Why You Are Who You Are: Investigations Into Human Personality

There are five key traits that best help us understand a person's behavior. Here, explore the two traits that give you the broadest picture of what a person is like. The first: extraversion, or your level of sociability. The second: neuroticism, the degree to which you experience negative emotions.

Examine the three remaining building blocks of personality. You'll learn about agreeableness, the degree to which you have a positive or negative orientation toward others; conscientiousness, the degree to which you're responsible; and openness, or your receptivity to new experiences and idea. Plus, consider a sixth personality trait that's starting to get attention.

What motivates you to do the things you do each and every day? Professor Leary explores three motives that instigate and energize people's behavior: the motive to interact with other people, the motive to achieve and be successful, and the motive to influence other people.

There are other motives that underlie behavior - ones that don't involve getting anything from the outside world. What are the benefits of these motives? After considering the Freudian roots of the subject, learn about three fascinating intrapersonal motives: for psychological consistency, for self-esteem, and for authenticity.

A large part of who you are as a person depends on the kinds of emotions you experience as you walk through life. In this lecture, look at our general tendencies to experience positive and negative emotions. What, exactly, are emotions? What leads some people to have more positive - or negative - emotions than others?

In addition to the general tendency to feel good and bad, we also differ in the degree to which we experience specific emotions such as anger, joy, guilt, and sadness. These tendencies, too, are an important part of your personality. As you'll learn, they help explain why different people respond to the same event in different ways.

When we talk about someone's character, we're referring to the degree to which that person tends to behave in ethical (or unethical) ways. In this illuminating lecture, take a look at moral aspects of personality from four critical angles: values, moral foundations, virtues, and character strengths.

Turn your attention to cognitive aspects of personality: characteristics related to people's styles of thinking. Here, Professor Leary focuses on four cognitive characteristics that involve differences in the degree to which people are curious, make decisions quickly, critically evaluate their beliefs, and enjoy thinking.

You are who you are partly because of the beliefs that you hold. Discover several big, broad beliefs that function like personality traits. These include people's beliefs about human nature, fairness, and the beliefs and attitudes that underlie authoritarianism.