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Personality Psychology
Personality is a term that is used to describe a list of traits shown continuously across time and situations. This results in predictability of the personality. Predictability makes it possible to explain and understand behavior. A person's personality can often suggest their internal thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Intrapersonal functioning is a term used to describe the stable processes that underlie these thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Gordon Allport defines personality as a "dynamic organization inside a person, of psychophysical systems that create the person's characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts and feelings."

Early Theories
Many theorists like Hippocrates had their own opinions on what affected the personality. Hippocrates believed that the body was composed of four humors: yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. When one of these four bodily humors was abnormal, it resulted in effecting the personality. Hippocrates associated each of the humors with different elements, and temperaments. Blood was associated with air and resulted in sanguine, or hopefulness. Black bile, associated with earth, resulted in a temperament that was melancholic and resulted in a person feeling sad. Yellow bile was associated with fire and resulted in what he called a choleric temperament, resulting in irritability and aggression. And lastly, phlegm, associated with water, resulted in a phlegmatic temperament, associated with being apathetic. If any of the four humors were at abnormal levels, Hippocrates believed the person would display the temperaments or show signs of sickness.

Different Perspectives of Personality Research
When studying personality, one must consider all the different perspectives in the approach to understand how personality is created. Some of these perspectives include things like trait theory, the influence of motives, evolutionary theories, and the social learning approach. Each of these theories try and explain how the personality is created and what influences its development.

Trait theory suggests that there are both traits and types within people that create the personality. Types are discontinuous categories that have qualitative differences. Traits are stable qualities in people that have continuous dimensions and quantitative differences. Examples of traits are things like fairness, intelligence, confidence, and helpfulness. Individual differences are reflected in the amount that a trait is seen. Within trait theory, there are many different approaches to how traits operate and to what extent. A Nomothetic view of traits suggests that traits are universal and it is possible to compare traits among individuals. It also states that individuals reflect a unique combination of traits, implying that while everyone has the same basic traits, not all individuals have the same levels of each trait. An Ideographic view of traits suggests that traits are idiosyncratic, or not universal. This approach explains that comparisons are not possible among individuals because not all traits are shared. It states that traits may be different in importance for different groups of people.

Motives are another important factor to consider when studying the personality. Motives are forces that are influenced by an underlying need. A need is a manifestation of an internal biological or psychological state. Needs direct behavior and influence a persons state of being. When a need is not met, an individual will have a motive to fulfill that need. For example, every human being has a need for water. The motive would be thirst. The need for water influenced the motive to no longer be thirsty. A press is an external event that acts as a trigger for motives. Using the same example as before, a thirsty person may be triggered to drink water by seeing a cold cup of water, which serves as a press. An incentive value is another important concept when looking at theories on motives. An incentive value is the degree to which a given behavior can satisfy a need. This accounts for the differences in individuals. What may be more satisfying to one person may not be the same thing to another person. Each individual has a different incentive value.

Another theory about personality is the inheritance or evolutionary theories. These theories suggest that personality is genetically-based. Evolutionists believe that the personality has adapted over time to ensure survival and reproduction.

Social learning theory suggests that the personality is shaped by our experiences with relationships, our environment, and the social world in general.

Personality Types
Through experimentation and research, psychologists have been able to identify five major personality traits. These are known as the Big Five. These traits are neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Neuroticism refers to a person's emotionality. Someone high in neuroticism has high emotional control and liability. This may cause them to exhibit signs of nervousness, anxiety, and excitability. A neurotic person may also display hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, and vulnerability to stress. Extraversion is also known as sociability a person has. This refers to the social adaptability, assertiveness, and energy a person contains. A person high in extraversion would be extremely warm, positive, and prone to excitement-seeking. Openness is also known as the intellect factor. Openness is associated with culture and being open to experience. A person high in openness would be labeled creative, knowledgeable, and imaginative. Agreeableness is associated with conformity, friendliness, and likability. A person high in agreeableness would be considered friendly, kind, considerate, and good-natured. The last of the Big Five is conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is also known as responsibility and having a strong will to achieve. A person high in conscientiousness would be considered cautious, planful, serious, and hardworking.

Personality Disorders
While studying the healthy components of the personality, psychologists began to expand knowledge on the abnormal aspects of the personality. All of the personality disorders were organized into three clusters: Cluster A, Cluster B, and Cluster C. Cluster A consists of all of the odd and eccentric disorders. These include personality disorders like paranoid schizophrenia, schizoid, and schizotypal. Cluster B includes the dramatic, emotional, and erratic personality disorders. These include disorders like antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality, histrionic personality, and narcissism. Cluster C is characterized by personality disorders dealing with anxiety or fear. This cluster includes avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder.

There are many approaches to understanding why and how personality disorders are created. The dimensional perspective suggests that personality disorders are just extreme manifestations of traits that are caused by deviating from cultural norms. It views personality disorders as interfering and disrupting a person's life, as well as the lives of others. The biological perspective explains that personality is genetically-determined, therefore, that our behavior is simply the product of a complex biological organism. It states that genetics and biology influence all the processes within a personality.

Studying Personality
There are several ways that psychologists study the personality. Some of these ways include methods such as systematic and nonsystematic observation, self reports, case studies, and many more. Nonsystematic observation describes a method where you, the individual, observes him or herself by self-reflection and observing the self in interactions with others. Systematic observation is when someone studies the information about more than one person in the same situation. In systematic observation, a person is able to use generalizability, the ability to make assumptions and apply a conclusion to many different people. Self-reports include things like surveys and interviews. In this method of studying personality, people are asked questions and given choices to these questions. Psychologists are able to make conclusions about their personalities based on their answers. In self-reports, there are scales and inventories. Scales assess a single aspect of the personality, while inventories are used to measure several distinct aspects of the personality. An example of a scale is a question like "I appreciate my family." The person being studied would then have to rate how much they appreciate their family on a scale from 1 to 10. Another type of self-report is experience sampling. Experience sampling is also known as diary studies because the participants give a brief report of how they are feeling throughout the day. These are done over long periods of time to get the most accurate conclusions. Implicit assessments are another method of studying the personality. Implicit assessments are conducted by asking the participants questions that don't seem to have a right or wrong answer. Depending on what the individuals answer, the psychologist is then able to draw conclusions about what a person is like. An implicit association test helps psychologists understand the feelings people have that they may not even be aware of themselves. An example of this type of test is a Rorschach ink blot. This test involves showing the individual a picture of an inkblot and asking them what they see. There are endless possibilities of what different people may see in the inkblot, making it useful in making assumptions about an individual based on what they see. Case studies are another important method in studying the personality. A case study is an intense monitoring of a person. Case studies involve studying a person for a very long period of time, gaining as much knowledge about a person as possible. A disadvantage to case studies is that it is hard to use that information to help understand other people because no two people are exactly the same. This provides limited generalizability. Psychophysiological methods are ways of studying the personality by observing the physical body. This includes things like studying a person's blood pressure, heart rate, stress hormones, and brain. By studying how the body reacts to different situations, psychologists are able to learn about the personality.