PSY7510 provides a comprehensive survey of personality psychology — the scientific study of the enduring patterns of thought, feeling, motivation, and behavior that characterize individuals and distinguish one person from another. Students evaluate the major theoretical traditions, examine the empirical research that supports, refines, or challenges each, and apply personality theory to understanding clients and professional practice. The course spans from classical psychoanalytic accounts of unconscious motivation to contemporary trait theories grounded in behavioral genetics, with sustained attention to the developmental and social-cultural processes that shape personality across the lifespan.
Major theories and research in personality psychology
Core topics
- Psychodynamic approaches: Freud's structural model (id, ego, superego), psychosexual stages, defense mechanisms, and object relations theory — then post-Freudian developments in ego psychology (Hartmann), self psychology (Kohut), relational psychoanalysis (Mitchell), and attachment theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth) as a scientifically validated psychodynamic framework
- Humanistic and existential perspectives: Rogers' person-centered theory (self-concept, conditions of worth, unconditional positive regard), Maslow's hierarchy of needs and self-actualization, existential psychology (May, Yalom) focusing on freedom, responsibility, meaning, and mortality — theories that emphasize subjective experience, growth, and agency
- Dispositional and trait approaches: The Five Factor Model (Big Five: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism), evidence for the heritability and cross-cultural universality of traits, personality stability across adulthood, and the predictive validity of trait measures for life outcomes (health, relationships, career success, longevity)
- Social-cognitive and learning approaches: Bandura's social-cognitive theory (self-efficacy, reciprocal determinism), Mischel's situationism critique and the person-situation debate, cognitive-affective processing systems (CAPS) — personality as patterns of if-then situation-behavior profiles rather than fixed traits
- Development and society: How personality develops across childhood and adolescence (temperament, attachment, parenting, peer influence), continues to develop into adulthood (mean-level change in traits), and is shaped by cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, and historical context — the interaction of biology and environment in producing personality
- Personality in professional context: Applying personality theory to clinical assessment (personality disorders in DSM-5, psychodynamic formulation, trait-based case conceptualization), therapeutic relationship (countertransference, alliance), and organizational settings (leadership, teamwork, selection)
PSY7510 assignments include theory comparison papers, personality assessment analyses, and applied case conceptualizations
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Frequently asked questions
This is one of the most practically important questions in personality psychology, and research has substantially refined the classical view that traits are fixed after young adulthood. Mean-level studies (tracking average trait scores across large samples) show that many traits change in predictable directions across adulthood: conscientiousness and agreeableness tend to increase with age (a phenomenon called the "maturity principle"), while neuroticism tends to decrease. Individual-level change occurs as well, though less predictably. Clinical interventions can produce meaningful, lasting changes in neuroticism and related traits — particularly for patients with anxiety and mood disorders. Therapy itself, life experiences (significant relationships, work transitions, trauma and recovery), and deliberate effort can shift personality in measurable ways. The "set like plaster after 30" view attributed to William James has not been supported by longitudinal research. For clinicians, this means personality is neither destiny nor fixed — it is a complex, dynamic profile that can be assessed, understood, and, where relevant, targeted for change in the service of client well-being.