Personality
Key Ideas
Knowledge and understanding should be relevant to the following key ideas:
· Personality is a socially and culturally constructed concept.
· Many different descriptions of the structure of personality have been proposed.
· Ways of measuring personality are linked to particular beliefs about its structure.
Areas of Learning
· Psychodynamic, humanistic, and trait conceptions of personality; the main forms of personality assessment used today, including standardised self-report inventories, clinical interviews, and behavioural observations.
· Psychological principles concerning personality in everyday experiences and events (e.g. character depictions in the popular media) and in psychological interventions, including assertiveness training.
· Application of these psychological principles to social issues (e.g. personality disorders, the relationship between personality and learning styles, the relationship between culture and personality) and personal growth (e.g. gaining greater insight into one’s own personality and the factors that have shaped it).
· Investigation designs and methods of assessing psychological responses used to study personality, including validity and reliability.
· Ethical issues associated with research and applications in the area of personality.
Links to Topics
Follow the links below to detailed curriculum summaries, PowerPoint Presentations to support the teaching of this topic and links to Video clips.
Forms of Personality Assessment
