personality
Summary
Personality is the relatively stable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that characterizes a person across time and situations. The MCAT tests it through competing perspectives (psychoanalytic, humanistic, trait, social cognitive, behaviorist, biological), each explaining that pattern differently.
Detail
Meaning: Personality is the relatively stable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that characterizes a person across time and situations. Theories differ on its source: psychoanalytic (Freud: id, ego, superego, unconscious conflict), humanistic (Rogers, Maslow: self-actualization), trait (Big Five: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism), social cognitive (Bandura: reciprocal determinism), behaviorist (reinforcement history), and biological (genes, temperament).
On the MCAT: A passage describes a person's behavior, a questionnaire, or a twin study, and you pick the perspective that fits. Unconscious conflict points to psychoanalytic; self-concept and personal growth to humanistic; scores on stable dimensions to trait; observational learning, self-efficacy, and person-environment interaction to social cognitive; heritability to biological. Projective tests (Rorschach, TAT) come from psychoanalytic thinking, while self-report inventories (MMPI) measure traits.
Common confusion: Personality is not expected to look identical in every context. Trait theories predict consistency, but the person-situation debate points out that behavior also varies with the situation, which social cognitive theory emphasizes. Also keep a personality trait, a normal-range disposition, separate from a personality disorder, a rigid, maladaptive pattern.
Sources
- Psychology (Myers)
- Psychology (Schacter, Gilbert, Wegner)
- Theories of Personality (Feist, Feist, Roberts)
Written for the MCAT and checked before it was published. For study reference only. Spotted an error? Let us know.