Theories of Personality: Understanding Persons ⋆ Book Box PDF

Skinner and Staats: The Challenge of Behaviorism
Dollard and Miller: Psychoanalytic Learning Theory

Theories of Personality: Uderstanding Persons by Susan C. Cloninger – Fourth Edition (2003)

Personality may be defined as the underlying causes within the person of individual behavior and experience. Personality psychologists do not all agree about what these underlying causes are, as the many theories in this text suggest. They offer a variety of answers to three fundamental questions.

First, how can personality be described? Personality description considers the ways in which we should characterize an individual. Should we describe personality traits by comparing people with one another or use some other strategy, such as studying an individual? What terms, beyond those offered in everyday language, should be used to describe people?

Second, how can we understand personality dynamics? How do people adjust to their life situations? How are they influenced by culture and by their own cognitive (thought) processes?

Third, what can be said about personality development? How does it reflect the influence of biological factors and experience in childhood and beyond? How does personality change over the life of an individual, from childhood to adulthood?

CONTENTS:

PART I: The Psychoanalytic Perspective