Describe the enduring persistent characteristics (traits) of this person that make up his/her personality. 

paper in which you will analyze the personality of a well-known person through two of the perspectives/domains of knowledge discussed in this course (the perspectives/ Domains of Knowledge you will chose from are clearly identified in the ‘topic’ column of the schedule on your syllabus).  You will identify and describe enduring persistent characteristics of this person and then use the 2 perspectives/Domains of Knowledge to analyze their behaviors.

First, you need to choose a well-known person to analyze.  Your analysis paper can only be as stimulating as your subject.  Look for an interesting, complicated, multi-dimensional person who has lived long enough to do some out-of-the ordinary things in their lifetime (the guidelines for who you can specifically choose to write about are listed below).

When writing your paper, you will ORGANIZE your paper into FOUR sections:

1)    Provide a brief History/Biography of this person.  You will have to do some true investigation to get this information because you may not just use ‘popular beliefs’ about this person.  Present this information in a chronological fashion (starting with what happened first, then continue to the latest). Only list the important issues that you feel influenced ‘who’ this person came to be.  Remember to be clear and brief (do your best to summarize well)…you only have 4-6 pages to do your full analysis.  This is not the ‘meat’ of your paper.

2)    Describe the enduring persistent characteristics (traits) of this person that make up his/her personality.  Discuss in detail the personal characteristics and behaviors that depict these personality characteristics.  What characteristics are consistently demonstrated through his/her biographical information?  It may help to narrow your description to a specific aspect of his/her personality or how this person acts in a few specific situations.  This part of your paper should be a strictly descriptive, without any interpretation.  That is, describe what this person does, says or feels, not why that is.  Don’t simply restate biographical information. Focus the number of enduring characteristics to a small, manageable number, so that you can analyze them well in the next section.
Be specific about which traits/characteristics of this person you will be explaining in the next section.  Bold these traits when you write about them.  Use your course notes to ‘name’ the traits or characteristics in terms that you can explain in-depth in the next section (and remember to bold them).

3)    Analyze this person’s interesting characteristics (traits) and behaviors from two perspectives/domains of knowledge covered in this course.—Important section! 
Go back over the description in the second part and now provide an explanation for each of the enduring characteristics (traits) from the two domains/perspectives you are choosing.  Use two different domains of knowledge and perspectives discussed in this course to analyze why you believe the person behaves the way s/he does or has the personality characteristics that s/he does.  Can you make connections between your subject’s past and present?  Why does s/he do what s/he does?  Discuss any aspect of the domains of knowledge/perspectives that you feel is relevant.  Briefly define the terms/concepts you will reference from the course.  Only psychological terms from the course are fair game to be the basis of your analysis (don’t go to outside sources and pull in obscure terms). You should look ahead to future chapters that you haven’t covered yet.  If you would like to include a concept/term from outside the course, you just need to email me in advance and we will discuss it.

This section is your chance to analyze why someone behaves the way the way they do, and base your analysis on theory.  You will be addressing the question, “Why is this person like this, according to this theory?”  You will not give your opinion here based on your personal history or ideas.  You will base this analysis on theory found in the two perspectives/domains of knowledge you choose.  When discussing various concepts and topics from the two perspectives/domains you choose, make sure you briefly define the concepts first, then explain how they are related to or explain the enduring traits/behavior of your identified person.

Here are a couple rules when choosing which perspectives/domains you will explore: 
– You may not choose the Dispositional Domain (students tend to be too narrow in their discussion if using this domain). You may use terms from this Domain to ‘name’ the enduring traits in section #2, but you cannot use this domain to analyze the enduring traits.
–  You must choose the Intrapsychic Domain as one of the perspectives through which to analyze the personality development of this interesting person.  You can discuss any aspect of this domain, from Freud’s information to more current ideas of personality development. 
So, you will then choose one additional domain/perspective through which to analyze this person’s personality. Remember—if you choose a Domain you have not covered yet in class, review the outline, PowerPoints, and lecture for details.
[Note: make sure to follow these two rules for choosing a domain of knowledge/perspective to analyze the personality of your famous person—your grade will suffer if you do not follow these rules.  Ask if you have any questions.]

Remember to be clear and use your two domains of knowledge to explain each of the enduring characteristics from the previous section. Explain ‘why’ the person you chose has those traits in this analysis section, using theories. This is a very important section of your paper! 

4)    Summarize and present your Opinion about how well the domains of knowledge or perspectives explained the personality of the person you chose.  State your opinions and the reasons behind them.  This is your opportunity to have a personal voice.  To get full credit for this section, you must be sure to provide the reasons for what you think so that the reader can understand your thinking.  Also, include in this section any unanswered questions you might still have about how this person became who they became.  Are there inconsistencies in their personality that you were unable to explain through the domains/perspectives you choose, even after reviewing your notes?  What still has you thinking about this person? What unanswered questions have you been thinking about? Is there anything you did not get a chance to address in this paper due to length constraints?