Abstract
Over the last few decades, most personality psychology research has been focused on assessing personality via scores on a few broad traits and investigating how these scores predict various behaviours and outcomes. This approach does not seek to explain the causal mechanisms underlying human personality and thus falls short of explaining the proximal sources of traits as well as the variation of individuals’ behaviour over time and across situations. On the basis of the commonalities shared by influential process–oriented personality theories and models, we describe a general dynamics of personality approach (DPA). The DPA relies heavily on theoretical principles applicable to complex adaptive systems that self–regulate via feedback mechanisms, and it parses the sources of personality in terms of various psychological functions relevant in different phases of self–regulation. Thus, we consider personality to be rooted in individual differences in various cognitive, emotional–motivational, and volitional functions, as well as their causal interactions. In this article, we lay out 20 tenets for the DPA that may serve as a guideline for integrative research in personality science. © 2020 The Authors. European Journal of Personality published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Association of Personality Psychology
Highlights
What kind of theoretical framework is most adequate to comprehensively understand and explain human personality? This question has not lost its relevance from the origins of personality psychology as an academic discipline up to the present day (Corr, 2020)
Over the last half century, personality psychology has been predominantly focused on developing consensual descriptions of personality, largely on the basis of taxonomies created by factor analysis, and using those descriptive models to investigate what outcomes are predicted by trait measures as well as how those scores change over time
We intend to highlight the importance of systems– theoretical thinking for personality psychologists and, throughout this article, formulate specific tenets for a solid dynamics of personality approach (DPA) that can serve to tie different dynamic approaches together, which could be instrumental for future research on personality and its underlying mechanisms (Table 1)
Summary
The DPA aims to understand the proximal causes of personality‐related phenomena. Feedback loops are a defining mechanism of the DPA; individuals adapt their functioning on the basis of the results of their behaviour. It constitutes a general explanatory framework that provides principles to organize the understanding of causal relationships between variables involved in complex adaptive systems It largely abstracts from the materials (e.g. blood vessels, neural networks, or computer circuit boards) that serve as a basis for the causal transference of information within a system. Luhmann, 1992), which typically have definable borders that distinguish them from their environment, such as the boundaries of the human body, and which maintain a network of variables that are causally connected to each other via congeneric operations These systems interact with their environments by taking in information (input) that triggers internal operations and by producing outcomes (behavioural output) that causally influence the environment (Rauthmann, 2016)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
