The View That Dominates Today’s Psychology

The View That Dominates Today’s Psychology

Important to find out whether a theory makes predictions that work.

We want to be quite clear about what we’re saying here. Personality is so important that lots of people besides psychologists try to understand it. Theologians, philosophers, artists, poets, novelists, and songwriters have all written about personality, and many have had good insights about it. We don’t mean to diminish the value of these insights. But are the insights enough?

 

People have different opinions on this. Some believe that insight stands on its own. Even some personality theorists believed this. Sigmund Freud, who’s often viewed as the father of personality psychology, wasn’t much interested in whether his ideas were supported in others’ research. He thought the insights were sufficient in themselves.

 

The view that dominates today’s psychology, however, is that ideas—even brilliant ones—have to be tested before they can be trusted. Too often, things that seem true turn out not to be true. Unfortunately, until you test them, you never know which ideas are brilliant and right and which are brilliant but wrong. Because of this, today’s personality psychology is a scientific field, in which research counts for a lot. Studies of personality provide information about how accurate or useful a theory is. The studies either confirm or disconfirm predictions and thereby support or undermine the theory.

 

When theories are used to generate predictions for research, a continuous interplay arises (see Figure 1.1). If a theory makes predictions, the result is research—scientific studies—to test the predictions. Results often support the predictions. Sometimes, however, the result either fails to support the theory or supports it only partly. This may suggest a limit on the theory—perhaps it predicts under some conditions but not others. Such a finding leads to revision of the theory.

Figure 1.1 In a scientific approach to personality psychology, there is a continuous cycling between theory and research. Theory suggests predictions to be tested, and the results of studies suggest the need for new or modified theory.

 

Once it’s been revised, the theory must be tested again, because it’s no longer quite the same theory. Its new ele-

 

Like a good work of art, a good theory should evoke some sort of reaction, either good or bad, but not indifferent.

 

A theory should also have the quality of parsimony. That is, it should include as few assumptions (or concepts) as possible. Put differently, it should be as simple as possi- ble. This criterion is important, but there’s a danger in applying it too rigidly. Knowledge is far from complete. A theory that looks parsimonious today may not be able to account for something that will be discovered tomorrow. A theory that looks too complex today may be the only one that can handle tomorrow’s discovery. Nevertheless, excess theoretical “baggage” is a cause for concern.

 

Another part of evaluating theories is highly subjective. Some theories just “feel” better than others. Some theories will fit your personal worldview better than others. You’re not the only one who reacts this way. So, do

 

What Is Personality Psychology? 5

 

The inheritance and evolution perspective emphasizes the fact that humans are creatures that evolved across millennia and that human nature (whatever it is) is deeply rooted in our genes. In this view, personality is genetically based. Dispositions are inherited. Indeed, some theorists take this idea a step further to suggest that many qualities of human behavior (and thus personality) exist precisely because long ago they had evolutionary benefits.

 

Another biological view, the biological process perspective, stems from the idea that personality reflects the workings of the body we inhabit and the brain that runs the body. This biological perspective focuses on how the nervous system and hormones influence people’s behavior and how differences in those functions influence the kind of person you are.

 

The psychoanalytic perspective, taken up next, is a very different view of human nature. It’s based on the idea that personality is a set of internal psychic forces that compete and conflict with one another. The focus of this perspective is on the dynamics of these forces (and how they influence behavior). Human nature, from this viewpoint, involves a set of pressures inside the person that sometimes work with each other and sometimes are at war with each other. One specific theory dominates the perspective—the theory of Sigmund Freud.

 

We’ve termed the next perspective psychosocial. The theories in this perspective start from the assumption that the most important aspect of human nature is our formation of relationships with other people and the ways these relationships play out. The psychosocial theories evolved from psychoanalytic theory (for that reason they sometimes are called neoanalytic), but they really rep- resent a very different worldview.

 

The learning perspective begins with a view of human nature in which change, rather than constancy, is para- mount. From this perspective, the key quality of human nature is that behavior changes systematically as a result of experiences. Because there are several views of how learning takes place, several theories link learning to personal- ity. In this perspective, a person’s personality is the integrated sum of what the person has learned up till now.

 

The self-actualization and self-determination perspective, also sometimes referred to as an organismic perspective, has its roots in the idea that every person has the potential to grow and develop into a valuable human being if permitted to do so. In this view, people naturally tend toward self- perfection. People can move themselves more fully in that direction by exercising their free will and by having environments that support that effort. The sense of seldetermination is central to this view of human nature. In this view, personality is partly the uniqueness hidden within and partly what the person chooses to make of that uniqueness.

 

The cognitive perspective takes as its starting point the idea that human nature involves deriving meaning from

 

psychologists. There’s even evidence that scientists prefer theories that fit their images of themselves (Johnson, Ger- mer, Efran, & Overton, 1988). William James, an important figure in the early years of psychology, said people will prefer theories that “are most interesting, . . . appeal most urgently to our æsthetic, emotional, and active needs” (James, 1890, p. 312). Which theories feel best to you, then, depends partly on how you see the world.

 

1.3: Perspectives on Personality 1.3 Summarize the main themes of the 10 theoretical perspectives on personality to be discussed in this text

 

Now, let’s preview the views of personality you will be reading about. The chapters all describe viewpoints that are influential today and will likely continue to be influential for some time to come. The theories range considerably in their starting points, which can make matters a little confusing. The starting point, in some sense, is always a view of human nature—of what aspect of human experience is the key to understanding people.

 

In explaining why someone did something, people often say “It’s just human nature.” But what is human nature? In what terms should we think about the nature of people? Different theorists have offered very different answers.

 

1.3.1: Perspectives to Be Examined Here Each theoretical orientation discussed in this book has a somewhat different angle on human nature. Thus, each represents a different perspective on what constitute the central elements of the human experience. Here are brief overviews of the perspectives you’ll be reading about.

 

The trait perspective begins with the intuitive idea that people have fairly stable qualities (traits) that are displayed across many settings and are deeply embedded in the per- son. This way of thinking originated in ancient times, but it remains very important today. From this point of view, the big issues are what (and how many) traits are the impor- tant ones in personality and how trait differences are expressed in behavior.

 

The motive perspective begins with the idea that the key element in human experience is the motive forces that underlie behavior. Theorists have posited many different motives and have studied how several of them vary over time and under different circumstances. People also differ in their patterns of underlying strengths of different motives. These differences in the balance of motives are seen as the core of personality, from this perspective.

 

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