What is it about?

The TPS-Paradigm is aimed at supporting scientists exploring individuals to make explicit and critically reflect on their basic assumptions, metatheories, and methodologies. Here it is applied to explore the basic ideas underlying concepts of 'personality' and to critically analyse the methods used for investigations. The analyses reveal limitations of popular 'trait' concepts and assessment methods that are still not well considered. The TPS-Paradigm is aimed at broadening the portfolio of theories and methods that are applied in the field in order to enable comprehensive explorations of 'personality'.

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Why is it important?

Personality psychology is fragmented across different theoretical schools of thinking, each with their own particular concepts and theories. The meta-theoretical concepts of the TPS-Paradigm highlight commonalities and differences and enable meaningful integrations. They show that 'trait' concepts are based on common yet mistaken beliefs and entail circular explanations by interpreting descriptions of behaviour as their explanations. The chapter also highlights that, because psychologists overly rely on rating methods, important ways in which individuals differ (e.g., in their behaviours) have not yet been systematically studied.

Perspectives

Psychologists should no longer hide behind vague, abstract and poorly defined construct terms such as 'personality' and 'traits' that fail to specify what is actually being studied. This only misleads the increasingly interdisciplinary research community and hinders exchange and advancement of the field.

Dr Jana Uher
University of Greenwich

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This page is a summary of: The Transdisciplinary Philosophy-of-Science Paradigm for Research on Individuals: Foundations for the Science of Personality and Individual Differences, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.4135/9781526451163.n4.
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