Compare and Contarst Analysis of Personalities - 1304 Words

People in general tend to ask questions about personality. ’What am I like? What is my friend really like?’ It is common to judge people because of their ’lack of personality’, when we think about someone who is boring or having a ’good personality’ refering to a person who is interesting. In personality psychology there is no evaluation in terms of idea of goodness of somebody’s personality, but there is an aim to define it in a scientific and objective way (Pervin Cervone, 2010). There are many definitions of personality, but generally we can describe it as a collection of characteristics or traits that have an influence on our thoughts and behaviour, and can lead us to success or failure in some situations (Pervin Cervone, 2010). Every thesis must be proved by a research. In personality psychology we recognize two types of research methods that lead us for deeper understanding of personality. These are idiographic and nomothetic approaches for studying personality, which will be compared and contrasted in this essay. Both of them are very important for the idea of personality, but provide slightly different kind of data. Idiographic approach to research focuses on specific cases in depth and tries to gather as much detailed information about individuals as possible. It is mostly used in clinical psychology, which aim is to explain and help those people who fail to adapt (Davey, et al. 2007). In contrast, nomothetic research method tries to understand laws that govern