Famous+Personality+Assignment


 * Famous Personality Assessment **
 * Overview: ** The purpose of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to apply the theories that you are learning about to a “real personality.” You will begin by choosing a famous person to study and analyze. The famous person may be alive or dead, real or fictional. The main requirements for your choice include: (1) the famous person must be known to members of the class, and (2) there must be sufficient information available about this person’s life for you to adequately complete the assignment.

After choosing a famous person, you will want to gather information about their life and personality. If the person is/was real, you might read their biography or autobiography. You might read articles about them published in newspapers or magazines as well as interviews that they have given. If the person is fictional, you might read the book or watch the movie/television episodes that they appear in. Your goal is to get to “know” this person well so that you will have plenty of information upon which to base your analyses of his/her personality.

You will analyze this famous person from two of the eight major perspectives that are addressed in your textbook (Chapters 3-10) and are covered in class (weeks 3-10). For example, you may choose to analyze this person from a Freudian or Psychoanalytic perspective. What do you know about his/her childhood that would be of interest to a psychoanalyst? Does this person seem to be fixated at any stage? What conclusions can you draw? You do not have to believe every part of your analysis, but it must reflect the facts of the individual’s life and the theory that you are using.

You will create a page for your personality assessment on our class Wikipedia site, located at http://personalitypsych2011.wikispaces.com/. Your page will include your analysis of the famous person’s personality from two perspectives, a biography of the person, a discussion, and an APA-formatted reference section. The biography is not the focus of the assignment. It should be brief and focus on aspects of the person’s life that are relevant to your assessment. The discussion should pull together and summarize your assessment. It can include general observations and conclusions about the famous person’s personality.


 * Format **: Because you will be posting this assignment on a webpage, it will not be formatted like a term paper. Instead, you will have five sections with the following section headers: Biography, Perspective 1 (ex: Psychoanalytic Perspective), Perspective 2 (ex: Trait Perspective), Discussion, References. There is a template available on the Wikipedia site that you can use to format your page. You will also turn in a paper copy of your assessment on the ** due date: Friday, 4/22 **. The paper should be 5-7 pages, double spaced, with 1-inch margins.


 * Grading: ** The assessment will be graded based on the following criteria: (1) demonstrating an understanding of the personality perspectives included, (2) adequately addressing the components of the assessment (i.e., inclusion of biography, assessment from two perspectives, discussion, references), (3) clarity of writing style. The famous personality assessment will not be accepted late.

** Response to Famous Personality Assessment **
 * Overview and Grading: ** You will respond to two of your classmates’ famous personality assessments of your choosing on the class website. In your response, you will discuss one point with which you agree and one point with which you disagree. It is important that you discuss why you agree / disagree with these points. Your response will be graded based on: (1) providing a thoughtful critique, (2) addressing a point of agreement and disagreement, (3) clarity of writing style. You will turn in a paper copy of your responses on the ** due date: Friday, 4/29 **. Each response should be 1-2 pages, double spaced, with 1-inch margins. It should include the name of the classmate that you responded to.