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Personality Psychology

In: Philosophy and Psychology

Submitted By Maddes
Words 2230
Pages 9
Introduction
The history of psychology dates as far back as ancient Greece. The philosophers since the 4th century BCE have been trying to define exactly what it is that makes us, us. Plato proposed four groupings (artistic, sensible, intuitive, reasoning) and Aristotle hypothesized four factors (iconic i.e. artistic, pistic i.e. common sence, noetic i.e. intuition and dianoetic i.e. logic) and contributed to ones social order in society. (blog. tiptaplab.com).
Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that governs the personality and its variations between individuals. The areas of focus include; construction of a coherent picture of the individual and their major psychological processes, investigation of individual psychological differences, investigation of human nature and psychological similarities between individuals. Personality also refers to someone’s public image (blog. tiptaplab.com).
The word personality is a Latin word personae, which is the mask actors wore in ancient Greek plays. They changed personae to let audience know they were assuming different roles (www.reading fanatic.com).
Key contributors of Personality
There are several contributors to school of personality psychology who explore personality in different contexts. They include Gordon Alport, who believed personality is something within an individual that leads to characteristics of behaviour and thought. Carl Rogers on the other hand thought it is a self organized consistent pattern of perception of the I, me, that lies at the heart of an individual’s experience. B.F. Skinner was of the opinion that the word personality is not needed to understand human behaviour (Caprara & Cevone, 2000).
The unconscious mind is one of the most notable contributions to the field of personality according to Sigmund Freud. His defence mechanism explanation is widely accepted as a

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