Dispositional Essay example

Burger (2008), says that there are many theories of personality and psychologists try to explain it with their own approaches. Discussed here will be the psychoanalytic approach, the trait approach, the biological approach the humanistic approach, the behavioural/social learning approach and the cognitive approach. They were devised to search for specific patterns in behaviour and ways of thinking about these

Dispositional personality theories are quite different from biological personality theories. The two will be compared and dissected in this article. The Big Five Personality Test will also be analyzed and how it is used to study personality will be examined.

Personality and how we behave have been of much interest to psychologists for a long time now and because of this there have been many theories and theorists that have been developed. Personality is defined as consistent behavior patterns and intrapersonal processes originating within and individual (Fritzley, 2012, p. 10). There are six main approaches to personality psychology they include: biological approach, humanistic approach, behaviorist approach, trait approach, psychoanalytic approach and cognitive approach. Each approach shines a little light onto why we behave the way we do and how our personalities are formed, the approaches contain many different theories from

The personality theory that I have chosen to focus on will be Identity Theory. It was developed by Erik Erikson in the nineteen hundreds. Erik Erikson believed that every individual goes through a certain number of stages to reach his or her full development or potential (Erikson, 1994). He theorized that a human being goes through eight different stages ranging from birth to death (Erikson, 1994). Identity Theory focuses on eight psychosocial stages of development, and an epigenetic principle of maturation (Schultz, 2008). The stages of development are

Between the 1920s and the 1950s the behaviourist approach was often primarily used. Behaviourists thought that psychology should be viewed as scientific, therefore theories within the approach consisted of controlled observations and measurements of behaviour which resulted in quantitative data, sometimes through the process of experiments. Within this perspective there is no room for free will, as all behaviour and thoughts are determined by the environment (Don, K. 2015), this is also the case from the biological aspect as they

In psychology, there are four major theories of personality: psychodynamic, trait or five-factor model, humanistic, and social-cognitive. The psychodynamic theory primarily focuses on the role of the unconscious mind. The social cognitive theory focuses on the effect of the environment on behavior and is based on theories of learning. Whereas, the humanistic theory emphasizes conscious life experiences and choices. The trait or five-factor model focuses on characteristics themselves and not the roots of personality.

When discussing the accuracy of personality tests, there is no test, which will provide perfect precision. According to Dr. O'Neil, “an individual's personality is the complex of mental characteristics that makes them unique from other people” (2006, Para 1). O’Neil believes that the potential factors involved in shaping personality include values, beliefs, and expectations that are genetic and environmental (O’Neil, 2006).

Personality is looked at everyday purposely and accidently. Whether you are judging how your new professor for the semester will be, or if you are studying your best friend for a project, personality is studied abundantly. While there are many ways to define personality, there is not a worldwide definition around. Personality is the unique combination of patterns that influence behavior, thought, motivation, and emotion in a human being (boundless.com). That is one of many ways of defining personality. When examining personality, there are four main approachable theories including: The Psychodynamic Approach, The Trait Approach, The Social-Cognitive Approach, and The Humanistic Approach.

Psychology has six main perspectives dealing with human behavior. The first perspective, biological perspective, presumes that biological factors, such as genes, hormones, and the nervous system, all affect human behavior and their mental process. The evolutionary perspective emphasizes how behavior and mental phenomena are a result of evolution through natural selection and adaptations of organisms in order to survive in their environment. The psychodynamic perspective focuses on unconscious conflicts within a person as the main determinant of behavior and mental life. The behavior perspective focuses on observing behaviors and how they are learned. The cognitive perspective describes how people process, think, and store information. The humanistic

Evolutionary/genetic perspectives do not generally account for the biological mechanisms between genes and personality.  Theorists use biological processes in an attempt to fill in the gap between personality and genetics by inferring, theorizing and researching biological links with behavior. Anatomical approach examines functions of various structures of brain.

In this assignment, the four major paradigms of psychology are discussed. The reasoning behind the placement of the theories will be discussed thoroughly and efficiently. Each of the theories was placed on a spectrum that measured whether they were more influenced by heredity or environment. Some, as many can see, can fit into both sides of the spectrum. There are many factors that are involved in the process, and each are important variables in personality and the evolution of humanity.

in order to analyze the patterns that determine personality, certain issues need to be addressed

Personality theories can be viewed differently depending upon how it was shared, through different aspects of ones

There are 4 different approaches to psychology such as Cognitive, Biological, Psychodynamic and Behaviourism (Jarvis, M. et al. 2004). Cognitive approach deals with the mental processes such as the memory, the way of thinking and problem solving which is a necessity to process information. It concentrates on the mental process, which contrasts with behaviourism (Woods, B. 2006). Behaviourism approach focuses on how an individual behaves in different circumstances. It states that behaviour is formed through positive and negative reinforcements as well as the behaviour are a response to a stimulus.

Personality takes many shapes and forms and is affected by many factors. My understanding of personality is simply a genetic and environmentally determined set of psychological traits that influence our reactions in the world around us. Genetic because our parents possess a certain set of psychological personality traits that we tend to have in common with them so therefore in my opinion there are heritable personality traits. Personality is environmental because we each have our own separate experiences in the world and these experiences help form our unique personality. Neo-Freudians such as Jung have given us a wide array of ideas of how they believe personality is developed and formatted. Jung in particular has a very interesting take on personality. It is this theory that I can most resonate with and apply to myself and even friends and family of mine.