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Lecture 1 Notes

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danielramoslorenzo
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LECTURE NOTES 1

Introduction to
Personality
Psychology
Lecture Notes 1

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson


LECTURE NOTES 1

Introduction

In the first lecture in our series, Dr. Peterson introduces the philosophical, psychological,
and neurobiological underpinnings of personality, and answers some fundamental
questions:

What is personality?​ ​Why would you want to learn about it? Why are personalities
different?​ Throughout the course, we’ll consistently consider and review these questions and
deep-dive into explanations regarding personality traits.

What is personality?

Personality is an evolved solution to life’s perennial problems.

There are many other ways that we as humans work to solve these problems, including the
development of technology and social cooperation, but in this course, we’ll be examining how
personality shapes our perception of the world and why others see the world differently.

How does personality work?

Personality functions by influencing our perceptions, motivations, emotions, and actions


such that people of different personalities actually experience and perceive the world
differently​.

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson


LECTURE NOTES 1

In future lectures, you will learn how scientists determined that there are five separable aspects
to human personality, each of which specializes in a different kind of problem.

Why learn about personality?

The fundamental reason you should understand personality psychology is because you
are a person who is situated in a social world. You have a personality and must contend
with other personalities.

When working together to solve problems, groups of humans that include many different
personalities are more adept for the ever-changing environment because they benefit from the
diversity of opinion.

Learning about what personality is and how it functions can help you understand yourself and
those around you. Understanding personality psychology can help you interact more
harmoniously with others and excel in cooperative endeavors.

Why do different personalities exist?

Humans are creatures with limited cognitive resources. We’re unable to process and pay
attention to all the objective facts in the world and instead focus on our feelings and perceptions,
which maximizes our limited resources. (For an example of this, review ​The Invisible Gorilla
experiment by Dr. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in the additional reading). Our
personalities prime our perceptual system to pay attention to certain kinds of things that then
influence our motivations, emotions, actions, and cognition.

Because of this, we all view the world differently, and Dr. Peterson emphasizes that those
differences play a large role in our personalities. Personality differences--as opposed to physical

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson


LECTURE NOTES 1

and sexual traits--are some of the biggest contributors to diversity ​among people. While we
can develop our personalities, they are somewhat bound by their genetic underpinnings. It’s
important to understand that differences between people are real and cannot be easily changed.

There is also a massive amount of complexity to be found in the five-factor model of personality
because the five traits vary fairly independently. This means that very many combinations of
scores on the five traits are possible.

If personalities are evolved solutions to life’s problems, why haven’t we evolved to the one
correct solution? Why aren’t everybody’s personalities the same?

There is no single correct solution to the world’s problems. The world is not the same in all
places at all times, and our environments are fundamentally unpredictable. Each personality
extreme is well-suited to a particular kind of environment that has occurred often enough to
keep them in the gene pool.

People tend to specialize and to seek out environments in which their particular combination of
traits is advantageous. Also, having a variety of strategies represented in the world means
people can cooperate to solve various kinds of problems.

Key Takeaways

1. Learning about personality theory will enable you to better understand yourself and cooperate with
others.
2. The five personality traits of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and
neuroticism combine to form a multitude of unique personalities that exist in the world
3. Personalities are evolved solutions to many of the world’s complex problems.
4. Different personalities evolved because there’s no single optimal solution to perceiving the world.
Multiple perceptions exist to help humanity adapt to an ever-changing environment

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson


LECTURE NOTES 1

Additional Reading & Mentions

This is a list of additional resources mentioned by Dr. Peterson in this lecture, as well as reading
materials, studies, and videos to enhance your learning experience:

● Iain McGilchrist on “The Divided Brain”:


■ Studies:
● A tale of two hemispheres​ ​(free)
● Divided Brain, Divided World: Why the Best Part of Us Struggles to be Heard
(free)
■ Videos:
● Documentary: The Divided Brain​ (paid)
● Anyone with half a brain can see that! (TED Talk)​ ​(free)
■ Book:
● The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain​ ​(paid)

● Invisible Gorilla Experiment


■ Studies:
● The Invisible Gorilla Strikes Again: Sustained Inattentional Blindness in Expert
Observers​ ​(free)
■ Videos:
● Selective Attention Test​ ​(mentioned 15:08) (free)
● The Monkey Business Illusion​ ​(mentioned 21:25) (free)
■ Books:
● The Invisible Gorilla​ ​(paid)

Discovering Personality​ with​ Dr. Jordan B. Peterson

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