Scientific Study of Personality

Scientific Study of Personality

Personality is something that has been debated for many years but with study and theories psychologists have their meaning of what personality is and how it plays a major factor of seeing how individuals are as a person. Each person has their own distinct characteristics when it comes to personality and not one person is the exact same. Throughout this paper we will discuss how psychologists define personality. We will also take a look at the different methods that are used to study personality, how the methods differ as well as the advantages and disadvantages of those methods.

Psychologists define personality as a quality that they have that has an effect on certain patterns of feelings, the way they think as well as behavior (Cervone & Pervin, 2010). According to Cervone & Pervin (2010), "Personality addresses three issues: human universals, individual differences, and individual uniqueness" (p 4.). However, there are multiple definitions or meanings to personality but this is psychologist's definition of personality. Personality psychologist use personality to help them determine why human beings do what they do with asking why, what and how. Though, there are multiple variables to look at such as biological factors, neurological and even genetics that may alter an individual's personality. Not just that but they has to look at how other factors may influence an individual's personality such as family, environment that they are in, social peers and even as much as their friends.

This is where psychologist's bring into play asking where, when, how, and why to better determine why an individual's personality is the way it is. Not any one person is the same so therefore they have to determine what things play a factor in that specific person. It also leads them to determine what is different among two separate individuals and what is similar or to see if what characteristics they may have that are different and similar. With the right tools personality psychologists can determine what factors that can lead to an individual to act the way they do. By studying a person's personality it can help researchers understand more about the individual and what makes them tick just from their behavior and why they have certain motives, but mostly just why they are the way they are (Cervone & Pervin, 2010).

Even though it may take some time to define personality since it has so many factors that relate to it, it can also take time to measure it with certain methods that are used to do this. When using different methods to study personality it is important to keep in mind how different each person is and how data will be different each time but may also be similar in certain aspects depending on what method is being used. Researcher's look at data and want the most reliability and validity because these two factors are very important in their research. The three most used methods to study personality are: experimental designs/true experiments, case studies, and correlational designs (Cervone & Pervin, 2010).

CASE STUDY

One of the methods used is case studies or self-report methods. The case study method is one of the methods that researcher's believe to be the best because it allows them to get a grasp