Dolores, Aryan Judith S.

MAPSY

Fundamental Principles for an Integrative Science of Personality

Summary:

• Personality Psychology aimed to study the historical background of person based

on dispositional traits, characteristics adaptations and cultural background based

on social, emotional, physical development. Every individual has a unique pattern

on adapting to everyday life, thus, some would have a healthy lifestyle while others

can be prone to live unhealthy lifestyle.

• A new five big principle of personality is proposed to understand the integrative

part of the human nature. These principle needs to be understood in the point of

view of an individual to be able to have an accurate depiction on how these people

respond to social situations and live a meaningful life.

• Principle 1: Evolution and Human Nature. Personality can be anchored and rooted

on primitive years as people tend to survive based on the environmental factors

present in their surroundings. Our brain tends to develop based on the experiences

from childhood up until adulthood. As our environment and technological advances

changed, practitioners must align their assessment based on how people perceive

different aspects of their life. For instance, learning and emotions can be assessed

the way they perceive a certain scenario on their life or others life. Similar with

adaptability, these can be observed by understanding their functional abilities on

performing daily tasks and decision-making.

• Principle 2: The Dispositional Signature. A person is believed to have an innate

dispositional trait that is unique to them. These traits can be recognized by how a

person deal with his personal life, family, and occupation. According to research,

there were studies such as behavioral approach system to determine the individual

differences of human being. On the other hand, behavioral inhibition system tends

to determine the maladaptive behavior a person uphold. The Big Five Personality

may vary depending on the culture which can be observe on the perception of a

person of his social role, utilizing his time and understanding situations.

• Principle 3: Characteristics Adaptation: People are believed to embrace their

characteristics based on their motives, goals, values, and virtues in life. These

characteristics are flexible and can be changed over time depending on the social

influences acquired within their environment. There were different theorists

assessed these personal traits such as dream narratives, psychological

individuation, understanding the schema and coping mechanism that affect the

developmental stage of a person. Characteristic adaptation is known as the

patterns of behavior influenced by dispositional traits and situational variables

which mapped out the social ecology of a person’s daily life. Thus, practitioner still

investigate motivational, social-cognitive, and developmental adaptation to

understand the holistic background of a person.

• Principle 4: Life Narratives and the Challenge of Modern Identity: People have

different life narratives that shape behavior, establish identity, and integrate social

life. Researchers suggest that narrative identity is a continuous process wherein a

person reconstructed the past events of their life to have a parallel meaning on
Dolores, Aryan Judith S.
MAPSY

their present life’s meaning and purpose. Narrative identity is investigated in terms

of cognitive, developmental, social, cultural, and clinical aspect of psychology. The

main focused of understanding the modern identity is to understand different types

of self-defining memories about intimate relationships and adolescent identity. In

addition, people may begin to enact based on their redemptive self to compensate

with their flaws and inferiorities.

• Principle 5: The Differential Role of Culture. In analyzing the personality of a

person, we must investigate the culture they were raised. All the values, attitudes

and beliefs are significant when understanding the trail of thoughts of a person.

Some culture would greatly differ from another; therefore, it is important to have a

background of different ethnicities and religion to avoid offending the person.

Personal Narratives

• Personal Narratives are important part of assessment because in some instances

some people are not good in the type of test given during psychological

assessment. Understanding the history and background of a person will guide a

person and the practitioner to work on personal issues that is deeply rooted in the

past. For instance, those who acquired tattoos has crafted and designed a

personal meaning when deciding to have permanent tattoo in their body.

Researchers suggest that this reminds them of personal battles they overcome

over the years. Our past self and future self guide our present self to compensate

with our previous failures and redeemed ourselves by achieving our dreams. Our

perception is most likely directed on how we perceive ourselves based on the past

experiences and fill the gaps to achieve our future self.

Filipino Psychology

• In Filipino culture, family are honed with similar rules and dialogues based on the

media platforms aired in every generation. It is possible that most of the families

have similar intergeneration belief, trauma or circumstances that is passed on to

their children. Some of these are the burden of being a breadwinner in the family,

incestuous relationship, rebel attitudes and witchcraft rituals. Thus people,

remember this because of storytelling from older generation or they have watched

it on the television. However, as of today, the media platforms open the doors to

social media which have a wider population of influencers from different countries.

The challenge now to Filipino Psychology is to understand how it affects the

present generation especially after COVID -19 which resulted to silent trauma.