What is Psychological Mechanisms? - Mind Scape Today
Psychological Mechanisms
Most psychological mechanisms have three essential ingredients: inputs, decision rules, and outputs. A psychological mechanism may make people more sensitive to certain kinds of information from the environment (input), may make them more likely to think about specific options (decision rules), and may guide their behavior toward certain categories of action (outputs). For example, an extroverted person may look for opportunities to be with other people, may consider in each situation the possibilities for human contact and interaction, and may behave in ways that encourage others to interact with him or her. Our personalities contain many psychological mechanisms of this sort-information – of processing activities that have the key elements of inputs, decision rules, and outputs.
This does not mean that all of our traits and psychological mechanisms are activated at all times. In fact, at any point in time, only a tiny fraction are activated. Consider the trait of courageousness. This trait is activated only under particular conditions, such as when people face serious dangers and threats to their lives. Some people are more courageous than others, but we will never know which people are courageous unless and until the right situation presents itself. Look around next time you are in class; who do you think has the trait of courageousness? You won’t know until you are in a situation that activates courageous behavior.
In this book, we will concentrate on several prevailing theories that seek to explain the traits and, mechanisms through which personality manifests itself. Moreover, this book is organized into the domains in which personality manifests itself.
Within the individuals …
Within the individual means that personality is something a person carries with him or herself over time and from one situation to the next. We feel that we are today the same people we were last week, last month. And last year we will continue to have these personalities in the coming months and years. And, although our personalities are certainly influenced by our environments, and especially by the significant others in our lives, we feel that we carry with us the same personalities from situation to situation in our lives. As such, the definition of personality stresses the fact that the important sources of personality reside within the individual and, hence, are stable over time and consistent over situations.
Personality psychologists are most concerned about how the characteristics of a person influence his or her behavior, thoughts, feelings, and life outcomes. We can highlight this by contrasting personality psychology with another sub-discipline of psychology, such as social psychology. In social psychology, the interest is not in characteristics within the individual but, rather, in things outside of the individual, such as the social environment. For example, we might ask a question about what influences a person to help other people. Social psychologists would look at factors external to the individual, such as the number of people in the immediate social environment or the distribution of responsibility among the members of the social group. In contrast, personality psychologists would look at factors internal to the individual, such as whether he or she has a cooperative personality and his or her current motivation or need to affiliate with others.
This distinction – between an emphasis on internal factors or external factors in understanding the causes of behavior – is what distinguishes personality (and clinical) psychology from most other sub-disciplines of psychology. That is, almost all other sub-disciplines (e.g. cognitive psychology, biological psychology, development psychology, and social psychology) emphasize the external factors that cause people to behave the way they do. Personality and clinical psychology look primarily at factors that are internal to the person in describing, explaining, and predicting differences between people.
