Практическое занятие №13. ТЕМА 5. Psychology Science as my data for study.
Psychology Science as my data for study.
Task 1. Read and translate the text. Answer to the problem Who am I? (in written form)
Personality
1 Defining Personality
Read and translate the text. Answer to the problem Who am I? (in written form)
Who am I?
If you ask yourself this question, you are asking the same question posed by personality psychologists. What is personality? Psychologists do not agree on a single answer to this question.
We define personality as consistent behaviour patterns originating within the individual. At least four aspects of this simple definition need elaboration.
First, personality is consistent. In other words, a person’s behavior patterns display some stability. This consistency in behavior exists across time and across situations. We expect someone who is outgoing today to be outgoing tomorrow. We also are not surprised to find that someone who is competitive at work also is competitive in sports. Of course, this does not mean that people cannot change. But we expect some consistency in the way people act.
Second, personality originates within the individual. This is not to say that external sources do not influence personality. Certainly the way parents raise their children affects the kind of adult the child becomes. But behavior is not solely a function of the situation we are in. The fear we experience while watching a frightening movie is the result of the film, but the different ways we express or deal with that fear come from within.
Third, this definition focuses on the individual’s behaviour. Social psychologists know people are different and often respond in different ways to the same situation. However, these psychologists look at how the average person behaves in a given situation, ignoring individual differences. In contrast, personality psychologists acknowledge the importance of the situation but are more interested in understanding, for example, why some people respond to a challenge with increased effort, while others react by giving up.
Finally, we treat the term behaviour rather broadly here. Although overt actions are of primary interest to personality psychologists, we cannot understand the actions without examining such things as thoughts, emotions, and attitudes. Thus, consistent patterns in the way we think about ourselves, our expectancies and the way we classify events into cognitive categories are all part of personality.
Task 2. Approaches to Understanding Personality. Give an extensive answer :
What are the sources of consistent behaviour patterns? (in written form)
This is the basic question asked by personality theorists and researches. They answer this question in many different ways. We describe five general approaches to explaining personality. These are the psychoanalytic approach, the trait approach, the humanistic approach, the behavioral/social learning approach, and the cognitive approach. Each approach seems to correctly identify and examine an important aspect of human personality. For example, psychologists, who subscribe to the psychoanalytic approach, argue that people’s unconscious minds are largely responsible for important differences in their behaviour styles. Those who favor trait approach view personality as the combination of stable characteristics that people display across situations and over time. Those advocating the humanistic approach identify personal responsibility and feelings of self-acceptance as the key causes of differences in personality. Behavioral/social learning theorists explain consistent behaviour patterns as the result of habits learned from the exposure to certain kinds of environments. Finally, those promoting the cognitive approach look at differences in the way people process information to explain differences in behaviour.
Which approach is correct? Obviously, each of the five approaches is of some value. It’s possible, that one theory is correct in describing one part of human personality, whereas another theory is correct in describing other aspects.