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:
www.planningzone.com/120/personality/per
sonality_intro.htm (accessed 22 September
2011)