No matter in study or work, everyone has tried to write a paper. By writing papers, we can cultivate our ability of independent thinking and innovation. You always have no way to write a paper? The following is my carefully arranged psychological paper on personality. Welcome everyone to learn from it, I hope it will help you.
Abstract: Since Darwin put forward the theory of evolution, it has set off great changes in biology and promoted the study of the origin of species. However, these changes focus on the discussion of physiological mechanism, but fail to pay attention to the study of individual psychology. Evolutionary psychology just fills this gap, and it has provided another perspective for many psychological studies since its birth. It synthesizes the existing evolutionary biology theories and broadens the research ideas of personality psychology. Based on the existing research, this paper will make a brief introduction to the personality view of evolutionary psychology.
Keywords: evolutionary psychology; Character; Form; influencing factor
In recent thirty years, evolutionary psychology has become a new research paradigm in the field of psychology. It combines the theory of evolutionary biology with the research law of psychology and broadens the research perspective of psychology. Personality and individual differences are the main research objects of personality psychology, and Jinhua psychologists have explored them by using evolution theory. They regard psychological mechanism and coping strategies as the focus of personality research, and believe that in the long-term evolution process, choice and adaptation have promoted the formation of personality.
First, the generation of personality.
The construction of personality theories of various schools can not be separated from the discussion of human nature, because this is the core of personality theory. For example, Freud emphasized human's sexual instinct, Maslow emphasized human's self-realization, Adler emphasized the pursuit of superiority, and Hogan, mcadams, mcclelland, Wiggins and others believed that people's focus was on the pursuit of status, power, prestige and intimacy. But all the above viewpoints only explain what human nature is, but ignore its origin and process [1]. Evolutionary psychologists have made a leap. They not only expounded their views on the origin of human nature, but also made a deeper excavation on this basis. In their view, human nature is the attribute of all individuals, which was gradually formed by our ancestors in the process of evolution, and its components are various psychological mechanisms.
(A) the emergence of personality is the result of adaptation and evolution.
In the process of human evolution, there are bound to be two challenges: survival and reproduction. In the process of evolution, how and to what extent will they affect the formation of our personality? Evolutionary psychologists believe that selection plays the most important role, which covers two aspects: sexual selection and similar selection. Species will compete in the process of finding a mate and raising offspring, which is sexual selection, with the aim of obtaining superior resources and better transmitting genes; Similar selection is more similar to altruistic behavior, but the object of behavior is limited to one's own relatives, because relatives have higher genetic similarity than others, so it is also an adaptation to create * * * resources for relatives through reciprocal behavior, and its purpose is still to ensure that one's genes can continue better. In the process of our evolution, most of the characters we passed down from generation to generation are beneficial to our survival and reproduction, and have achieved the effect of adaptation. In other words, the vast majority of individuals in the group can develop the adaptability of both * * * and personality in general environment. In this process, three products are produced: adaptation and its by-products and noise. Human nature is made up of these three.
(B) the basic system of basic needs to produce basic personality
After functional analysis, evolutionary psychologists have divided people's psychological mechanisms and pointed out that the formation of individual psychological mechanisms is by no means accidental. It is pointed out that the most basic and important link in the formation of personality system is individual adaptability. MacDonald believes that there is continuity from mammals to primates to humans. In order to meet the needs of human beings from low-level to high-level species, five systems have been produced accordingly: behavior approach system, nurturing-loving system, behavior inhibition and responsibility system, and open experience system, each of which will produce different behavior strategies [2].
Second, the influencing factors of personality
In the history of personality psychology research, personality and individual differences have always been two major concerns. Perhaps personality psychologists in different times have different concerns, among which many opinions have been obtained on personality, but there are still many different opinions on individual differences.
(1) inheritance
Some researchers believe that there will be three products in the process of evolution: adaptation, noise and by-products of adaptation. Among the three, the universal psychological mechanism we have is the final result of adaptation, while noise and by-products bring about differences among individuals, not the product of natural selection.
Toby and cosmi used the concept of reactive inheritance to explain how the psychological mechanism evolved. In their view, heredity is the most important mechanism to transmit input information to individuals, and individuals will eventually give selective solutions. In other words, in the process of evolution, we should not only adapt to the problems in the environment, but also coordinate with our existing resources. Subsequent research shows that the adaptation process also manipulates the mechanism of personality activation and formation, and affects heredity, resulting in various differences in individual adaptation process [1]. For example, all individuals are naturally aggressive, and whether they are activated or not will keep pace with the environment. Aggressiveness is very common in personality traits, and the heritability is zero. However, aggressive activation will be influenced by individual personality, which is highly hereditary. From this point of view, the attack mechanism of people who gain stronger physique through heredity is more likely to be successfully activated. To some extent, human self-evaluation mechanism can evaluate heredity and affect the activation of aggressive psychological mechanism.
(2) Environment
Many evolutionary psychologists oppose the genetic theory on the point of personality influencing factors. They think that individual differences in the process of adaptation are not noise or garbage, on the contrary, these differences are of great significance to individuals. Under the mutual influence of our psychological mechanism and environment, individual differences begin to appear in personality, which is also the adaptability to individuals. The importance of early experience in personality shaping confirms this point.
Research shows that early experience is a very important environmental factor. Individuals adopt different psychological strategies because of different early environmental events. Everyone is born with various optional psychological strategies. Among them, early experience will affect the choice of strategies, and then decide which ones to keep. The research shows that whether a girl's father, as an important figure, appears in a key event in her first seven years will have a great influence on her sexual selection strategy in her later life. If there is a natural or premature lack of paternal love, these girls will tend to think that their parents' resources are unstable, suspicious spouse relationship is difficult to maintain, and the opposite sex is hard to believe, so they will get the most self-interested resources in short-term sexual relations. And their companions who fully feel the father's love, long-term sexual strategies will be activated, they will actively seek a safe and lasting adult attachment relationship, and will further invest the love they feel in the next generation. In fact, every girl has these two coping mechanisms at the beginning, but the differences in their early experiences lead to the differences in their activation mechanisms and eventually become individual differences [3]. The embodiment of environmental importance shows that personality can be shaped to some extent.
Three. assess
The view of personality in evolutionary psychology broadens the horizon of personality research. Since the study of personality psychology, the discussion of human nature has mostly touched on the essence of human nature, ignoring the emergence of human nature. To some extent, the personality view of evolutionary psychology has made a new attempt, trying to integrate evolutionary theory with personality psychology, taking reproduction and adaptation as an important source of individual differences, and then solving some problems that other viewpoints can't solve, which is conducive to our deeper thinking about personality. Especially in heterosexual attraction, competition and the establishment and termination of marriage, the views displayed by evolutionary psychology have also had a great influence on other disciplines of psychology.
Of course, evolutionary psychology also has some shortcomings in the construction of personality system. First of all, the personality psychology of evolutionary view only focuses on the explanation of the origin of personality. Secondly, the personality concept constructed by this school is mostly speculative, and we can't explain it through the occurrence of time reversal, because the lack of detailed information is likely to lead to the fallacy of reasoning. Finally, evolutionary psychology overemphasizes the role of natural conditions such as selection and adaptation, and lacks the analysis of the influence of economic and cultural factors in complex human society.
Human itself is so complex, and personality is also a huge system. Each theory can only explain one aspect of personality, but not all of it, and so can the perspective of evolutionary psychology. However, looking at personality from the perspective of evolutionary psychology will undoubtedly broaden our horizons and help us better understand the personality system.
References:
Wolf, M.& Xin, F.J.(20 12). Ecological and evolutionary consequences. Ecology and ecological trends. Evolution, 27(8), 452-461.
[2] Liu Zheng &; Zhao Qing (20 10). Introduction to the application of evolutionary psychology in the field of personality. Journal of Nanchang Institute of Education (5), 12 1.
[3] Wang,,&; Guo Benyu. (20 1 1). The new direction of contemporary personality research: evolutionary psychology. Journal of nanjing xiaozhuang university (1), 75-78.
Personality psychology papers 3 i. Overview of positive psychology
Positive psychology rose in the early 1990s, mainly in American psychological circles, and was founded by American psychologists seligman and Csikzentmihalyi. In the process of studying negative emotions such as depression, anxiety and prejudice, seligman noticed that psychology should not only study injuries, defects and injuries, but also study people's excellent qualities. Seligman became the chairman of APA from 65438 to 0997 and put forward the term "positive psychology". In 2002, the publication of the Handbook of Positive Psychology edited by Snyder and Lopez officially declared the independence of the positive psychology movement. Since then, many psychologists have gradually set foot in the field of positive psychology and gradually formed the research trend of positive psychology. In fact, the research origin of positive psychology can be traced back to Terman's research on genius and marital happiness and Jung's research on the meaning of life in the 1930s.
The humanistic trend advocated by Maslow and Rogers has also had a far-reaching impact on modern psychology. In 1950s and 1960s, some psychologists began to explore and study the positive aspects of people, which greatly promoted the development of positive psychology. At present, the research of positive psychology mainly focuses on positive emotions and experiences, positive personality characteristics, the influence of positive emotions on health and the cultivation of talents. It is divided into three levels: on the subjective level, it studies positive subjective experiences, including happiness and satisfaction, hope and optimism, happiness and happiness, including their physiological mechanisms and access; At the personal level, study positive personal characteristics, including love ability, work ability, courage, interpersonal skills, sensitivity to beauty, perseverance, tolerance, creativity, concern for the future, spirituality, talent and wisdom; At the group level, there are many factors in the study of civic virtue and social organization that make individuals become responsible, altruistic, polite, tolerant and professional citizens, including healthy families, well-connected communities, effective schools and socially responsible media. They are not isolated, but have a strong correlation. Among them, the study of positive personality at the individual level is an important aspect of positive psychology research, which is of great and positive significance for improving the application level of psychology and promoting the healthy development of personality.
Second, the study of "positive personality traits" in positive psychology.
The study of positive psychology is more about positive emotional experience, which has a positive effect on improving people's mental state. The premise of positive psychology is self-management, self-guidance and adaptation to the whole, so positive personality traits are the foundation of positive psychology. In 200 1 year, Sheldon and others applied the "causal feeling trajectory" to the study of spontaneous personal goals, and provided a quantitative way to reveal positive motivation and some incomprehensible positive psychological concepts by measuring the "causal feeling trajectory". Positive psychology specializes in 24 positive personal characteristics, including optimism, love, communication skills, virtue, work ability, sensibility, creativity, talent, spirituality, tolerance, perseverance, courage, defense mechanism, wisdom, concern for the future, self-determination and so on. These characteristics have been studied a lot in the early days, and with the rise of positive psychology, related research has flourished. Positive psychologists believe that one of the best ways to cultivate these positive characteristics is to enhance the individual's positive emotional experience. Psychologists believe that positive personality traits are mainly achieved by stimulating and strengthening personal abilities. When stimulating and strengthening a certain practical ability or potential ability becomes a habitual way of working, positive personality traits are formed. Positive personality helps individuals to adopt more effective coping strategies, including self-determination, optimism, mature defense mechanism and wisdom, among which self-determination and optimism are more concerned. Ryand and Deci studied the characteristics of self-determination and the formation of self-determination personality characteristics from three aspects: the innate nature of learning, creation and curiosity is the basis of its formation, and these innate natures must be combined with certain social values and external life experience to transform into their own intrinsic motivation and value, and the full satisfaction of psychological needs is the premise of its formation. They studied the theory of self-determination from the perspective of human nature. Based on the intrinsic motivation of individuals, this paper discusses three related human needs: ability needs, relationship needs and self-needs. They believe that when these needs are met, personal happiness and social development will be optimistic. Under this condition, individuals are motivated internally to give full play to their potential and actively seek greater challenges. Ryan and Desi believe that hindering the satisfaction of demand will lead to negative psychological results.
Among the positive personality characteristics, optimism is more concerned, because optimism makes people see more beautiful things, and sometimes there will be "optimistic prejudice", that is, judging one's own risk is less than judging the risk of others, which is blindly optimistic and unrealistic. These are two contradictory aspects: realism will improve the possibility of successfully adapting to the environment, while optimism will make us feel better subjectively. How to strike a balance between reality and optimism? Schneider (200 1) discussed a kind of "realistic optimism" and thought that "realistic optimism" is not contradictory to reality, so in principle, there will be no unrealistic evaluation of the environment or events, and optimism can be achieved without deceiving others. This study of "realistic optimism" explains positive psychology well: making life more meaningful. In the study of mature defense mechanism, psychologist Vailliant proposed that to describe positive psychological process, it must be studied for life. Because a truly positive psychological adaptation mechanism is to be cultivated in life. Under the guidance of this idea, he studied three large adult samples for decades. On the basis of the existing results, Vailliant summed up the role of mature defense mechanisms such as altruism, sublimation, depression, humor and expectation in a successful and happy life.
Regarding the study of wisdom, Hall, the first president of the American Psychological Association, tried to come up with a model of wisdom changing with age, but it did not get widespread attention. However, in recent years, the study of wisdom has picked up again. Baltes and Stawdinger reported a series of studies. They set up a complex model, which regards wisdom as the enlightening application of cognition and motivation to organize knowledge and pursue individual and collective Excellence. Their definition of wisdom is a practical and exquisite knowledge system about the basis of survival. Hillson and Marie( 1999) distinguished positive personality characteristics from negative personality characteristics on the basis of questionnaire research, and thought that there were two independent dimensions in positive personality characteristics: (1) positive self-interest characteristics; (2) Positive relationship with others. The former refers to accepting oneself, having personal life goals or feeling the meaning of life, feeling independent, feeling successful or being able to grasp the environment and environmental challenges; The latter refers to being able to get support from others when you need it, being willing and able to help others when they need it, attaching importance to and expressing satisfaction with the relationship with others. Positive personality helps individuals to adopt more effective coping strategies, so as to better face various stress situations in life. Strategies for coping with stress can be simply divided into approach strategies (such as solving problems or seeking social support) and avoidance strategies (such as escaping or denying), and approach strategies are more effective than avoidance strategies in coping with stress. Some researchers use "Big Five" personality to study the relationship between personality factors and coping strategies. The results show that conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness are significantly related to coping strategies, neuroticism is related to avoidance strategies, and the opposite emotional stability of neuroticism is related to coping strategies.
Third, the significance of the study and the existing problems
Kennon. Sheldon and Lourak pointed out in Why Positive Psychology is Needed: "Unfortunately, psychologists know very little about how to promote the prosperity and development of mankind. On the one hand, they don't pay enough attention to it, on the other hand, more importantly, they wear colored glasses, which hinders the understanding of the value of this problem. In fact, paying attention to the positive aspects of human nature is more conducive to a deeper understanding of human nature. " Positive psychology advocates exploring human virtues: love, forgiveness, gratitude, wisdom, control and optimism. Many traditional branches of psychology, such as clinical psychology, counseling psychology, social psychology, personality psychology and health psychology, can turn their attention to the study of positive aspects of human nature under the paradigm of positive psychology. Emphasizing the positive aspects of human nature can make all branches of psychological research pay more attention to cultivating and mobilizing the inner strength of human nature, thus making treatment, consultation, training and health psychology. Of course, the research of positive psychology is still immature, lacking a complete theoretical framework and being unsystematic. Compared with traditional mainstream psychology, positive psychology still stays at the theoretical level and lacks a lot of practical research. Although there are still some defects in positive psychology as a theory, it does not prevent the concept of "positive" from being accepted by more people. Seligman and Csik2szentmihalyi acknowledged some shortcomings in the proposition of positive psychology in their Comments on Answering the Introduction to Positive Psychology, but they predicted the bright future of positive psychology with a more optimistic attitude. The study of positive psychology in the west also puts forward many problems that need to be solved, which need psychologists, especially psychologists with different cultural backgrounds, to explore.
For example, positive psychology emphasizes positive emotions such as happiness and satisfaction, and thinks that these positive emotions and positive factors of human nature should be valued and emphasized. However, Ceng Yun, an ancient man in China, said, "Heaven is going to drop a great post, so people are also human beings. We must first suffer from their bones and muscles and their aspirations ..." And some common sense seems to show that many successful people often have to force themselves to do some very complicated and difficult things in the process of success, which is very painful. How can I be a happy success? Can negative emotions and positive emotions be converted? How to convert? How to shape a perfect and sound personality? And so on, if these practical problems can be systematically and deeply studied and effectively solved, it will certainly promote the further development of positive psychology and even psychology itself.
;