This paper explores personality and fictional characters: Idiographic and Nomothetic Descriptions. In this assignment, you will describe the personality of a fictional character from a novel, play, movie, or television series.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Descriptions.

Personality and Fictional Characters: Idiographic and Nomothetic Descriptions. In this assignment, you will describe the personality of a fictional character from a novel, play, movie, or television series. Unlike most of your other essay assignments, this assignment doesn’t require any searching for scientific articles or books. Instead, it involves only your own study of a novel, play, movie, or television series—one that you will find on your own. In fact, for this assignment you are actually not permitted to do any searching for other people’s analyses of the personality of your fictional character. Your analysis should be entirely your own.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Descriptions.

Note: In the instructions below, “book” or “novel” can refer to whichever work you are using, whether a novel, a play, a movie, or a television series. Non-traditional forms of writing can be used only if the volume is at least equivalent to a short novel. Sections of the Assignment 1. Title page (see comments in “Details…” section below) 2. Start your essay with a statement indicating the name of the fictional character you’ll be studying, along with the title of the book in which this character appears. Indicate that you will provide idiographic and nomothetic personality descriptions of this character.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Descriptions.

Note: Do not give any background information about the book, any summary of the book’s plot, or any list of its various characters. (The assignment isn’t a book report.) 3. Idiographic Description of the Character In this section, describe what you consider to be a few (two to four) of the most noteworthy features of this fictional character’s personality. Each feature should have its own paragraph. Justify your choices with reference to the character’s thoughts, feelings, words, or actions. In giving these examples, you should be concise, giving only the basic context needed for your reader to understand what is happening.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Descriptions.

The examples should be in your own words, not direct quotations from the book (except in cases of quoting what a character was saying or thinking). Give page numbers for these examples. (In the case of a movie, you must give the time of the relevant scene; in the case of a television series, you must give the season number, episode number, and time of the relevant scene.) In your idiographic description of this character, do not use any special terms from personality psychology; just describe him or her as an insightful reader who had never studied personality psychology would do.

Idiographic and Nomothetic Descriptions.

4. Nomothetic Description of the Character In this section, describe this same fictional character in terms of the HEXACO personality factors. Each factor should have its own paragraph. For each factor, estimate the character’s “level” of that factor, and explain your estimate based on the character’s thoughts, feelings, words, or actions. You can use as levels the rough categories of “very high”, “somewhat high”, “average”, “somewhat low”, and “very low”. Justify your estimates with concise examples from the book (much as in the above section).

Idiographic and Nomothetic Descriptions.

Make sure that the evidence you give as indicating a character’s level of a factor really is relevant to that factor; that is, be sure that you understand the content of the factors. The content of the HEXACO factors is described in detail in the file “hexaco factor descriptions for essay assignment”, which is posted on the course Isaak/Sakai site. (Note: Don’t insert these definitions into your essay.) See also Tables 3.5 and 3.6 of the textbook. You can also mention your level of confidence in your estimate.  https://youtu.be/OK0Ant1HOt4

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