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Personality and the Five Factor Theory Essay

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PSYC Essay To understand personality there are three main aspects that must be looked at: LArsen and Buss Definition of personality, The Six Domains of knowledge of personality, and Costa and McCrae's Five Factor Theory. In this essay I will first break down larsen and Buss definition and connect it to the domains, then connect the domains to the five factor thoery (FFT). Larsen and Buss define personality as "the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relitivly enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the environment (including the intrapsychic, physical and social environment)." To fully understand this defintion, it is best to break it down into …show more content…

His research show that when hostile people bump into others they treat ambiguous behavior as hostile. When they act aggressive, it evokes agression in the other person, making the aggression a self-fufiling prophecy. So if a person from the outside environment acts hostile towards us, it evokes that same hostility from us. The third main interaction people have with the environment is manipulation of the environment and those within it. Manipulation does not have to have a negative connatation with it, but usually does. Types of manipulation include: coersion, charm, regression and reason. Different personality types are more likley to use differnt kinds of manipulation, such as people low on agreeableness are more likely to use coersion by yelling, while people high on agreeableness will use reason to get people to do what they want. The final part of the definition is the adaptations (to the environment) like dealing with the challenges and problems we face throughout life. One way to examine this is through the cognitive experintial domian and the concept of goals and personal projects. Personal projects are a set of relevent actions intended to achieve a goal that a person has selected as efined by pstchologist Brian Little. He beleives these are important to understanding personality because they reflect how people navigate through everyday life. As we go through life,

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