- Personality reflects a characteristic set of behaviors, attitudes, interests, motives, and feelings about the world.
Theories
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Categorical Type - people are fitted into broad categories, with each type being qualitatively different from others.
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Trait - people are defined according to how much of each of a list of traits they have
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Behaviorist - personality is a reflection of the person’s learning history — people repeat responses reinforced in the past.
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Cognitive - beliefs, thoughts and mental processes are seen as primary determinants for behavior across situations.
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Psychodynamic - personality is determined by intrapsychic structures (Freud’s id, ego, and superego) and by unconscious motives or conflicts from early childhood.
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Individual - emphasizes higher human motives and views personality as the individual’s complete experience rather than having separate parts.
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Situational - personality is not consistent. It is merely a response to a situation learnt through reinforcement
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Interactive - Combines the situational and trait approaches — people have a tendency to behave in certain ways but that is moderated by the demands of different situations.
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Both situational and individual factors contribute to enduring characteristics attributed to personality
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The discovery of neural correlates of personality suggests it has a biological basis, and that individual differences in personality are related to meaningful individual differences in brain structures and responses to social stimuli.