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1.3 DEFINITIONS OF PERSONALITY 17

a ‘pattern’ of traits, and, importantly, a life story nar rative embedded in a specific culture. All of these features of personality are represented in the various chapters of this text. Both Allport’s (1937) and McAdams and Pals’s (2006) definitions draw our attention to two import ant features of personality: function and change— this stands in contrast to trait descriptions that tend to be much more static in nature.

Schopenhauer to Freud and German theorists in the early twentieth century, so they are prevalent in intellectual views of society. This cool–hot distinction is now very popular in psychology, as well as economics, with the advent of a more psychological perspective on judgement and decision-making: behavioural economics (Corr & Plagnol, 2023). 7. Personality can be seen as consisting in three parts: (a) latent constructs with each person having a true score on each trait/factor (see Chapter 20); (b) re sponse functions , which relate latent constructs to specific situational constraints/affordance; and (c) measured expressions of personality over time and situations. 8. The concept of personality is much more dynamic than any single score on a personality question naire might imply. 9. Personality predicts a wide range of life outcomes (e.g. occupational performance) and in this way has practical utility (see Chapter 22). • The first known theory of personality is seen in the cosmological writings of the Greek philosopher and physiologist Empedocles, who lived some 500 years bc . • Hippocrates related Empedocles’ ideas to physical humours (i.e. bodily fluids), which were associated with variations in temperament. • These ideas were later taken up by the physician and philosopher Galen, who specifically related the four humours to four temperament types: san guine (blood), choleric (yellow bile), melancholic (black bile), and phlegmatic (phlegm). • Other major ideas come from the philosopher Em manuel Kant and the experimental psychologist Wilhelm Wundt. • These early ideas contained the intellectual kernels that inspired modern-day personality psychol ogists (e.g. linking physical functions with traits/ temperament). SECTION SUMMARY

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1.3.3 THE CONSENSUS VIEW ON PERSONALITY

Irrespective of their specific features, most personality perspectives share general assumptions: 1. Personality has biological origins, although with an important contribution from the environment (see Chapter 13). 2. As personality develops over the lifespan it is in fluenced by many factors, including culture (see Chapter 10 and 11). 3. The characteristic thoughts, feelings, and be haviours that comprise personality are typi cal patterns of transitory state processes (see Chapter 5). 4. Traits of personality serve as convenient and useful summaries of the crystallization of all of the var ious processes of personality, as measured at any one point in time. 5. Consistencies in personality are found over time and across situations, but this does not mean that personality does not change over time and is always expressed in the same way in all situations. Instead, the rank ordering (not absolute scores) of person ality over time shows considerable stability, and personality serves to predict different behaviours in reaction to different situations. 6. There is the idea that more controlled-deliberative processes (‘cool’ processes) serve to control the expression of more automatic-emotional (‘hot’) ones—we see this with the notions of the Ego, Id, and Super-ego in psychodynamic theory. These ideas can be found from Plato and Aristotle to

© Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press