The Goal Approach Of Contemporary Personality Study

Gordon Allport argued that Man's nature, like all of nature, seems to be composed of relatively stable structures. So he asked what units shall we employ? Until now, it is the question that researchers should answer first. The trait theory pushes forward personality researches greatly, while after "person-situation"debate more and more researchers realized that trait theory can't disclose all the meaning of personality. And researchers begin to touch the dynamic aspects of personality.Goals are cognitive representation of motivation. Recently, many personality psychologist began to study particular , idiographic and contexualized personality structure in the term of goals, which bring new energy into the related domains. Some researchers even advocate that this is a revolution and a fundamental change has been evolving in how personality psychologists think about human motivation. They begin to explore the goals people pursuit in daily life, and the way people evaluate them. And the goal concept becomes one of import part of motivation and personality theory.Some researchers express goals in their own term, such as current concerns (Klinger, 1977), life tasks (Cantor, 1990), personal striving (Emmons, 1989), personal project (Little, 1989). Although the four kind of units have different meanings, they own a united principle. They all study goal-directed behavior and agree that personal behavior is organized by the pursuit for goals. So the four units are together called Personal Action Constructs. Because they all concern people's intentional behavior, so the approach is also called intentional psychology. The personal action construct study insists an epistemology different from traditional personality study, and look subjects as the expert of themselves. The approach provide an integral viewpoint about personality psychology, and also show a new way studying the change during personality development.