9780198811398_Ch1

Chapter 1 Introduction to Personality Psychology 16

Over the intervening centuries to modern times, there were sporadic writings on personality and emotion. For example, one famous book was by Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy , first published in 1621. This was intended as a medical textbook, but not as one we would recognize today. The focus was on melancholy , what we today term clinical depression. The book is interesting for using melancholy as a way of viewing all human emotion and can be read online. One interesting aspect of Burton’s book is to treat melancholy, or depres sion, as an emotion with positive features, related to imagination and creativity. This book has been much admired, especially as it anticipates much that we would recognize today as a characterization of the depressed personality, and the dispositions and habits associated with it. Closer to the present time, other thinkers such as Immanuel Kant (in the eighteenth century) and the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (in the nineteenth cen tury) contributed significantly to the then-current un derstanding of personality (Stelmack & Stalikas, 1991). Kant agreed with Galen that individuals can be cate gorized according to one of the four temperaments— importantly, there was no overlap between the catego ries. Kant developed a list of traits that could be used to describe the four personality types—in a manner similar to contemporary approaches to describing per sonality (see Chapter 6).Wundt, the experimental psy chologist, went further and proposed using two main axes to describe personality: emotional/non-emo tional and changeable/unchangeable. The first axis separated strong from weak emotions (the melan cholic and choleric temperaments from the phleg matic and sanguine), while the second axis separated the changeable temperaments (choleric and sanguine) from the unchangeable (melancholic and phlegmatic), as shown in Figure 1.3.

Emotional

1

Choleric

Exciteable

Anxious

Egocentric

Worried

Melancholic

Exhibitionist

Suspicious Serious Thoughtful Unhappy

Impulsive

Histrionic Active

Unchangeable

Changeable

Playful

Reasonable

Easy-going Sociable Carefree

High-principled

Controlled

Persistent

Hopeful

Steadfast Calm

Phlegmatic

Contented

Sanguine

Nonemotional

organization within the individual of those psycho physical systems that determine his unique adjust ments to the environment’ (p. 48). If we unpack this definition step by step, it provides us with ideas of process (‘dynamic’), structure (‘organization’), neu rophysiology (‘psychophysical systems’), situational factors (‘environment’), and individual differences (‘unique adjustments’). This is a fairly comprehensive listing of the varied features of personality—perhaps only knowledge, experience, and personal meaning are missing. A more recent and comprehensive definition of personality was given by McAdams and Pals (2006, p. 212): an individual’s unique variation on the general evolu tionary design for human nature, expressed as a de veloping pattern of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and integrative life stories complexly and differentially situated in culture. In this updated definition, we see deviations from the typical (mean) evolutionary ‘design’, as well as FIGURE 1.3 Immanuel Kant arrangement of two dimensions of temperament. Shown are characteristics (traits) associated with the quadrants in relation to the Ancient Greek classification of humours and temperament. Credit: Saklofske et al. (2012). Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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1.3.2 GORDON ALLPORT’S PERSONOLOGICAL TRAIT APPROACH

As a scientific milestone, Allport’s (1937) personolog ical trait approach defined personality as ‘the dynamic

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