PSY 356 EXAM 1 COMPLETE
QUESTIONS 2026 SET WITH 100%
CORRECT ANSWERS
\.why personality? - ANSWER-✔Most philosophical branch of psychology
Tries to answer a much broader question
What are people like and why do they do the things they do?
Borders on theology and philosophy
Most inclusive
Most fields of psychology focus on what the majority of people do (group means, trends, or
tendencies)
People who don't go along with these trends are seen as error or viewed as outliers and often
omitted in research
In personality, the different person is not seen as an error and eliminated, they are often
focused on
\Q\.Grand theories of presonality - ANSWER-✔Used to describe theories that answer all the big
questions
What are people like, what are the human traits that define people, and what makes them act
that way
Going to go through 4 different paradigms of theory (4 waves of theory not 4 theories)
Paradigms are umbrellas under which many theories fall
None of these paradigms have been disproven, any one of these explanations of human
personality are viable
Current research in personality no longer tries to come up with grand theories of personality
,Instead, personality theorists attempt to explain individual differences
Dr. Amirkhan focuses on how different people deal with stress and why different people have
different reactions
\Q\.psychoanalytic theories of personality paradigm - ANSWER-✔This way of thinking originated
with freud (who was not a personality psychologist but rather a psychiatrist)
He was dealing with cases that others couldn't explain or help, so he had to figure out what
happened to cause these patients to deviate so severely from the rest of humanity so that he
could treat these patients more effectively
So he invented a picture of what the normal personality looks like and how this normal
personality develops
He didn't go out and observe people or do research, but on observations of his patients
Focus: The focus of his theory was inner conflicts, because of the clientele he was dealing with
(who were very conflicted)
His idea was that all people have inner conflicts that we are dealing with, and may not even be
aware of them
Traits: expressions of inner conflicts
Motivation: hedonism (maximum pleasure and minimal pain)
Freud's theory is not valued today, perhaps partly because of his negative view of humanity and
perspective that humans are selfish, people are only interested in maximizing their own
pleasure
Ran from late 1800s until 1940s
\Q\.learning theories of personality paradigm - ANSWER-✔Starting in the 1920s there was an
effort in the united states to reclaim personality psychology
A reaction in a way to freud's focus on the unconscious workings of the human personality,
believed it was not scientific because it could not be measured and was all speculation
Focus: observables (things you can see and count), specifically, observable behaviors I(BF
skinner took this to an extreme and called his theory behaviorism
,Traits: learned behaviors, all traits shaped by environment (product of your environmental nd
the rewards and punishment you have experience)
Motivation: maintained the idea that people are motivated by hedonism
Changed the language, called it reward and punishment, but the idea is still the same
People are motivated to maximize reinforcement and avoid punishment
The first learning theories were focused on animals (though this changed with social learning
theories) which wasn't really much of an improvement from Freud's focus on abnormal people,
the first two learning theories did not focus on normal people/personalities (or people at all)
\Q\.humanist theories of personality paradigm - ANSWER-✔Emerged in the 1960s
The beginning of positive psychology
Reactions to the first two paradigms
People are full of potential, theta re not ruled by inner conflicts or shaped by their environment,
that there is a curiosity and desire to be creative within each person, and their personality
explodes from this and is an outward manifestation of this desire to grow
Focus: human potential (the creativity and motivation to grow and understand and improve)
Traits: expressions of that potential, a consequence of your potential interacting with
environmental constraints
Sometimes your environment fights you on your potential
The first paradigm to focus on successful people/people who have made contributions to
society
Also relied on clinical observation
Motivation: human desire to grow (motivation no longer pleasure seeking)
Humanistic theories had a short lifespan, though they are reemerging in the form of positive
psychology today
\Q\.cognitive theories of personality paradigm - ANSWER-✔Came to prominence in the 1980s
With the advent of computing/personal computers, people became interested in information
processing and artificial intelligence and how can we mimic what the human brain does
, With this shift into computer issues there became a focus on how people think and how this
translates into personality
Focus: thought
The way you think about and see the world will translate into how you act in the world
Traits: consequences of your perceptions
Behavior is a logical consequence of the way you perceive and think about the world
Rely on laboratory and field experiments with people
Like humanist theories, they use a subject pool that makes sense for personality, looking at how
most people behave and establishing a general set of rules by which people behave
Motivation: truth seeking
What we are doing in our life is trying to come up with our best interpretation of reality, which
has survival value
If you can read your environment accurately, then you are more likely to survive
\Q\.current personality research - ANSWER-✔Individual differences in stress reactions
Because of pressures to publish, in the 90s and early 2000s trying to come up with a grand
theory of personality became daunting and personality psychologists began to focus instead on
more specific individual differences
Trying to explain differences in one arena of interest
\Q\.agreed upon personality definition - ANSWER-✔There is no one agreed upon definition of
personality, different people have different takes
This has stymied progress in personality research, preventing overall forward movement
All of the definitions are valid, choosing a definition is more of a political than a scientific
decision
\Q\.Gordon Alpurt (1937) - ANSWER-✔One of the grandfather's of the field
QUESTIONS 2026 SET WITH 100%
CORRECT ANSWERS
\.why personality? - ANSWER-✔Most philosophical branch of psychology
Tries to answer a much broader question
What are people like and why do they do the things they do?
Borders on theology and philosophy
Most inclusive
Most fields of psychology focus on what the majority of people do (group means, trends, or
tendencies)
People who don't go along with these trends are seen as error or viewed as outliers and often
omitted in research
In personality, the different person is not seen as an error and eliminated, they are often
focused on
\Q\.Grand theories of presonality - ANSWER-✔Used to describe theories that answer all the big
questions
What are people like, what are the human traits that define people, and what makes them act
that way
Going to go through 4 different paradigms of theory (4 waves of theory not 4 theories)
Paradigms are umbrellas under which many theories fall
None of these paradigms have been disproven, any one of these explanations of human
personality are viable
Current research in personality no longer tries to come up with grand theories of personality
,Instead, personality theorists attempt to explain individual differences
Dr. Amirkhan focuses on how different people deal with stress and why different people have
different reactions
\Q\.psychoanalytic theories of personality paradigm - ANSWER-✔This way of thinking originated
with freud (who was not a personality psychologist but rather a psychiatrist)
He was dealing with cases that others couldn't explain or help, so he had to figure out what
happened to cause these patients to deviate so severely from the rest of humanity so that he
could treat these patients more effectively
So he invented a picture of what the normal personality looks like and how this normal
personality develops
He didn't go out and observe people or do research, but on observations of his patients
Focus: The focus of his theory was inner conflicts, because of the clientele he was dealing with
(who were very conflicted)
His idea was that all people have inner conflicts that we are dealing with, and may not even be
aware of them
Traits: expressions of inner conflicts
Motivation: hedonism (maximum pleasure and minimal pain)
Freud's theory is not valued today, perhaps partly because of his negative view of humanity and
perspective that humans are selfish, people are only interested in maximizing their own
pleasure
Ran from late 1800s until 1940s
\Q\.learning theories of personality paradigm - ANSWER-✔Starting in the 1920s there was an
effort in the united states to reclaim personality psychology
A reaction in a way to freud's focus on the unconscious workings of the human personality,
believed it was not scientific because it could not be measured and was all speculation
Focus: observables (things you can see and count), specifically, observable behaviors I(BF
skinner took this to an extreme and called his theory behaviorism
,Traits: learned behaviors, all traits shaped by environment (product of your environmental nd
the rewards and punishment you have experience)
Motivation: maintained the idea that people are motivated by hedonism
Changed the language, called it reward and punishment, but the idea is still the same
People are motivated to maximize reinforcement and avoid punishment
The first learning theories were focused on animals (though this changed with social learning
theories) which wasn't really much of an improvement from Freud's focus on abnormal people,
the first two learning theories did not focus on normal people/personalities (or people at all)
\Q\.humanist theories of personality paradigm - ANSWER-✔Emerged in the 1960s
The beginning of positive psychology
Reactions to the first two paradigms
People are full of potential, theta re not ruled by inner conflicts or shaped by their environment,
that there is a curiosity and desire to be creative within each person, and their personality
explodes from this and is an outward manifestation of this desire to grow
Focus: human potential (the creativity and motivation to grow and understand and improve)
Traits: expressions of that potential, a consequence of your potential interacting with
environmental constraints
Sometimes your environment fights you on your potential
The first paradigm to focus on successful people/people who have made contributions to
society
Also relied on clinical observation
Motivation: human desire to grow (motivation no longer pleasure seeking)
Humanistic theories had a short lifespan, though they are reemerging in the form of positive
psychology today
\Q\.cognitive theories of personality paradigm - ANSWER-✔Came to prominence in the 1980s
With the advent of computing/personal computers, people became interested in information
processing and artificial intelligence and how can we mimic what the human brain does
, With this shift into computer issues there became a focus on how people think and how this
translates into personality
Focus: thought
The way you think about and see the world will translate into how you act in the world
Traits: consequences of your perceptions
Behavior is a logical consequence of the way you perceive and think about the world
Rely on laboratory and field experiments with people
Like humanist theories, they use a subject pool that makes sense for personality, looking at how
most people behave and establishing a general set of rules by which people behave
Motivation: truth seeking
What we are doing in our life is trying to come up with our best interpretation of reality, which
has survival value
If you can read your environment accurately, then you are more likely to survive
\Q\.current personality research - ANSWER-✔Individual differences in stress reactions
Because of pressures to publish, in the 90s and early 2000s trying to come up with a grand
theory of personality became daunting and personality psychologists began to focus instead on
more specific individual differences
Trying to explain differences in one arena of interest
\Q\.agreed upon personality definition - ANSWER-✔There is no one agreed upon definition of
personality, different people have different takes
This has stymied progress in personality research, preventing overall forward movement
All of the definitions are valid, choosing a definition is more of a political than a scientific
decision
\Q\.Gordon Alpurt (1937) - ANSWER-✔One of the grandfather's of the field
