Personality psychology studies how people think, feel, and behave (the psychological triad). It overlaps with clinical psychology in studying both normal and extreme patterns of personality. The goal of personality psychology is to explain the whole person in their daily environment, though this is very difficult. There are multiple basic approaches to studying personality, including traits, biology, psychoanalysis, learning, and cognition. While each approach has strengths and weaknesses, they are not mutually exclusive and can provide complementary perspectives on understanding personality.

1. Chapter 1:
The Study of the Person
The Personality Puzzle
Sixth Edition
by David C. Funder
Slides created by
Tera D. Letzring
Idaho State University
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
1

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
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
2

3. The Things Personality Psychologists
Study
• Psychological triad: the combination of how
people think, feel, and behave
• Overlap with clinical psychology
– Normal vs. extreme patterns of personality
– Both attempt to understand the whole person
• The whole person
– How all other areas of psychology come together
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
3

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
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
4

5. The Goals of Personality Psychology
• Explain the whole person in his or her daily
environment
– Mission: Impossible
• Think of an important behavior that you
performed recently and all of the reasons for
that behavior.
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
5

6. Basic Approaches to Personality
• Also called paradigms
• Definition: a theoretical view of personality
that focuses on some phenomena and ignores
others
• Trait approach: how people differ
psychologically
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
6

7. Basic Approaches to Personality
• Biological approach: understand the mind in
terms of the body
• Psychoanalytic approach: primary concern is
with the unconscious mind and internal
mental conflict
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
7

8. Basic Approaches
• Phenomenological approach: focus on
conscious experience of the world
– Humanistic psychology: how conscious awareness
produces uniquely human attributes
– Cross-cultural psychology: how the experience of
reality varies across cultures
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
8

9. Basic Approaches
• Learning approach: how behavior changes as
a result of rewards, punishments, and life
experiences
• Cognitive approach
– Social learning: learning through observation and
self-evaluation
– Cognitive processes: focuses on perception,
memory, and thought
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
9

10. Basic Approaches: Competitors or
Complements?
• Not mutually exclusive
• They address different questions
• One Big Theory
– It’s difficult to do everything well
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
10

11. Advantages and Disadvantages of
Personality Psychology
• “Great strengths are usually great
weaknesses, and surprisingly often the
opposite is true as well.” (p. 10)
– Funder’s First Law
– Also seen in individuals
– What is something you really like about your best
friend? Does this same characteristic ever cause
problems?
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
11

12. Advantages and Disadvantages of
Personality Psychology
• Goal is to account for the whole person and
real-life concerns
– Advantage: inclusive, interesting, and important
– Disadvantage: overinclusiveness or unfocused
research
• Basic approaches
– Advantage: good at addressing certain topics
– Disadvantage: poor at addressing other topics or
ignores them
12
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

13. Pigeonholing Versus Appreciation of
Individual Differences
• Other areas of psychology treat all people as if
they were the same
• Personality psychologists emphasize individual
differences
– Negative: pigeonholing
– Positive: leads to sensitivity and respect for
individual differences
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
13

14. 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.
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
14

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.
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
15

16. Clicker Question #3
Which of the following 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.
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
16