Psychohistory 2.0

  4. Looking at a basic personality trait. In my last post I described how we need to define relevant factors that predict how an individual behaves. Let's examine one of those. The needs or wants in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, are usually not called personality traits, because they are assumed to be pretty much universal. I want to challenge that assumption and instead propose that differences in how strong these needs are, affects many personality traits. All humans (and animals) seek pleasure and want to avoid pain. But we differ in where we draw the line for what pain/gain ratio is acceptaable. Some are more risk-averse than others. They prefer to play it safe even though that will reduce the reward. So what Maslow calls the need to feel safe, isn't equally strong in everyone. How does this difference affect traits and behaviours? As a representative for the more risk-averse, we can take Epicurus. His life philosophy was to avoid pain, fear and stress - then you ...

  3. How do you describe a person? We need to be able to calculate an agent's behaviour from a limited set of quantifiable parameters. So how do you define a character's personality? It's the fact that we are different, that creates the problems we have in society, but it also creates positive dynamic forces and makes life interesting. This is what the field of psychology is all about, and I must say I think they have failed to accomplish the fundamental task of figuring out how we differ from each other and how much. A popular but rather meaningless pursuit, is to divide people into types. That's a too simplistic approach. Let me try to identify the many different layers of our personality that affects how we live. First we have physiological needs – for food, sleep, warmth – and they are basically the same for everyone, so they are not good measurements to define an individual. At the next level we have psychological needs, which differ a little more from person ...