Berecz four personalty methods - Essay Example

Research on Personality types Personality gets made of specific characteristic feelings, patterns of thoughts, behaviors and many other ways that make an individual different from the rest. Research has showed that some auxiliary factors can determine how specific traits get expressed. An individual’s personality originates within himself. Even though some aspects of personality get altered as individuals progress through life, personality remains consistent throughout life. Personality psychologists research the peculiar characteristics of persons and their similarities among other people (Theodore, 2003).

Personality is consistent and organized. We express aspects of it in various situations and the responses we give are stable. Personality is psychological and becomes influenced by biological processes and needs. Personality causes one to react to people and objects in their environment based on their personality thus it causes behavior.Numerous techniques exist in research on personality study. Each technique has its own strengths and weaknesses (Goodwin, 2009). They include; an experimental method which is where the researcher manipulates and controls the variables he is interested in and takes measures of different results projected.

It is the most scientific method of research. Its demerits are evident in analyzing complex aspects of personality like emotion, motivation and drive. These aspects are abstract and difficult to measure because they are internal. Self-reports and case studies research methods are about in-depth study of individual and information provided by the person. They rely a lot on the observer’s interpretation. Self-report research method depends on the memory of the person of interest. These two research methods are subjective and are impossible to generalize the research findings to a population that is large.

Clinical research depends on information collected from clinical patients over the time of treatment. A lot of personality theories get centered on this research. Since the research subjects are exclusive and show abnormal behavior, this research method is highly subjective and strenuous to generalize and hence its weakness.Experimental research method is the most appropriate method to conduct research on personality types. Through experiments, we understand the relation between two variables.

As such, to know if the number of hours spent playing computer games causes poor grades, controlled experiments may get conducted where children become compelled to play computer games for a number of hours each day, and grades become monitored. By considering this hypothesis and verifying results to prove the achievements of experimentation, we are able to tell the cause of behavior. Experiments get conducted on differentiated groups of subjects. These are the treatment groups. They are participants who become manipulated to analyze the effects manipulation.

Controlled groups are where subjects do not get manipulated to show the comparison between the two groups. Experimentation is the best method of research because it proves results after experimentation process.Experimentation establishes a cause and effect relationship as all variables get controlled. The relation between one independent variable and another dependent variable in experimentation is correlation. For example, if psychologists were to examine the relationship between the number of hours students spent playing video games and student grades, the assumption would be that as children spend a lot of time playing computer games, their grades became poorer by the day.

This is a negative correlation (Goodwin, 2009). Conducting research on correlation assist in conclusion of the assumptions. The weakness of experimentation is that research carried out through correlation does not give room for the establishment of the cause behind the condition. In the study of children engaged in computer games and poor grades, we assume that engaging in computer games affects students grades and disregard other factors causing this too. References Berecz, J. (2008). Theories of Personality: A Zonal Perspective.

Boston: Pearson Allyn & Bacon.Goodwin, J. (2009). Research in Psychology: Methods and Design. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Theodore Millon, M. L. (2003). Handbook of Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons.