History of Personality Psychology

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The period from approximately 1930 to 1950 was marked by the establishment of the field and the development of a number of general systems. Gordon Allport (1937, as cited in McAdams, 2009) viewed personality psychology as the study of the individual person-an idiographic approach to personality-and how that individual adjusted to his environment. During that period however, other Psychologists had a nomothetic approach to personality in which personality emphasized how people were different from one another, as well as how they were alike. American psychology searched for universal laws that applied to all organisms instead of individualized studies. The period from 1950 to 1970 marked a second historical phase. Psychology departments grew and became more specialized in areas of clinical, counseling, and industrialized/organizational psychology. Personality Psychologists focused on research toward personality traits, needs, and motives that could be reliably measured and whose impact on behavior could be observed. This historical period focused instead on problems and controversies concerning personality measurement. Mischel (1968, as cited in McAdams, 2009) argued against explanations of human behavior based on internal personality traits such as extraversion, anxiety, needs, and motives. His theory is that the approach of personality psychology should be the study of an individual’s response to situational and environmental factors. This theory was later criticized by personality psychologists because it became the study of psychology disorders instead of personality psychology. A third phase in the brief history of modern personality psychology began around 1970 and continues to the present day. Personality psychologists are concerned with the development of human beings from birth to death. Developmental psychologists focus their
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