Biological and Humanistic Approaches to Personality

Biological and Humanistic Approaches to Personality

Biological and Humanistic Approaches to Personality

Introduction

Everybody's heard period personality, and most of us can describe our own or our friend's personality. What most don't understand, although, is that personality is one of most theorized and most researched aspects of psychology?

So what is personality? To understand this notion, you first require understanding distinction between the trait and the state. Atrait is the somewhat enduring one-by-one characteristic. For example, most of understand persons who are outgoing, amicable, assured, or shy. When we describe these persons, we use these traits to better understand their personality; to better understand who they are. Astate, on other hand, is the provisional change in one's personality. Examples of states might be furious, depressed, fearful, or anxious. We typically use states to describe the person's reaction to something.(Maslow, 1968)

The Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs five-stage form (structure and terminology - not precise pyramid diagram itself) is clearly and exactly attributable to Maslow; later versions of idea with added motivational stages are not so clearly attributable to Maslow. These expanded models have instead been inferred by others from Maslow's work. Specifically Maslow mentions to desires Cognitive, Aesthetic and Transcendence (subsequently shown as distinct needs grades in some interpretations of his idea) as additional facets of motivation, but not as distinct grades in Hierarchy of Needs.

Diagrams on this page are my own interpretations and are not suggested as Maslow's original work. Interestingly in Maslow's publication Motivation and Personality, which first presented Hierarchy of Needs, there is not the pyramid to be seen.

 

Biological Factors

First, idea that our genetic makeup determines, at least in part, our personality has been the strong conviction among theorists for thousands of years. Secondly, one of first questions Personality students often ask is what ...