Introduction to Psychology: The Psychology of Personality

What makes us what we are? A key question within psychology and the subject of endless hours of research and theory within the field. On this course, you’ll examine the factors that influence personality and build your understanding of psychological theories.

You’ll cover Freud’s pioneering work on the psychodynamic perspective of personality, before considering theories of humanism, behaviourism, and personality-traits, as well as examining how the culture of a society affects individual personality.

You’ll study the approaches, models and theories of the groundbreaking figures who contributed to the field, before looking into the efficacy of personality-tests in helping us to further our understanding of the human decision-making process.

As you build your understanding of different personality traits and the tools that psychologists use to identify them, you’ll learn how to explain psychometric properties of personality tests and explore how different personality theories apply to a case study.

Every personality type has a set of defence mechanisms that have been developed through childhood experiences and as a result of other personality traits. You’ll discover how to identify at least five of these mechanisms and provide examples of how they work.

Self-efficacy – your belief in your own ability to succeed – is a key factor in resilience, but it can’t be changed without effort. You’ll develop your understanding of the factors that underlie and define self-efficacy, and find out how it can ultimately be changed.