives. Personality Defined • Personality is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptions to, the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments. Personality Is the Set of Psychological Traits… • Psychological traits are characteristics that describe ways in which people are different from each other. • Traits also define ways in which people are similar to some other. • Traits describe the average tendencies of a person. • Research on personality traits ask four kinds of questions: o How many traits are there? o How are the traits organized? (Organization, or structure of traits) o What are the origins of traits? (Where do they come from and how they develop) o What are the correlations and consequences of traits? (In terms of experience, behaviour, and life outcomes) • Psychological traits are useful for at least three reasons: o They help describe people and help understand the dimensions of difference among people. o Traits are useful because the help explain behaviour. § The reasons people act may be partly a function of their personality traits. o Traits are useful because they can help predict future behaviour. • Personality is useful in describing, explaining, and predicting differences among individuals. Trait-descriptive adjectives – Adjectives that can be used to describe characteristics of people.PSYB30H3 Personality Psychology 2 Week 1 Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality Psychology And Mechanisms… • Psychological mechanisms are like traits. o Mechanisms refers to the process of personality. • Psychological mechanisms have three essential ingredients: o Input o Decision rules o Outputs • A psychological mechanism may make people more sensitive to certain kinds of information from the environment (input), make them more likely to think about their specific options (decision rules), and may guide their behaviour toward certain categories of action (outputs). • Our personalities contain many psychological mechanisms of this sort – information-processing procedures that have key elements of inputs, decision rules, and outputs. Psychological mechanisms: Three key ingredients Figure 1.1 Psychological mechanisms have three essential ingredients. Our personalities contain many such mechanisms. Within the Individual… • Within the individual means that personality is something a person carries with him or herself over time and from one situation to the next. • The important sources of personality stresses that the important sources of personality reside within the individual and, hence, are at least somewhat stable over time and somewhat consistent over situations. Input Decision Rules IF THEN OutputPSYB30H3 Personality Psychology 3 Week 1 Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality Psychology That Are Organized and Relatively Enduring… • Organized means that the psychological traits and mechanisms for a given person are not simply a random collection of elements. • Rather, personality is organized because the mechanisms and traits are linked to one another in a coherent fashion. o Example: Desire for food and a desire for intimacy. If you have not eaten for a while and are experiencing hunger pangs, then your desire for food might override your desire for intimacy. On the other hand, if you have already eaten, then your desire for food may temporarily subside, allowing you to pursue intimacy. • Our personalities are organized in the sense that they contain decision rules that govern which needs are activated, depending on the circumstances. • Psychological traits are also relatively enduring over time, particularly in adulthood, and are somewhat consistent over situations. And That Influence… • An emphasis on the influential forces of personality means that personality traits and mechanisms can have an effect on people’s lives. • Personality influences how we act, how we view ourselves, how we think about the world, how we interact with others, how we feel, how we select our environments (particularly our social environments), what goals and desires we pursue in life, and how we react to circumstances. • Persons are not passive beings merely responding to external forces; rather, personality plays a key role in affecting how people shape their lives. • Personality traits are forces that influence how we think, act, and feel. His or Her Interactions with… • The nature of person-environment interaction is complex. • Interactions with situations include perceptions, selections, evocations, and manipulations. • Perceptions refers to how we “see” or interpret, an environment. o Two people may be exposed to the same objective event, yet what they pay attention to and how they interpret the event may be very different. And this difference is a function of their personalities • Selections describes the manner in which we choose situations to enter – how we choose our friends, hobbies, college classes, and careers. o How we go about making these selections is a reflection of our personalities. • Evocations are the reactions we produce in others, often quite unintentionally. o We create the social environment that we inhabit. o Our evocative interactions are also essential features of our personalities.PSYB30H3 Personality Psychology 4 Week 1 Chapter 1: Introduction to Personality Psychology • Manipulations are the ways in which we intentionally attempt to influence others. o The ways in which we attempt to manipulate the behaviour, thoughts, and feelings of others are essential features of our personality. • All of these forms of interaction – perceptions, selections, evocations, and manipulations – are central to understanding the connections between the personalities of people and the environments they inhabit. And Adaptions to… • Adaption conveys the notion that a central feature of personality concerns adaptive functioning – accomplishing goals, coping, adjusting, and dealing with the challenges and problems we face as we go through life. • Few things are more obvious about human behaviour than the fact that it is goal directed, functional – such as neurotic behaviour as excessive worrying – may, in fact, be functional. The Environment • The physical environment often poses challenges for people. o Some of these are direct threats to survival. • Humans have evolved solutions to adaptive problems. • Our social environment also poses adaptive challenges. o The ways in which we cope with our social environment – the challenges we encounter in our struggle for belongingness, love, and esteem – are central to an understanding of personality. • The particular aspect of the environment that is important at any moment in time is frequently determined by personality. • We have an intrapsychic environment. o Intrapsychic means “within the mind”. o We all have memories, dreams, desires, fantasies, and a collection of private experiences that we live with each day. o This intrapsychic environment is real to each of us and makes up an important part of our psychological reality.