The topic I have chosen for my research paper is personality. I am going to explore the field of personality psychology from different perspectives of personality theories. We all think differently, feel differently and therefore behave differently. This broad pattern or tendency is what we generally call personality. In terms of psychology, however, the fact is that there is no one single definition of personality that is agreed by personality theorists. What makes a person who he or she is? What can influence the personality? Ethnicity? Age? Education? Religion or belief? Childhood experience? Culture? Social environment? Medical effect?Does a personality change? When or how it change? Role of unconsciousness?There are so many things that could determine personality and I am going to analyze variety of personality theories in my research paper.
Here is how I would organize and develop my paper. I would explore six major personality theories; Trait Theories, Type Theories, Psychoanalytic Theory, Humanistic Theory, Behaviorist Theory and Social-Cognitive Theories. (I would exclude Biopsychological theory here for a reason). There would be three major paragraphs and I would group up the first two as systematic theories, the third and fourth as abstract theories and the last two as external effect theories. I categorized them in this way since this would make it possible to view them deeper, compare and contrast those theories within each paragraph in regard to similarities, differences or common foundations. So, for example, the first paragraph would include Five factor model by Lewis Goldberg, Three factor theory by Hans Eysenck and 16 personality factors, also known as Lexical Hypothesis, by Raymond Cattell from one big tree of Trait Theories. Then it would include Carl Jung, Briggs Myers and type A type B personality theory as Type Theories.
I am going to use the Internet resources as pre-research to gather general information and to plan basic constructure of the paragraphs in the most effective way. For further and main resources, I am going to use psychology textbooks as well as books and e-books as following. “Attitude, Personality and Behavior”, “Personality and development in childhood”, “Personality development: a psychoanalytic perspective”, “Dimension of personality”, “Personality in adulthood: a five-factor theory perspective” and some more as I find. I will also use several articles from New York Times.
Psychology has a long past but its history is short, compared to other subjects of science. There are much more to be found about human complexity, which I am interested in. In my research paper, I would like to approach personality, one of the complexities of human beings, from many different perspectives. I hope this paper would be highly informative, intellectual, academic and still something interesting to read.
Keiko Matsuura
Hi Keiko,
ReplyDeleteYour research paper sounds really interesting. I'm not a big on psychology, but learning about the personality of humans, and what can influence it sounds fun. Humans are very interesting characters, which explains why everyone's personality is very different. I think it's cool that your going to research the reasons why humans personalities are so different. Good Luck :)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEloquent! Also, this is very a interesting topic. You may consider, though, narrowing it down to a single personality type, or perhaps all types, but within a certain region of the world.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your research!
Hey Keiko,
ReplyDeleteI am a psychology major and I am very interested in your topic of research. Human beings are diverse and all have their own unique personality traits. There are many aspects of psychology and a numerous amount of behavioral problems that I think you should look into on your paper.
I think the main influence on someone's personality is their surroundings. I suggest in your research you find out what opinions you find the most on behavior influence... not only from a text or internet source but alsop from professors and classmates to make it more interesting.
You have alot of work on your hands but you seem like you have a clear view on what your going to look into so good luck and if you need any suggestions or help feel free to email me :)
Goood Luck
I love to find out more about personailities and different types of personalities, but I agree with Megarnold in choosing only one personality type or even thejust a certain age range of personalities. what about the personalities of teenagers between the age of 14 and 18? or the personalities of people in their 20s? your topic is great though. I think everyone would always want to know more about different personality traits.
ReplyDeleteHi Keiko - As we discussed, you'll need to narrow this down. There are so many ways to go with this! I can't wait to see what you choose.
ReplyDelete