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Week 12 · Module overview

Week 12 — Personality

Introduction to Psychology Free sample edition

Welcome to your Week 12 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A hiring team weighing a personality test and a clinic choosing a well-tested inventory both depend on how personality is described and measured.

In plain language

Everyone you know has a style: the friend who plans every trip, the cousin who talks to strangers in line, the coworker who stays calm in a crisis. Personality is the word psychologists use for that style, a person's typical way of thinking, feeling, and acting that shows up again and again. This week you will meet the four big families of personality theory, and each one asks a different question about where that style comes from. You will learn to describe a person on five dials, which are sliding scales with a low end and a high end, instead of sorting them into a box. Finally, you will compare the tests psychologists trust with the ones they do not, including the quick quizzes you find online.

  • Already covered: Week 1's perspectives, Week 2's reliability and validity, and Week 11's question of stability.
  • This week: four families of personality theory, the Big Five, and personality tests.
  • How they connect: each family grows from a Week 1 perspective.
  • Where we're going next: Week 13, Social Psychology, asks how the situation shapes behavior.

Focus

What is a person like, and how would you know?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

  • [ ] name the four families of personality theory and their key ideas
  • [ ] read a person on the Big Five as five dials, not a type
  • [ ] identify five defense mechanisms and explain self-efficacy
  • [ ] judge a personality test by its reliability and validity

To-do

Plan your week

  1. Read Chapter 12 (about 45 minutes), then the lecture and the slides.
  2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
  3. Do the Analysis Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
  4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: read one person you know on one Big Five dial and name the behavior behind it.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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