Case Study: Personality Theory

Case Study: Personality Theory

Plagiarism is the use of someone else’s ideas without giving proper acknowledgment. The term “plagiarism” includes, but is not limited to, the use, by paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished work of another person without full and clear acknowledgment. It also includes the unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another person or agency engaged in the furnishing or selling of term papers or other academic materials.

The Modern Language Association’s MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers defines plagiarism as follows:

repeating another’s sentences as your own,
adopting a particularly apt phrase as your own,
paraphrasing someone else’s argument as your own,
presenting someone else’s line of thinking in the development of a thesis as though it were your own.

In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have written or thought something that you have in fact borrowed from another.

Appearance

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

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Please number the pages of your essay (except for the title page).

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

Prior to beginning work on this discussion, please read the required Churchill and Mruk (2014), Hayes (2012), and Waterman (2013) articles, and review the APA’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct  and Chapters 14 through 17 in your textbook.

For this discussion, you will choose a person who has an important presence in popular media today. This person might be a political, business, human rights, education, or entertainment figure. Examine the major theoretical approaches studied in the class so far (psychodynamic, behavioral, learning, trait and type, and humanistic). Briefly describe your chosen figure’s personality from the point of view of each of these five approaches. Evaluate and describe any cultural considerations which may affect the personality assessment within each of the given approaches. Analyze the ethical implications of basing your personality assessment on the information available through the popular media. Select the theoretical approach you think best describes the person and elaborate on his or her personality using this approach.

Guided Response:  Review several of your colleagues’ posts and respond to at least two of your peers by 11:59 p.m. on Day 7 of the week. You are encouraged to post your required replies earlier in the week to promote more meaningful interactive discourse in this discussion.

·  Considering your colleague’s chosen person, was the theoretical approach he or she selected appropriate?

·  Suggest another perspective that might be used to assess this person, and provide a rationale as to why the perspective may be more effective.

·  Consider the ethical implications indicated by your colleague. Review the APA’s Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct  and describe the issues present in assessing personality using only the information available in popular media.

Continue to monitor the discussion forum until 5:00 p.m. MST on Day 7 of the week and respond to anyone who replies to your initial post.

Carefully review the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric for the criteria that will be used to evaluate this Discussion Thread.