Personality Theory & Human Nature

Personality Theory and Human Nature This paper will evaluate David M. Buss, personality theory and human nature. According to Buss, most studies in personality theory are concerned with how and why individuals differ from one another, evolutionary psychology primary goal is a description of human nature. The theory of human nature describes what it means to be human, and how humans are like one another. David Buss was born on April 1953 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He was a high school drop out. He majored in psychology and graduated from the University of Texas in Austin. He obtained his PHD from the University of California at Berkeley. He went to Harvard University as an assistant professor where he met Leda Cosmides, a cognitive psychologist, and her husband John Tooby, a biological anthropologist, who stimulated his interest in theory of evolution. In 1985 Buss was an associate professor at the University of Michigan. The two theories of human nature are first the empirical theory or the social science model and the second is the evolutionary psychological theory of human nature. The first empirical or social science model of personality deals with what a person has experienced in his or her lifetime. Locke, refers to the tabala rasa(a blank tablet) this notion refers to what you become as a person depends on what you have experienced. According to this view, the environment, including cultural environment, is important in determining personality. The second, evolutionary psychological theory of human nature, evolutionary psychologists disagree with the tabala rasa explanation of human nature. The task of personality theory document describes behavioral tendencies. According to Buss(2011), “contemporary evolutionary psychologists reject the nature versus nurture dichotomy as artificial; similarly, they reject questions concerning “how much nature’ or “how much nurture.”(p.363). Interactionist theorists say personality is a result of internal and

References: Matthew H. Olson, & B. R. Hergenhahn (2011). An Introduction to Theories of Personality. Eight Edition, p.356-378. David M. Buss (2005). The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology. p.256-258