Psychology at the beginning of the twenty-first century has become a highly diverse field of scientific study and applied technology. The specific histories of all specialty areas in psychology trace their origins to the formulations of the classical philosophers and the methodology of the early experimental, and appreciation of the historical evolution of psychology in all its variations transcends individual identities as being one type of psychologist or a other. Each of the volumes also reflects the investment of scientific psychologists in practical applications of their findings and the attention of applied psychologists to the scientific basis of their methods.
The preparation of this handbook was made possible by the dedication and scholarly sophistication of the 25 editors and co-editors who formed the editorial board.
Volume Preface
Fittingly placed at the end of the social psychology section, Aubrey Immelman's chapter includes a synthesis of personality and social behavior. The social psychology chapters fall easily into a few categories based on the nature of the issues they address. No less fundamental are the questions about the sources of people's emotions and how they influence behavior.
It is fair to say that these issues appear in one form or another in most chapters of this book.
Contents
Bodenhausen, PhD Department of Psychology
Contributors
Christian Wheeler, PhD Graduate School of Business
CONTEXTS
Evolution: A Generative Source for Conceptualizing the Attributes of Personality
A review of the literature suggests that the behavioral dimension of activity-passivity may be useful. The first group includes physiological needs such as air, water, food and sleep, quality of the ecosystem. In contrast, the second of the two main modes of adaptation is seen in the lifestyle of the animal kingdom.
As before, I consider both of the following criteria to be necessary for the definition and determination of a complete personality characterization.
Cultural Perspectives on Personality and Social Psychology
Some of the earliest works in the culture and personality tradition adopted a critical case methodology to test the generality of psychological theories. Work on individualism-collectivism represents one of the most influential and longest traditions of research in cross-cultural psychology. This assumption of the interdependence of psychological and cultural processes represents the central idea of cultural psychology.
Ironically, this was one of the problematic aspects of early work in the tradition of culture and personality.
PERSONALITY
Genetic Basis of Personality Structure
Despite the dominance of the five-factor approach, there is still disagreement about the number of dimensions needed to represent the higher-order structure of personality. Multivariate analyzes extend univariate analysis of the genetic and environmental influences on a trait to evaluate genetic and environmental components of the covariation between two or more traits (DeFries & Fulker, 1986). This issue is central to solving some of the problems of personality description and structure.
Plomin, DeFries, and McClearn (1990) noted that across a series of studies, “the structure of genetic influences appears to be similar to the structure of [nonshared] environmental influences” (p. 236). These models provide the opportunity to evaluate the hierarchical structure of personality by comparing the fit of the two models to the same data set. This raises important questions about the factors responsible for the apparent hierarchical structure of personality traits and the nature and conceptual status of the higher order.
This structure is illustrated by the findings regarding the structure of the higher-order dimension of compulsivity identified in studies of personality disorder traits (Livesley et al., 1998). Sampling differences are thought to be limited to differences in the magnitude of the genetic and environmental influence exerted on a domain's facet scales. The results indicate that genetic and environmental influences commonly affect four of the five FFM domains for males and females.
Comparison of EPI and psychotic scales with measures of the five-factor model of personality. Personality as a cause of adverse life events. 2000). The relationship code: Deciphering genetic and social influences on adolescent development.
Biological Bases of Personality
Both pathways have historical origins in the evolutionary history of the species. These correlations controlled for the influence of the other two Eysenck factors, neuroticism and psychoticism. These effects were due more to the impulsivity component than to the sociability component of the E scale used in the study.
The direction of the findings was confirmed in a second experiment (Stelmack, Campbell, & Bell, 1993) and in a study by Bullock and Gilliland (1993). Previous studies showed no correlation between the levels of the serotonin metabolite, 5-HIAA, and N in the cerebrospinal fluid. Even in the studies that are significant, the specific gene only accounts for a small portion of the genetic variance.
Low cortical and autonomic arousal is a hallmark of psychopathic (antisocial) personality, which may represent an extreme manifestation of the P dimension of personality (Zuckerman, 1989). Twenty percent of the most violent patients showed abnormal measurements in the temporal lobe, compared with 2% to 3% in the other two groups. However, low peripheral levels of the catecholamines norepinephrine and epinephrine are also linked to aggressiveness.
Deletion of the MAO-A gene in mice increases their aggressiveness, suggesting that the gene is involved in the inhibition or regulation of aggression. Until recent decades, the study of the brain was limited to peripheral measures such as the EEG.
Psychodynamic Models of Personality
In psychoanalytic terms, the activities of the mind (orpsyche) are assumed to be largely unconscious, and unconscious processes are thought to be particularly revealing of personality dynamics (Brenner, 1973; Fancher, 1973). Although aspects of the primacy of the unconscious assumption remain controversial (see Kihlstrom, 1987; McAdams, 1997), research on implicit learning, memory, motivation, and cognition has converged to confirm this basic premise of psychoanalysis (albeit in slightly modified form). ). The reconceptualization of the ego by ego psychologists set the stage for object relations theory and self psychology.
Ironically, the concept of the ego defense - now central to psychodynamic models of personality - did not receive much attention during the theory's formative years. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol.
Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. Strachey (Ed. & Trans. .), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol.
Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. The Adaptive Design of the Human Psyche: Psychoanalysis, Evolutionary Theory, and the Therapeutic Process). New York: Guilford Press.
A Psychological Behaviorism Theory of Personality
The approach taken here is that a behavioral theory of personality must analyze the phenomena of the personality domain in this way. But there are no programs to study individual differences in imitation, the cause of such differences, and how these differences influence individual differences in important behaviors (eg, the ability to copy letters, learn new words, or fulfill other current educational tasks of the child). From the perspective of PB philosophy and methodology, the field of personality is in a very primitive state as a science.
This view of the field of personality and its theories of personality is a byproduct of the construction of the theory that will be discussed in the remaining sections. One group of subjects learned a list of words, including the sequence rope, swing and pendulum. The other group learned the same list of words, but the three words were not learned in order. This is called cumulative-hierarchical learning because of the construction properties involved: the second learning process builds on the first learning process, but in turn forms the basis for a third learning process.
By creating a basis for further learning, the three major BBRs - the emotional-motivational, language-cognitive and sensorimotor - also grow and deepen through cumulative-hierarchical learning. PB's definition of personality is that it is composed of the three basic behavioral repertoires that the individual has learned. In this theoretical view, environmental conditions play two roles in determining the behavior of the individual.
Some of the implications of the PB theory of personality for study in the twenty-first century will be outlined. For example, most of the items test the child's verbal-motor repertoire needed to follow instructions.
Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory of Personality
Furthermore, the rational system can understand the functioning of the experiential system, whereas the reverse is not true. As mentioned, the operation of the experiential system is closely related to the experience of affect. The influence of the experiential system on the rational system can be positive as well as negative.
In this illustration we have an interesting cycle of influence of the rational system on the experiential system, which in turn influences the rational system. Classical conditioning is an example of the operation of the experiential system at the simplest level. As you might already suspect, the explanation lies in the principles of the experiential system.
Other evidence shows that the form independent of the content of processing in the rational system can be influenced by priming the experiential system. Sequential influence does not only take place in the direction in which the experience system influences the rational system. Reliable individual differences exist in the effectiveness or intelligence of the experience system.
Thus, one way that the rational system can be used to improve the functioning of the experimental system is by teaching people to understand the functioning of their experimental systems. As its name implies, the essence of the experiential system is that it is a system that learns from experience.
