Personality psychology is the study of how personality develops.
Your uniquepersonalitymakes you who you are; it influences everything from your relationships to the way you live.
These professionals may also be tasked with the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of personality disorders.
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The Basis of Personality Psychology
What is it that makes you who you are?
Theories of Personality Psychology
A number of theories have emerged to explain the aspects of personality.
Some are focused on explaining how personality develops, while others are concerned with individual differences in personality.
Psychologist Gordon Allport was one of the first to describe personality in terms of individual traits.
Common traits are shared by many people within a particular culture.
An example of a cardinal trait is Mother Teresa.
Allport suggested that there were as many as 4,000 individual traits.
Psychologist Raymond Cattell proposed that there were 16.
Today, the"Big Five" theoryis perhaps the most popular and widely accepted trait theory of personality.
An individual’s personality will fall somewhere on the spectrum for each trait.
According to Freud, children progress through a series of stages of personality development.
Successful completion of a stage allows a person to move on to the next phase of development.
Failure at any stage can lead to fixations that can impact someone’s adult personality.
Erik Erikson, another psychologist, describedeight psychosocial stagesof life.
Successfully completing each stage leads to the development of a healthy personality.
Othermajor personality theoriesinclude biological theories, behavioral theories, psychodynamic theories, and humanistic theories.
The tests are widely used in a variety of tweaks.
For example, the famousMyers-Briggs throw in Indicator(MBTI) is frequently used as a pre-employment screening assessment.
Other assessments can be used to help people learn more about different aspects of their personalities.
Some tests are used as screening and evaluation tools to help diagnose personality disorders.
Gaining a better understanding of your personality can be helpful in many aspects of your life.
Personality assessments that you take online should be taken with a grain of salt.
Being diagnosed with a personality disorder can be distressing, but you should know that there are treatments.
Work closely with your healthcare team to develop a treatment plan that focuses on your needs and goals.
There are many ways to think about personality.
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