This document discusses the key concepts in personality psychology. It defines personality as an individual's characteristic patterns of thought, emotion and behavior. The goal of personality psychology is to explain the whole person in their daily environment. There are several basic approaches to studying personality, including traits, biology, psychoanalysis, and learning. While each approach has strengths and weaknesses, together they provide a more comprehensive understanding of personality than any one alone.

1. CHAPTER 1
The Study of the Person
The Personality Puzzle, 8th
edition
© 2019 W. W. Norton & Company

2. Objectives
• Discuss the things personality psychologists study.
• Define personality.
• Discuss the goal of personality psychology and how
this leads to the basic approaches.
• Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of
personality psychology.

3. The Things Personality Psychologists Study
Psychological triad
Overlap with clinical psychology
• Normal versus extreme patterns of personality
• Personality disorders
• Both attempt to understand the whole person
The whole person
• How all other areas of psychology come together

4. Definitions of Personality
• “An individual’s characteristic patterns of thought,
emotion, and behavior, together with the
psychological mechanisms—hidden or not—behind
those patterns” (p. 5)
• An individual’s unique and relatively consistent
patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving

5. The Goals of Personality Psychology
Mission: Impossible
• Explain the whole person in his or her daily
environment.
• Think of an important behavior that you
performed recently and ALL of the reasons for
that behavior.

6. Basic Approaches to Personality
Basic approaches or paradigms
Trait approach: how people differ psychologically
Biological approach: understand the mind in terms of
the body
Psychoanalytic approach: focus on the unconscious
mind and internal mental conflict

7. Basic Approaches
Phenomenological approach: focus on people’s
conscious experience of the world
• Humanistic: how conscious awareness produces
uniquely human attributes; understand meaning
and basis of happiness
• Cross-cultural: how the experience of reality
might be different across cultures

8. Basic Approaches Cont’d
Learning and cognitive processes approach
• Learning: how behavior changes as a result of
rewards, punishments, and other life experiences
• Classic behaviorism: focuses on overt behavior
• Social learning: how observation and self-
evaluation determine behavior
• Cognitive personality: focuses on cognitive
processes, including perception, memory, and
thought

9. Competitors or Complements?
• Major advocates of basic approaches have
claimed their approach explains everything worth
explaining.
• They are not mutually exclusive.
• They address different questions or key concerns.
• Each ignores many key concerns.
One Big Theory (OBT)
• To explain everything
• But it’s difficult to do everything well.

10. Advantages as Disadvantages and Vice Versa
“Great strengths are usually great weaknesses, and
surprisingly often the opposite is true as well” (p. 10).
• Funder’s First Law
• What is something you really like about your best
friend? Does this same characteristic ever cause
problems?

11. Advantages and Disadvantages
Accounting for the whole person and real-life concerns
• Advantage: inclusive, interesting, and important
• Disadvantage: over-inclusiveness or unfocused
research
Basic approaches
• Advantage: good at addressing certain topics
• Disadvantage: poor at addressing other topics or
ignores them

12. Pigeonholing versus Appreciation of Individual Differences
Personality psychologists emphasize individual
differences.
• Negative: pigeonholing
• Positive: leads to sensitivity and respect for
individual differences
Other areas of psychology treat people as if they were
the same.

13. Clicker Question 1
The goal of personality psychology is to
a) explain the whole person in his or her daily
environment.
b) explain how people think in ways that differ from
each other.
c) understand extreme patterns of personality.
d) develop One Big Theory to explain everything about
personality.

14. Clicker Question 1: Answer
The goal of personality psychology is to
a) explain the whole person in his or her daily
environment. (correct answer)
b) explain how people think in ways that differ from
each other.
c) understand extreme patterns of personality.
d) develop One Big Theory to explain everything about
personality.

15. Clicker Question 2
The basic approaches or paradigms of personality psychology
a) can be combined to create One Big Theory.
b) are in competition with each other to offer the best
explanation of personality.
c) are useful because one approach cannot sufficiently
explain all of personality.
d) are not useful because they are too limited.

16. Clicker Question 2: Answer
The basic approaches or paradigms of personality psychology
a) can be combined to create One Big Theory.
b) are in competition with each other to offer the best
explanation of personality.
c) are useful because one approach cannot sufficiently
explain all of personality. (correct answer)
d) are not useful because they are too limited.

17. Clicker Question 3
What is a strength of personality psychology?
a) It uses pigeonholing.
b) It treats all people as if they were the same.
c) The basic approaches ignore areas they cannot
explain.
d) It is inclusive, interesting, and important.

18. Clicker Question 3: Answer
What is a strength of personality psychology?
a) It uses pigeonholing.
b) It treats all people as if they were the same.
c) The basic approaches ignore areas they cannot
explain.
d) It is inclusive, interesting, and important.
(correct answer)