personality theories
Summary
Personality theories are frameworks that explain why people show stable patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. The MCAT's main families are psychoanalytic, humanistic, trait, social cognitive, behaviorist, and biological, and the usual task is matching a scenario to a theory's central claim.
Detail
Meaning: Personality is a person's relatively stable pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Each theory names a different source of that pattern. Psychoanalytic (Freud): unconscious conflict among id, ego, and superego, shaped by childhood. Humanistic (Rogers, Maslow): an inborn drive toward self-actualization, fostered by unconditional positive regard. Trait: stable dimensions, such as the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism). Social cognitive (Bandura): reciprocal determinism among person, behavior, and environment, plus self-efficacy. Behaviorist: personality is learned through reinforcement and punishment. Biological: genes and temperament, studied with twin and adoption studies.
On the MCAT: A vignette or passage describes a person's behavior or a researcher's claim, and you name the theory or choose which one would best explain a finding. Typical contrasts are unconscious versus conscious, disposition versus situation, and describing versus explaining.
Common confusion: Trait theories describe and measure personality but do not explain where it comes from, while psychoanalytic, behaviorist, and social cognitive theories propose mechanisms. Also, social cognitive theory is not simply behaviorism: both stress the environment, but social cognitive theory adds thinking, observational learning, and self-efficacy.
Sources
- Psychology (Myers)
- Theories of Personality (Feist, Feist, and Roberts)
Written for the MCAT and checked before it was published. For study reference only. Spotted an error? Let us know.