22 Oct How important is the past, present, and future to personality and behavior? How are ones personality and behavior patterns developed, including abnormal personalities and behavior patterns
Due Sunday, October 23, 2022, 11:59 PMTime remaining: 2 days 9 hours
Write a 2-3 page (double-spaced) discussion that outlines your current position the following questions:
1) How important is the past, present, and future to personality and behavior?
2) How are one’s personality and behavior patterns developed, including abnormal personalities and behavior patterns?
3) How are personalities and behavior patterns changed?
4) How should psychologists go about studying their subject matter?
5) How might your answers to these questions be reflected in your therapeutic, parenting, relational, or research approach and technique?
Summarize your own positions on these issues as best as you can. Do not worry if your positions seem inconsistent but note when you feel they are and why this might be the case. Your positions themselves will not be graded. Only the completeness of the assignment (e.g., whether you thoughtfully answered all the questions) and your writing (e.g., clarity, spelling, grammar) is evaluated. Use 1” margins, Times New Roman, 12-pt font.
Theories of Personality Initial Paper Feedback Rubric
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How important is the past, present, and future to personality and behavior? |
Writing shows high degree of attention to logic and reasoning of points well developed thoughts. The writing clearly leads the reader to the conclusion and stirs thought regarding the topic. Content indicates synthesis of ideas, in-depth analysis of original thought and support for the topic. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized with transitions used between ideas and paragraphs to create coherence. The writing sufficiently expresses coherent ideas from original thinking supported by firm evidence. Main points well developed with quality supporting details and reflects. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized, but some points are misplaced or stray from the topic. Some transitions are used inconsistently. Main ideas reflecting some critical thinking is presented without detail or development. |
Writing lacks logical organization. It shows some coherence but ideas lack unity. Many or serious errors are present. Main ideas reflect little critical thinking is presented without detail, development, or ideas are vaguely presented. |
|
How are one’s personality and behavior patterns developed, including abnormal personalities and behavior patterns? |
Writing shows high degree of attention to logic and reasoning of points well developed thoughts. The writing clearly leads the reader to the conclusion and stirs thought regarding the topic. Content indicates synthesis of ideas, in-depth analysis of original thought and support for the topic. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized with transitions used between ideas and paragraphs to create coherence. The writing sufficiently expresses coherent ideas from original thinking supported by firm evidence. Main points well developed with quality supporting details and reflects. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized, but some points are misplaced or stray from the topic. Some transitions are used inconsistently. Main ideas reflecting some critical thinking is presented without detail or development. |
Writing lacks logical organization. It shows some coherence but ideas lack unity. Many or serious errors are present. Main ideas reflect little critical thinking is presented without detail, development, or ideas are vaguely presented. |
|
How are personalities and behavior patterns changed? |
Writing shows high degree of attention to logic and reasoning of points well developed thoughts. The writing clearly leads the reader to the conclusion and stirs thought regarding the topic. Content indicates synthesis of ideas, in-depth analysis of original thought and support for the topic. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized with transitions used between ideas and paragraphs to create coherence. The writing sufficiently expresses coherent ideas from original thinking supported by firm evidence. Main points well developed with quality supporting details and reflects. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized, but some points are misplaced or stray from the topic. Some transitions are used inconsistently. Main ideas reflecting some critical thinking is presented without detail or development. |
Writing lacks logical organization. It shows some coherence but ideas lack unity. Many or serious errors are present. Main ideas reflect little critical thinking is presented without detail, development, or ideas are vaguely presented. |
|
How should psychologists go about studying their subject matter? |
Writing shows high degree of attention to logic and reasoning of points well developed thoughts. The writing clearly leads the reader to the conclusion and stirs thought regarding the topic. Content indicates synthesis of ideas, in-depth analysis of original thought and support for the topic. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized with transitions used between ideas and paragraphs to create coherence. The writing sufficiently expresses coherent ideas from original thinking supported by firm evidence. Main points well developed with quality supporting details and reflects. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized, but some points are misplaced or stray from the topic. Some transitions are used inconsistently. Main ideas reflecting some critical thinking is presented without detail or development. |
Writing lacks logical organization. It shows some coherence but ideas lack unity. Many or serious errors are present. Main ideas reflect little critical thinking is presented without detail, development, or ideas are vaguely presented. |
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How might your answers to these questions be reflected in your therapeutic, parenting, relational, or research approach and technique? |
Writing shows high degree of attention to logic and reasoning of points well developed thoughts. The writing clearly leads the reader to the conclusion and stirs thought regarding the topic. Content indicates synthesis of ideas, in-depth analysis of original thought and support for the topic. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized with transitions used between ideas and paragraphs to create coherence. The writing sufficiently expresses coherent ideas from original thinking supported by firm evidence. Main points well developed with quality supporting details and reflects. |
Writing is coherent and logically organized, but some points are misplaced or stray from the topic. Some transitions are used inconsistently. Main ideas reflecting some critical thinking is presented without detail or development. |
Writing lacks logical organization. It shows some coherence but ideas lack unity. Many or serious errors are present. Main ideas reflect little critical thinking is presented without detail, development, or ideas are vaguely presented. |
|
Usage of correct grammar, usage, and mechanics in APA format. |
Essay is free of distracting spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors; absent of fragments, comma splices, and run-ons. Meets most criteria of APA formatting requirements. |
Essay has few spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors allowing reader to follow ideas clearly. Very few fragments or run-ons. Meets some of APA formatting requirements. |
Essay has several spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors allowing reader to follow ideas clearly. Very few fragments or run-ons. Meets few of APA formatting requirements. |
Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors create distraction, making reading difficult; fragments, comma splices, run-ons evident. Errors are frequent. Fails to follow APA formatting requirements. |
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Newton and Time
1 Abstract
Newton's conception of time has had a profound influence upon science,
particularly psychology. Five characteristics of explanation have devolved
from Newton's temporal framework: objectivity, continuity, linearity,
universality, and reductivity. These characteristics are outlined in the
present essay and shown to be central to psychological theories and methods.
Indeed, Newton's temporal framework is so central that it often goes
unexamined in psychology. Examination is important, however, because
recent critics of Newton's framework–including both scientists and
philosophers–have questioned its validity and usefulness.
Newton and Time
2 Newtonian Time and Psychological Explanation
Brent D. Slife, Baylor University
Perhaps no conception is more fundamental to any science than time.
If a science is concerned at all about the order, organization, and
measurement of events, then it has to have assumptions of time. Indeed, the
notion of "event" itself is wrapped up in temporal assumptions. Even "soft"
sciences, such as psychology, must adopt philosophical assumptions about
temporal order and measurement. Psychological researchers not only
measure time in many of their experiments, but psychological theorists
assume certain characteristics of time in virtually all their explanations.
What are these assumptions? Why are these assumptions used and not
others? The problem is that such questions are virtually never addressed in
psychology. With certain rare exceptions,1 psychologists have ignored the
assumption of time. They have studied how people perceive and manage
their time, but they have not examined the assumptions of time in their own
theorizing.
The reason for this is clear. At the point in history when psychology
was conceived as a discipline, time had become reified. That is, time was no
longer an "assumption;" time was a property of reality existing independently
of our consciousness. Indeed, this was the view of time implicit in our
culture. As this article will show, psychologists adopted this cultural view, in
part, because it was not recognized as a view. Several historical factors are
described below as leading to this reification. Undoubtedly, a prime factor
was Isaac Newton's popularization of this reification in the physical sciences.
This essay outlines how Newtonian physics–the ideal of sciences during
psychology's formative years–became a model for all that early psychologists
wished their discipline to become. Much of this model, however, involved
Newton and Time
3 Newtonian assumptions of the world that were accepted uncritically. One of
these assumptions, as this essay will show, is Newton's own rendition of
time–Absolute Time.
The bulk of the present essay outlines how Newton's conception of time
has influenced "scientific" explanations ever since. As we shall see, five
characteristics of explanation have devolved from Newton's temporal
framework: objectivity, continuity, linearity, universality, and reductivity.
The article first describes each of these as it is related to Absolute Time.
Then, criticisms of this framework by philosophers and physicists are
delineated. The latter group of critics is especially important because many
contemporary physicists have abandoned these temporal characteristics (as
well as Absolute Time) in their explanations. Nonetheless, contemporary
psychology–with its identity now somewhat intact–has not looked back to
physics. This essay reveals how psychology currently maintains most, if not
all, of these temporal characteristics in its mainstream explanations of
behavior, mind, and abnormality.
The Rise of Absolute Time in Western Culture
The view of time held so widely by psychologists is also the view of
time held widely in Western society. Time is "out there" flowing like a line
from past to present to future. No examination of this linear notion of time is
considered necessary, because it is part of reality. An interesting example of
that "reality" is our dependence upon the past. All events that occur in the
present are thought to be explainable by events in the past. Because the
past, present, and future are considered to be consistent with one another–as
part of the same "line"–the present and future must be consistent with, if not
determined by, the past. In this manner, it is "common sense," both in
Newton and Time
4 psychology and our general culture, to explain behavior, attitudes, and
personality through past events. The question is: How did this 'common
sense' become so common? How has this linear view of time gained such a
hold on our culture and such an influence in psychology?
Actually, the predominance of linear time is a relatively recent
phenomenon. Ancient peoples did not view time as an objective frame of
reference for marking events. They relativized time by making it conform to
events, rather than events conform to time. For the Romans, each hour of
daylight in the summer was longer than each hour of daylight in the winter.
Time was a dynamic and adjustable organization tailored to fit our world
experiences. Cyclical rather than linear views of time dominated these
cultures because so many aspects of nature seemed cyclical, such as the
seasons and heavenly bodies. Plato believed that the order of world events
was destined to repeat itself at fixed intervals. Aristotle's students wondered
whether Paris would once more carry off Helen and thus again spark the
Trojan War (Porter, 1980).
Our Western view of time arose primarily as a result of three historical
developments: the spread of Christianity, the industrialization of society,
and the invention of cheap watches (cf. Porter, 1980; Morris, 1984, chs. 1 and
2; Whitrow, 1980, section 2.3). Pre-Judaic religions complemented the
cyclical view of time. They either portrayed time as infinite and possessing
no beginning or end, or as a cycle of rebirth and future life with time forever
repeating itself. The spread of Christianity brought to bear a "stunning" new
conception (Porter, 1980, p. 13). Christians considered their God to be the
creator and ultimate destroyer of the universe. Hence, the world had a
beginning and an end, and important Christian events, such as the birth of
Christ, were unique and nonrepeatable. The spread of these conceptions
Newton and Time
5 resulted in a competition between the cyclical and linear views during the
medieval period (Whitrow, 1980, section 2.3).2
The temporal tide began to turn in the favor of linearity–at least for
our Western culture–when industrial economies arose. As Lewis Mumford
concludes, "The clock, not the steam engine, is the key machine of the
modern industrial age" (Mumford, 1934, p. 14). When power stemmed from
the ownership of land, time was considered plentiful and cyclical, being
associated with the unchanging cycle of the soil. However, with the rise of a
mercantile economy and the mechanism of industry, emphasis was placed on
the scarcity of time and "forward" progress (Whitrow, 1980, pp. 58-59). "Time
is money" was the byword; time could now be "saved" or "spent."
The coup d'état for the linear view was the increased availability of
cheap watches. The mass-production of watches in the nineteenth century
made it possible for even the most basic functions of living to be regulated by
time. "One ate, not upon feeling hungry, but when prompted by the clock:
one slept, not when one was tired, but when the clock sanctioned it"
(Mumford, 1934, p. 17). Regulation of our lives by the clock meant that the
abstract assumption of linear time could be endowed with a type of concrete
reality (Morris, 1984, ch. 3). People now seemed to be able to "see" and "feel"
time (the clock). Time also appeared to be one of the causes of psychological
factors, because the thoughts and behaviors of individuals seemed to turn on
what time "told" them. In short, a convenient (linear) way of organizing
events became reified as the way events were organized.
Psychology was conceived and developed during this temporal
zeitgeist, when time was a concrete actuality rather than a point of view.
The spread of Christianity, industrialization, and the invention of cheap
clocks, all coalesced to make linear time a "reality." Before this coalescence,
Newton and Time
6 many scientists, including Newton, felt it necessary to make their
assumption of time explicit. Several views of time were possible, 3 and so one
view had to be identified and supported. On the other hand, psychologists
were not called upon to articulate their temporal assumptions. Linear time
had become a given and required no discussion or defense. Time existed as a
line, independently of us, and virtually everyone accepted this reification
without awareness.
Newtonian Time
Psychology was not the only discipline that reified time. Einstein
described a similar state of affairs in his own discipline at the turn of this
century:
Concepts which have proved useful for ordering things easily assume
so great an authority over us that we forget their terrestrial origin and
accept them as unalterable facts. They then become labeled as
"conceptual necessities," "a priori situations," etc. The road of
scientific progress is frequently blocked for long periods by such errors.
It is therefore not just an idle game to exercise our ability to analyze
familiar concepts, and to demonstrate the conditions under which their
justification and usefulness depend. (as quoted in Holton, 1973, p. 5)
Einstein's point here, of course, is that sometimes the very pervasiveness of
an idea leads to its anonymity. Certain ideas can be so commonplace and so
widely accepted that they go completely unrecognized. Yet it is these very
ideas that are often the most influential for thinkers in a discipline.
Part of Einstein's immense contribution to knowledge was the
realization that time played an unrecognized role in physics. Indeed, linear
time was seen as an absolute truth–an unquestioned part of reality–during
Newton and Time
7 the preceding three hundred or so years of physics. This led to a curtailment
in the number of new ideas in physics (cf. Burtt, 1954, Ch. VII, sections 3-4).
Acceptable ideas about reality had to be compatible with time's supposedly
linear properties. Einstein's theory of relativity, however, was in large
measure based upon his examination and eventual rejection of this
traditional view of time. 4 He proposed an alternative view that ultimately
revolutionized the discipline of physics in the twentieth century (to be
discussed later).
Still, this revolutionary view has had little impact upon the lay
culture. Except for parts of physics and philosophy, the Newtonian picture of
the world remains dominant in Western culture (McGrath and Kelly, 1986, p.
26-30). This is not to say that this "picture" was totally original to Newton.
When it came to crucial aspects of his metaphysic, Newton often accepted the
view of the world handed down by his predecessors (Burtt, 1954, p 231). In
regard to time, his most immediate forerunner was Isaac Barrow (1735), who
regarded time as "passing with a steady flow" (p. 35). Aristotle is also viewed
as one of the primary philosophical precursors of Newton's view of time
(Faulconer and Williams, 1985; Williams, 1990). Nevertheless, Newton
rightly deserves the credit for assembling their ideas into the current
package our culture calls "time." Let us therefore examine Newton's views in
more detail.
Newton postulated Absolute Time which ". . .of itself, and from its own
nature, flows equably without relation to anything external. . ." (Newton,
1687/1990, p.8). Newton needed this assumption for two main reasons.
First, his conceptions of motion and causality required an absolute frame of
reference (Burtt, 1954, p. 249). Motion, for example, could not be detected or
measured without an objective "past" and "present." The rolling ball begins
Newton and Time
8 its roll at some point in the past but is "now" at some point in the present.
Second, his mathematics required the continuity of events (flowing
"equably"). He regarded moments of absolute time as a continuous sequence
like that of real numbers, believing that the rate of this sequence was
independent of events (Whitrow, 1980, pp. 185-190).
For these reasons, absolute time became the standard by which all
scientific explanations were judged. The order (and directionality) of the
world was thought to be synonymous with the absolute and linear
organization of events. Characteristics of Newton's absolute time became the
"rules" for acceptable scientific explanation for nearly three centuries and
still form the rules for many disciplines such as psychology. It is thus
important that we explicate these rules and their modern criticisms and then
check the specific role these rules play in psychological explanation.
Newtonian Temporal Framework for Explanation
Newton's approach to time left science with a legacy of five somewhat
overlapping implications or characteristics for "scientific" explanation. These
include objectivity, continuity, linearity, universality, and reductionism.
Some of these characteristics are the properties of time itself, as envisioned
by Newton, and some are the necessary properties of the events to be
explained, because they are in absolute time.
The assertion that events are "in" time is itself an implication of a
temporal characteristic. Newton viewed time as objective, existing
"absolutely" and independently of consciousness. Time is conceived as a
medium in which and against which events occur and can be related to one
another. Motion, causation, and change are seen to exist "out there," and so
an absolute framework for evaluating these conceptions must also exist "out
Newton and Time
9 there," separate from them (and our consciousness). If time were subjective–
Newton might argue–distinctions between the temporal dimensions (past,
present, and future) would be left up to the perceiver, and an objective
science would be in jeopardy. Indeed, the notion that cause and effect
require succession in time occurred with the advent of absolute time (Bunge,
1959, pp. 62-64).
This view of causality was bolstered by another property of Newtonian
time, its linearity. Newton was a highly religious man whose theology
guided much of his scientific work (Burtt, 1954, pp. 256-264). God, for
Newton, was the First Cause of the world, and thus time has a beginning
point (unlike cyclical time), and properties akin to a geometric line, with no
gaps or spaces. Time begins in the past and advances into the present on its
way to the future.5 This places the greatest weight upon the past (or the
"first" in a sequence), because it is the temporal entity which supposedly
starts this process. The metaphor of the line means that the present and
future must remain consistent with the past. Moreover, the past is the
temporal entity with the most utility. The present is less useful because it is
just an evanescent "point" on the line of time, and the future is less useful
because it is not (yet) known with any certainty. Only information from the
past is thought to be substantive and certain enough to be truly known and
understood.6
Newton also considered time to be continuous, proceeding smoothly
and "equably," as he put it (Newton, 1687/1990, p. 8). Actually, this
characteristic of time has two properties worth separating out: consistency
and uniformity. Consistency is the well-known Newtonian notion that events
which happen at one point in time will be consistent with events occurring
later in time–the past is continuous with the future. This is the origin of
Newton and Time
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