A non-reductive science of personality, character, and well-being must take the person's worldview into account

Frontiers in Psychology

Artur Nilsson¹ 

关键词: worldview;    meaning-making;    non-reductive materialism;    personality;    character;    well-being;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00961

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

In his foundational work for personality psychology, Allport (1927, 1937) distinguished personality from character. Personality was, on Allport's account, a descriptive concept referring to a psycho-physical structure, whereas character was personality evaluated in accordance with moral norms. When he introduced the paradigmatic “lexical” method of deriving personality trait terms from the dictionary, he therefore sought to exclude all trait terms with ostensive normative content. This approach had a profound effect upon the field, and researchers are still today working on how to optimally purge personality of normative content (e.g., Bäckström et al., 2009; Pettersson and Turkheimer, 2010). Its appropriateness as a paradigm for the entire field of personality psychology can, however, be questioned (Kristjánsson, 2012; Nilsson, 2014). It is plausible that some personality characteristics particularly relevant to psychic illness, human flourishing, and moral behavior are intrinsically value-laden (Cloninger et al., 1993; Cawley et al., 2000; Peterson and Seligman, 2004).

【 授权许可】

CC BY