The Construction of Personality : An Introduction (Introductions to Modern Psychology)

329 Pages·1988·1.56 MB·English

by  Sarah Hampson

The construction of personality
The Author
Until recently, Sarah E. Hampson was a lecturer in psychology at Birkbeck
College, University of London. She is now at the Oregon Research Institute
in the USA, where she is conducting research in personality and social
cognition. She has served on the editorial boards of the British Journal of
Social Psychology, the European Journal of Personality, and Personal
and Individual Differences. She was the founding secretary of the
European Association for Personality Psychology, established in 1984.
Introductions to Modern Psychology
General Editor: Max Coltheart
Birkbeck College, University of London
Animal Learning: An Introduction Stephen Walker
Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction Alan Garnham
Clinical Psychopathology: An Introduction E.M. Coles
Consistency in Cognitive Social Behaviour: An Introduction to Social
Psychology C.J. Mower White
Introduction to Human Memory Vernon H. Gregg
Language Processing in Children and Adults: An Introduction
Margaret Harris and Max Coltheart
Physiological Psychology: An Introduction Simon Green
The construction of
personality
An introduction
Second edition
Sarah E. Hampson
London and New York
First published in 1982 by
Routledge
Second edition published in 1988 by
Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Published in the USA by
Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
© Sarah E. Hampson, 1982, 1988
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher
except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Hampson, Sarah E. 1951-
The construction of personality.
(Introductions to modern psychology)
Bibliography: p.
Includes indexes.
1. Personality. 2. Personality Research.
I. Title. II. Series
BF698.11333 1988 155.2 87-12875
British Library CIP Data also available
ISBN 0-415-00256-7 (Print Edition)
ISBN 0-203-13695-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-17552-2 (Glassbook Format)
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 The concept of personality 1
Part One Explicit Personality: The Personality
Theorist’s Perspective
2 Single-trait theories 13
3 Multi-trait theories 40
4 Personality and consistency 72
Part Two Implicit Personality: The Lay Perspective
5 The lay perspective 101
6 Implicit versus explicit personality theories 134
Part Three The Self Perspective and Personality
Construction
7 The self perspective 163
8 The construction of personality 191
Part Four Applications of the Constructivist Approach
9 Personality over the life-span 209
10 Criminal personality 249
Bibliography 281
v
vi Contents
Author index 310
Subject index 316
Acknowledgments
First edition
A number of people have read some or all of this book at different stages
in its preparation and their reactions have been invaluable. I am especially
indebted to Max Coltheart for his help with the entire manuscript and to
Camilla Mower White who also commented on all the chapters. In particular,
I would like to thank Paul Harris for his candid comments. I am also
grateful to Mary Boyle, Gordon Craig, Peter Dowrick, Daphne Loasby,
Angus McLachlan and the third and fourth year Birkbeck psychology
undergraduates in 1979–80 for their evaluations of various chapters, and I
would like to thank Carol Machen and Patricia Caple for their assistance
with typing.
Second edition
I would like to thank Lewis Goldberg, David Good, Dean Peabody and
Nico Smid for their thoughtful suggestions for revisions, and Hazel Sparey
for typing the manuscript. In addition, help from Helen, Frank and Larry at
various stages in the preparation of this book has been indispensable.
Some of this book was written while I was at the Oregon Research
Institute, Eugene, Oregon, USA, and partially supported by grant MH39077
from the National Institute of Mental Health, USA, and also by a grant
from the British Academy.
vii
viii Acknowledgments
The figure from Dimensions of Personality edited by H. London and
J.E. Exner (1978), is adapted on page 19 with kind permission of John
Wiley & Sons.
1 The concept of personality
A definition of personality
Personality has different meanings for theologians, philosophers, and
sociologists, and within psychology it has been defined in many ways
(Allport, 1937). Rather than give examples of the diversity of the definitions,
which tends to be confusing rather than illuminating, we will begin by
considering just one definition of personality considered acceptable by many
psychologists today (Block, Weiss and Thorne, 1979): personality refers
to ‘more or less stable, internal factors that make one person’s
behaviour consistent from one time to another, and different from the
behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations’
(Child, 1968, p.83).
In a few words, this definition manages to encompass all the major
assumptions of a generally accepted definition of the concept of personality.
These assumptions are that personality is stable, internal, consistent and
different.
Stability
The definition begins by stating that the personality is more or less stable.
It is not assumed that personality is entirely stable but rather that it can, to
a limited extent, undergo changes. Such a view allows for the possibility of
long-term personality growth and change over the life-span and short-
term fluctuations in personality from day to day. Nevertheless, these
1