Question

Book: The Story of Psychology

Discussion: Personality Psychology is essentially the study of traits. Personality psychologists want to know “What accounts for the differences in individuals and in their behavior?” and laypeople want to know “How can I correctly predict others’ behavior and make judgments accordingly?” Is human nature determined from within or from without? Are our minds and behavior the products of inner forces, or are we shaped and prodded into thought and action by the stimuli of the environment? This is, once more, the classic nature versus nurture question. These debates have always been a part of psychology, since Plato, and likely always will be. Most psychologists now lean toward the interactionist view of nature/nurture question- that most everything a person does results from an interaction between their personality and the situation they happen to be in.

Questions/ Discussion: Discuss how we came to this conclusion, specifically when it comes to personality, citing both historical thought and empirical data on both biological and environmental influences.

Can we now predict behavior based on personality? How could a layperson go about trying to do this?

Answer 1

Ofcourse behaviour can be predicted based on the personality.Personalities are characterized in terms of traits, which are relatively enduring characteristics that influence our behavior across many situations. Traits like-

• Extraversion shows outgoing, easy going, talkative and energetic behaviour
• Introversion shows shyness, talking very less, likes indoor activities
• Neuroticism shows unstable, anxious behaviour
• Psychoticism shows solitary,troublesome,lack of empathetic behaviour etc.
• Nercissism shows grandiose view about self, selfish, behaviour
• Openness behaviour shows curious and appreciate art, imagination and new things.
• Conscientiousness shows dependable, disciplined and achievement-focused behaviour.

A lay person always judge personality based on the behaviour. A lay person is always judgemental and their view is always contaminated with prejudice and social discrimination.Also religion and culture has a great effect on their thoughts.