Biological and Humanistic Approaches to Personality
Walter Vanderhorst
PSY/250
University of Phoenix
Biological and Humanistic Approaches to Personality
People often speak of personality as if it were a product such as a colored tie that gave life to an old suit. Not only that, sometimes we speak as if personality consisted of attractive and admirable traits: affection, charm, honesty. But as we shall see in this paper, for a psychologist’s personality is much more complex than that, it involves the regular use of the term, and includes both positive and negative traits. Another aspect of our definition is that personality persists across time and situations. Whether reflect our own conduct or interpret the acts of another person, we hope to find consistency. If someone is friendly someday, we would be surprised if they show rough the next day. If a relative, who is normally quiet and attentive, suddenly becomes aggressive and disrespectful, we often care about and seek an explanation. We know that life is not as predictable as a TV series, but we expect a degree of consistency, a pattern that reflects the unique personality of each individual. And when faced with the inconsistency, we suspect that something is wrong. Thus, the personality concept gives some degree of predictability and stability to the individual.
As we analyzed the biological and humanistic approaches to personality, we encountered that Feist and Feist, (Feist, 2009), said that “although no single definition is acceptable to all personality theorists, we can say that personality is a pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person’s behavior” (p. 4). There are varying aspects that determine personality. Also, there are varying different approaches concerning the development of personality in psychology. An approach is a certain perspective involving particular assumptions; that is, in regard to...