Personality Psychology
Personality psychology is the study of individual differences in behavior and thinking. We think of people as having unique personalities, and we have words to describe them?your friend is nice, your teacher is mean, your younger brother is shy, and so on. But when you delve deeper into personality, it?s a lot more complex than one-word traits or even several traits put together. Your friend is nice to you, but is she nice to her worst enemy? Your teacher is mean, but how does he act with his wife and children? Your younger brother is shy, but how does he act inside the home and in the presence of only your family? Our personalities can change depending on the situation we?re in. Yet it seems like there has to be some temperament, or core, or some essential property that sets people apart from others. So what exactly constitutes personality? This is what personality psychology tries to analyze, discover and explain.
First of all, personality has to come from somewhere. Personality is thought of something people are born with, something that?s ?them? and who they are. Indeed, personality is highly genetic?you might find yourself exhibiting the same personality traits and mannerisms as your parents, and identical twins have been shown to exhibit very similar dispositions. Biology can help explain how people think and act, but others would disagree about this being the whole picture. Environmental influences and the choices we make can also have a big impact on our personalities. A cheerful child might experience trauma and grow to be timid as an adult, or he might choose to overcome conflict and grow up to be resilient. Nature, nurture and free will all interact with each other and it?s this interplay that appears to shape personality.
The most current theory in personality psychology is the ?if?then? profile. It explains personality through this model?if a person is in this situation, it activates certain thoughts and feelings, causing the person to act in that way. Everybody has an internal model that consists of what are called ?cognitive-affective units.? They are structured so that an external event activates certain units, which activate others, and so on in a chain until it leads to an action. The cognitive-affective unit structures we have developed depend on our innate temperament, culture, and situation.
The ?if?then? profile is an innovative and quite comprehensive model of personality, but science is a never-ending process and this model is bound to be modified in the future. What if ?if?then? profiles themselves change? This will be addressed with a newer model, and newer models will follow. As long as people continue to be curious about the nature of personality, personality psychology will continue to investigate it.
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