This document provides an overview of personality psychology, including definitions of personality and approaches to studying it. It defines personality as consistent patterns of thought, feeling, motivation, and behavior originating within an individual. It then discusses five approaches to understanding an example person John's aggressive behavior: the psychoanalytic, trait, humanistic, social learning/behavioral, and biological approaches.

1. Personality Psychology

2. What is it?
 The branch of psychology that studies measurable
differences between individuals
 This semester, we will be exploring personality and
abnormal psychology.

3. Personality
 Refers to the consistent patterns of
thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour
originating within the individual.
 Personality psychologists construct general theories
of the structure of personality (the way personality
processes are organised) and individual differences
(the way people vary in their personality
characteristics)

5. PERSONALITY

6. Closer look at definition
 the consistent patterns of thought, feeling, motivation
and behaviouroriginating within the individual.
 Consistency – must display some stability.
 Patterns of thought, feeling, motivation and behaviour –
personality psychologists should examine the covert as
well as the overt.
 Within – external sources influence personalities, but it is
not solely a function of the situation.
 The individual – personality psychologists are more
interested in understanding why people behave
differently in the same situation.

7. Five Approaches to
Personality
 Scenario:
 Meet John.
Suppose you have observed that John
often behaves in an aggressive manner.
As a youth, John constantly was in
trouble for fighting with other
children. When he gets in an argument
with someone over some small
detail, John frequently will threaten the
other person with violence.
You conclude from these observations
that aggressive behaviour is part of
John’s personality

8. Psychoanalytic approach
to John
 John is expressing an instinct that we all have to act
in an aggressive manner.
 For John, the unconscious mechanism that holds
this impulse in check is not functioning properly.
 A closer examination might show that John acts
aggressively only in certain situations or people –
e.g. middle-aged males. The psychoanalytic might
speculate he is expressing some unconscious
hostility toward his father.

9. Trait Approach
 The trait approach might describe John’s behaviour
pattern in terms of an aggressive trait: Because of
some past experiences or even some inherited
tendency, John is more likely to respond to
situations with aggression than people who are
lower in this aggressive trait.

10. Humanistic Approach
 John’s aggressiveness is his response to the
frustration of some basic needs.
 Aggression will cease as soon as John gets back on
the road to self-fulfillment.

11. Behavioural/Social
learning Approach
 John has been reinforced for aggressive behaviour
in the past.
 Therefore, he has a habit of responding to certain
types of situations with aggression.
 Having observed others be rewarded for acting
aggressively, John expects that he too will be
rewarded if he imitates this aggressive behaviour.

12. Cognitive Approach
 John frequently attends to aspects of his
environment that stimulate him to act aggressively.
 Because he tends to process information along lines
related to violence, he is more likely than most
people to respond to events with aggression.

13. Biological Approach
 John’s brain examination shows that he has an
damaged hypothalamus – a critical part of the brain
that controls aggression.