The purpose of this assignment is to integrate the information that was discussed in class to evaluate a persons personality. There are 6 parts to this paper; to get full credit on the entire assignment, be sure to complete all portions and answer all questions.
Paper is due on November 18th at 6:30PM. Hard copies and Safe Assign submission are required. See syllabus for late paper policy.
Remember: Going to the writing center will give you an additional 3 points on your paper! Also, if your paper is double-sided, youll also receive an addition 2 points on your paper!!
Interview Instructions
1. Find someone who is willing to be interviewed. Be sure to explain to them the purpose of the paper and give them an opportunity to decline if theyre hesitant. Once you acquired consent, have them sign the consent form (see below). Give them a copy if they want one.
Person you are interviewing must be over the age of 18. Otherwise, it will be difficult to complete the rest of the assignment.
2. Schedule at least an hour to interview the person.
3. Make sure you ask them these questions during the interview. Feel free to add more questions that youre interested in learning more about your participant.
Interview Questions
Note: You do not have to provide the complete transcript of the interview. The interview is used as data for you
to complete your Term Paper.
1. Tell me about yourself. Here, make sure you get important demographic information about your participant. Find out their age, identified gender, race/ethnicity, major/occupation (if applicable)…
a. If client was born/raised outside of NYC, find out how long theyve been here and how they feel about the change.
2. Describe your family. How many people? Do they all live together? Where do you fall in the family dynamic? What roles do you play within the family?
3. How close were you to your parents? To your siblings (if applicable)? To your extended family (if applicable)?
4. Describe your childhood. Would you say it was mostly good, mostly bad, a good mixture of both? What do you recall stressed you out the most while growing up?
5. How would you describe your experience in school? Was it difficult? Was it easy? What subject did you like the most? Why? What subject did you like the least? Why?
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Psy 249: Psychology of Personality Fall 2019
6. Describe your experiences with teachers and other adults while growing up. How did they typically describe you? Did you agree with those descriptions? Now that youre looking back at it, do you feel that those are accurate descriptions of who you are today?
7. Who are the 5 closest people currently in your life? Why those people? What roles do they play in your life?
8. If you were to describe yourself using 5 words, what would it be? Why did you choose those words specifically?
a. Would your close family or friends agree with those 5 words? Why or why not?
9. What is the first thing you want people to know about you?
10. How do you think strangers see you? How do you think this influences the way you behave?
11. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? What are you doing now to make this a reality?
12. Some theories see personality as something we cannot control and that we are predetermined or pre-
destined to behave a certain way. Do you agree with this? Why or why not?
Term Paper Instructions
To get full credit on this assignment, be sure to answer all the questions. If you miss any of the questions, you will lose points. The points next to each question is how much each question is worth. The paper is out of 230 points and is worth 20% of your final grade.
Part I: Introduce Your Participant
1. In one paragraph, briefly describe your participant. Be sure to include relevant demographic information that helps paint a picture of who this person is. (5 points)
2. Describe the participants family and where the participant stands in their family dynamic. (5 points)
3. Describe the participant’s relationship with members of their family. (5 points)
Part 2: Childhood/ Past Experiences
1. How did the participant describe their childhood? What did you notice while asking them about it? Were they comfortable? Were they evasive? (15 points)
2. What was their experience of school going up? What did you notice while asking them about it? Were they comfortable? Were they evasive? (15 points)
3. When discussing significant adults in their lives while growing up (Question 6 in interview), who did the participant focus on the most? Did the participant describe mostly positive experiences or negative experiences? (10 points)
4. How did adults describe them in the past? When participant was answering this question, how did they answer it? (10 points)
5. Do they agree with the teachers and adults assessment? (5 points)
Part 3: Current Self
1. How did the participant describe themselves? Do you (as the interviewer) tend to agree with their self- assessment? Why or why not? (15 points)
2. Who were the 5 people they identified? What makes them so significant? Does the participant tend to believe that these 5 people will agree with their self-assessment? Why or why not? (20 points)
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Psy 249: Psychology of Personality Fall 2019 3. How do they believe strangers perceive them? If you just met the participant, do you think you would
also perceive them in the same way? Why or why not? (15 points)
Part 4: Future Self
1. Where does the participant see themselves in the next 5 years? Do you believe its a realistic expectation of themselves? What are they doing to meet this goal? (10 points)
2. How did the participant respond to Question 12? Do they seem to agree with the idea or were they taken aback by this idea? (10 points)
Part 5: Analysis of Participant: Using the theories we have discussed in class, analyze the participants personality.
1. How would Freudian theorists (Chapters 10 and 11) explain the participant? Be sure to be explicit in your analysis and explain why you believe this to be the case. (25 points)
2. How would Existential theorists (Chapter 12) explain the participant? Be sure to be explicit in your analysis and explain why you believe this to be the case. (25 points)
3. Identify 2 cultural variables that needs to be fully addressed. What do these variables mean? What do they do for your analysis? (20 points)
Part 6: Conclusion
1. Following basic writing guidelines, conclude your paper. This should be no more than 1 paragraph. (5 points)
Also included in grade:
1. Must include consent form with your paper. If you fail to attach consent form, you will lose 5 points.
2. Make sure your paper is in the proper format. For each incorrect formatting, you will lose 1 point. (5 points)
a. 12 point font throughout
b. Times New Roman
c. 1 inch margin
d. double space
e. left side alignment
3. Make
a. Grammar
sure you follow proper sentence mechanics (5 points)
b. Spelling
c. Punctuation
d. sentence and paragraph structure
4. Coherence is important! Make sure your paragraphs flow. Make sure you have topic sentences. Use transition sentences! (5 points)
