PSYCH101 Chapter Notes - Chapter ch 12: Albert Bandura, Raymond Cattell, Trait Theory

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYCH101
• Professor: Paul Wehr

Document Summary

Personality is a characteristic pattern of thinking, interacting, and reacting that is unique to each individual and remains relatively consistent over time and situations. Some psychologists study personality by using an idiographic approach: meaning they focus on creating detailed descriptions of individuals and their unique personality characteristics. An idiographic approach might involve focusing on a rare type of individual eg. a serial killer. What makes an idiographic approach distinct is that it is person centered, and might include how an individual perceives his or her own personality as well as how others perceive that individual"s personality. In contrast, other psychologists are interested in describing personality in terms that can apply to any member of the population. These questions reflect a nomothetic approach: which examines personality in large groups of people, with the aim of making generalizations about personality structure. One advantage of this approach is that it allows.