PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

Getting Started

Copyright © 2007 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

What is Personality?

Focus on What – and Where –

is Personality?

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PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

Wundt’s Views: Psychology’s Job

• Wilhelm Wundt– Founder of experimental psychology– Believed that the discipline of psychology studies

various mental systems one by one• Sensation• Perception• Memory• Etc.

• Wundt saw personality as the system of those individual parts

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

Wundt’s Views: Personality’s Job

Personality

Sensation and

Perception

Motives and

Emotion

Emotion and

Cognition

Sensation Perception Memory Emotion CognitionConscious-

ness

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

Analyzing Wundt’s Conception

• Personality is a system• A system is a set of

interrelated parts.• Examples of systems:

– The jewelry organizer (top, right)

– A boiler (to right)– Personality

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

Definition of Personality

Personality is the organized, developing, system within the individual that represents the collective action of that individual’s major psychological subsystems.

Self Control

ActionImplementation

Motives andEmotions

KnowledgeGuidance

Some Psychological Systems…

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

Getting Started

Copyright © 2007 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

Where is Personality?

“One of the most crucial questions of personality is, “Where is it?”… (Monte)

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

The Molecular Molar Continuum

Molar Sociology

Psychology

Biology

Chemistry

Molecular Physics

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

The Internal-External Continuum

Inside the solar system Outside the solar system

Inside the earth Outside the earth

Inside the body Outside the body

Inside Outside

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

Personality Amidst Its

Subsystems

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

Personality Amidst Its Subsystems 

   

 

     

Socio-logical Level

 Groups Including or Interacting with Personality

Psycho-logical/Sym-bolicLevel

 

InternalPersonality 

   

External Situation

Bio-logical Level

Nervous System Situational Elements

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

Another Key Dimension: Time

PART 1: EXPLORING PERSONALITY CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PERSONALITY?

What Is the Personality System?

© Copyright 2006 Allyn & Bacon Mayer’s Personality: A Systems Approach

Where it is…and What it is

• Given where it is, what are its tasks?

• How does it carry out these tasks?– To answer this, we must describe how it works