A final way to look at personality starts from each person's own point of view, from the inside out. Biology may hand us temperamental dispositions that benefit or limit us, the environment may deal us some tough or fortunate experiences, our parents may treat us as we would or would not have wished, but the sum total of our personality is how we, individually, weave all of these elements together. Watch What Is Personality? to appreciate the many ways personality might be defined.

One such approach to personality comes from humanist psychology, which was launched as a movement in the early 1960s. The movement's chief leaders—Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), Carl Rogers (1902–1987), and Rollo May (1909–1994)—argued that it was time to replace psychoanalysis and behaviorism with a “third force” in psychology, one that would draw a fuller picture of human potential and personality. Psychologists who take a humanist approach to personality emphasize our uniquely human capacity to determine our own actions and futures.

Abraham Maslow The trouble with psychology, said Maslow (1970, 1971), was that it had ignored many of the positive aspects of life, such as joy, laughter, love, happiness, and peak experiences, rare moments of rapture caused by the attainment of excellence or the experience of beauty. The traits that Maslow thought most central to personality were not the Big Five, but rather the qualities of the self-actualized person—the person who strives for a life that is meaningful, challenging, and satisfying.

For Maslow, personality development could be viewed as a gradual progression toward self-actualization. Most psychologists, he argued, had a lopsided view of human nature, a result of their emphasis on studying emotional problems and negative traits such as neuroticism or insecurity. As Maslow (1971) wrote, “When you select out for careful study very fine and healthy people, strong people, creative people . . . then you get a very different view of mankind. You are asking how tall can people grow, what can a human being become?”

Carl Rogers As a clinician, Carl Rogers (1951,1961) was interested not only in why some people cannot function well but also in what he called the “fully functioning individual.” How you behave, he said, depends on your subjective reality, not on the external reality around you. Fully functioning people experience congruence, or harmony, between the image they project to others and their true feelings and wishes. They are trusting, warm, and open, rather than defensive or intolerant. Their beliefs about themselves are realistic.

To become fully functioning people, Rogers maintained, we all need unconditional positive regard, love and support for the people we are, without strings (conditions) attached. This doesn't mean that Winifred should be allowed to kick her brother when she is angry with him or that Wilbur may throw his dinner out the window because he doesn't like pot roast. In these cases, a parent can correct the child's behavior without withdrawing love from the child. The child can learn that the behavior, not the child, is what is bad. “The rule in our house is ‘no violence,’ children” is a very different message from “You are horrible children for behaving so badly.”

Unfortunately, Rogers observed, many children are raised with conditionalpositive regard: “I will love you if you behave well, and I won't love you if you behave badly.” Adults often treat each other this way, too. People treated with conditional regard begin to suppress or deny feelings or actions that they believe are unacceptable to those they love. The result, said Rogers, is incongruence, a sense of being out of touch with your feelings, of not being true to your real self, which in turn produces low self-regard, defensiveness, and unhappiness. A person experiencing incongruence scores high on neuroticism, becoming bitter and negative.

In the past two decades, another approach to personality has focused on the importance of the life narrative, the story that each of us develops over time to explain ourselves and make meaning of everything that has happened to us (Bruner, 1990; McAdams & Guo, 2015; McAdams & Manczak, 2015; Sarbin, 1997). In the narrative view, your distinctive personality rests on the story you tell to answer the question, “Who am I?”

Because the narrative approach emphasizes how the stories we tell give us an identity, shape our behavior, and motivate us to pursue or abandon our goals, it integrates the many diverse influences on personality that we have discussed in this chapter. Do you believe you are a victim of bad childhood experiences or a survivor of them? Do you believe that your mood swings are caused by a biochemical imbalance or an imbalanced love affair? When you tell about your life to others, do you play the hero or the passive bystander?

The life narrative you create for yourself reflects your needs and justifies the actions you take, or fail to take, to solve your problems. It affects whether you even feel that you can solve your problems and transform your life (McAdams & Manczak, 2015). Psychotherapist David Epston worked with an immigrant woman named Marisa, who had been abused and rejected all her life. “To tell a story about your life turns it into a history,” he told her, “one that can be left behind, and makes it easier for you to create a future of your own design” (quoted in O'Hanlon, 1994). Marisa came to see that she could tell a new story about her experiences, one that did not emphasize the tragedies that had befallen her but rather her triumphs in overcoming them. “My life has a future now,” she told Epston. “It will never be the same again.”

In the narrative view, your stories about how you see and explain yourself are the essence of your personality, capturing everything that has happened to you and all the factors that affect your biology, psychology, and relationships. They are what make you unique in all the world.

As with psychodynamic theories, the major scientific criticism of humanist psychology is that many of its assumptions are untestable. Freud looked at humanity and saw destructive drives, selfishness, and lust. Maslow and Rogers looked at humanity and saw cooperation, selflessness, and love. May looked at humanity and saw fear of freedom, loneliness, and the struggle for meaning. These differences, say critics, may tell us more about the observers than about the observed.

Many humanist concepts, although intuitively appealing, are difficult to define operationally. How can we know whether a person is self-fulfilled or self-actualized? How can we tell whether a woman's decision to quit her job and become a professional rodeo rider represents an “escape from freedom” or a freely made choice? And what exactly is unconditional positive regard? If it is defined as unquestioned support of a child's efforts at mastering a new skill, or as assurance that the child is loved in spite of her or his mistakes, then it is clearly a good idea. But in the popular culture, it has often been interpreted as an unwillingness ever to say “no” to a child or to offer constructive criticism and set limits, which children need.

Despite such concerns, humanist psychologists have brought balance to the study of personality. A specialty known as “positive psychology” follows in the footsteps of humanism by focusing on the qualities that enable people to be optimistic and resilient in times of stress (Donaldson, Dollwet, & Rao, 2015; Gable & Haidt, 2005; Seligman & Csikszentmihaly, 2000). Influenced in part by the humanists, psychologists are studying many positive human traits, such as courage, altruism, the motivation to excel, and self-confidence. Developmental psychologists are studying ways to foster children's empathy and creativity. And some researchers are studying the emotional and existential effects of the fear of death.

As for narrative approaches, research is flourishing, showing how the stories that we tell about ourselves play a crucial role in shaping our distinctive personalities (McAdams & Manczak, 2015). Cognitive psychologists emphasize how our stories shape and distort our memories. Psychotherapists are exploring the ways in which clients who tell self-defeating life stories might turn them around, creating more hopeful and positive ones. Social and cultural psychologists examine how a culture or society's dominant myths and shared stories influence people's ambitions and expectations, political views, and beliefs that the world can be improved or will never change.

The humanist, existential, and narrative views of personality share one central message: We have the power to choose our own destinies, even when fate delivers us into tragedy. Across psychology, this message has fostered an appreciation of resilience in the face of adversity.

Now that you have read about the major influences on personality (see Review14.1), how would you explain your own personality or those of your best friends?