Toward an integrative personality psychology

Författare

Artur Nilsson

Summary, in English

Previous attempts to construct an integrative framework for personality psychology are primarily descriptions of what

the field looks like today rather than analyses of its logical structure and research possibilities. I aim to draw attention

to logically important points that may help to integrate the field and suggest potentially fruitful research paths that

are unrealized due to historical contingency. My point of departure is that the crucial defining feature of personality

psychology is that it studies human beings not just as mechanical systems, but also as rational agents, whose

experiences and actions are imbued with intentionality and meaning. I argue that it follows if we take this core feature

of personality seriously that the study of personality consists of two equally basic and mutually irreducible projects:

the study of traits, defined as objective patterns of behavior, and the study of worldviews, defined as subjective

sources of meaning. I argue that worldviews are, contrary to popular belief, not inherently less universal, or in other

ways less basic, than traits, and that both traits and worldviews can, and should, be studied across universalistic,

historic- cultural, and individual- centered levels of analysis. I conclude by emphasizing the need for a systematic study

of worldviews, and systematic integration across the trait- worldview divide and the nomothetic- idiothetic divide, for

the development of richer and more unified portraits of personalities.

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