Understanding personality in psychology

 Introduction  Definition  Importance of personality  Personality origins  Personality assessment  Drawbacks of personality assessment  conclusion

 Psychology is a study about humans, to find out what influences them to behave the way they do  One of the most important factors to this is their personality  How does one find out another’s personality?

 personality is the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that make a person unique. Personality rises from within an individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life

 As previously stated personality is the prime contributing factor to why a person acts and thinks the way that they do.  Personality helps to choose one’s career in life by knowing whether they are suited to it or not

 type theory the early perspectives on personality. this theory suggests that there are a limited number of personality types which are related to biological influences.  Psychodynamic theory emphasises the influence of the unconscious. these are things that one does unknowingly. There are many different theories about how personality develops. Here are some of the ideas:

 Behavioural theories suggests that personality is a result of interaction between the individual and the environment. things that are around an individual play a large part in determining their personality

There are essentially 3 methods to assessing an individual’s personality:  The clinical interview  Objective personality assessment  Projective personality assessment

 Way of assessing a patient’s personality  Aims to measure an individual’s behaviour  Two people sit down and exchange words, for the interviewer to try and understand the patient’s problem in order to diagnose it  Consists of structured, semi-structured and unstructured interviews.

 Professional type of assessment with controlled, consistent questions measured by scores.  Tests measure a person’s normal performance  Cut-score point on the scale

 Aimed to reveal hidden personality traits.  Reveals person’s inner feelings and conflicts from previous life experiences  Rorschach test interprets patient’s responses to discover personality characteristics

 Tests may be dehumanizing.  Tests may invade privacy.  Tests may be biased.  Tests may be culturally unsuitable.

 Psychology has come a great way in figuring out how and why humans act the way they do but as seen above some methods have to be re-addressed to cover one more step to the ultimate goal of personality assessment perfection

 About.com. (2011). Behavioural psychology. Available from: psychology.about.com/od/behavioralpsychol ogy/Behavioral_Psychology.htm (accessed 21 September 2011)  Schneiderman, R. (2010). Career Planning. Why Is Personality Important? Available from: sonality_intro.htm (accessed 22 September 2011) sonality_intro.htm