Personality Vs Personality

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Recommended: THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

As rational human beings, we believe we have control and awareness over our choices and actions, but do we? Philosophers and social psychologists have addressed the interaction of an individual’s character traits in situations. Each has made arguments and presented questions around decision making. Philosophy suggests humans have global traits and these fixed traits cross situations. However, social psychologists reduce variables to the agent’s personality traits within the context, which would attribute inconsistent actions due to local traits.
Virtues are expressed through character traits exercised in circumstances, yet decisions are due to environmental factors interact with an individual’s traits. Because one’s character is known through …show more content…

Aristotle provides ethical theory concerning values, goals and choices an individual makes in producing ethical decisions. A moral virtue is a result of habits and by practicing just actions a person becomes virtuous (Nicomachean Ethics, 1098b23). Humans obtain moral virtue by habitually choosing the mean in each situation, therefore the actions manifest in the active exercise of a virtue (NE, 1098b30-38). Virtues are tested when deliberating the mean between pleasure and pain (NE, 1004a5-16). The mean between excess and deficiency is the nature of moral qualities (NE, 1004a28-36). An example from Aristotle is “a man who knows no fear at all, is courageous, and meets every danger becomes reckless” (NE, 1104b1-3). The mean is known through wisdom and becoming a virtuous individual not just having actions that are virtuous. Virtuous character traits are in one’s being, not just performing virtuous actions (NE, 1105b4-14). Hence, being virtuous and having virtuous actions come from an unchangeable character (NE, …show more content…

Doris argues “philosophical explanations referencing character traits are generally inferior to those adduced from experimental social psychology” (2002, p. 6). Psychological experiments are artificial and limited based on confounds and sample sizes, so Doris indicates using everyday experiences of personality and behavior in the natural context give us more insight than a laboratory (2002, p. 13). “If behavior is context dependent as a Situationist argues, how can any experiment, including the situations’ own, motivate any general conclusions about human behavior” (Doris 2002, p.13). If situationism is false, then there are no problems generalizing of experiments and experimental psychology should be taken seriously. If situationism is true, generalizations in the laboratory are impossible, yet situationism is valid from the start and needs no evidence (Doris 2002,

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