Also surveyed in that chapter is some of the modern cognitive research on personality. The final chapter in this book, Chapter 19, offers an overall evaluation of the different perspectives of personality psychology and does some crystal ball gazing about the future of the field. Pigeonholing vs. Appreciation of Individual Differences Personality psychology tends to emphasize how individuals are different from one another. Some people are uncomfortable with this emphasis, perhaps because they find it implausible, undignified, or both.4 Other areas of psychology, by contrast, are more likely to treat all people as if they were the same, or nearly the same. Although the emphasis of personality psychology indeed often entails categorizing and labeling people, it also leads the field to be extraordinarily sensitive to the fact that people really are different from each other.
People are different, and it is necessary as well as natural to wonder how and why.
Summary Personality psychology's unique mission is to try to explain the psychological functioning of whole individuals. This is an impossible mission, however, so different approaches to personality must limit themselves in various ways. Each addresses certain aspects of human psychology quite well, and ignores others. The advantages and disadvantages of each approach seem inseparable. The book is grouped into five sections that survey each basic approach.