Personality: Theory, Research and Assessment

1
Chapter 12

• Personality Theory, Research and Assessment

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Personality

• An individuals characteristic pattern of
• Thinking
• Feeling
• Behaving

3
Personality traits

• Durable disposition
• a characteristic pattern of behavior
• a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by
  self-report inventories and peer reports

4
Empirically derived test

• a test developed by testing a pool of items and
  then selecting those that discriminate between
  groups
• Factor analysis

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The Big Five

• Costa and McCrae
• Openness to experience
• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

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The Big Five

• Costa and McCrae
• NEO Inventory

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Personality Inventory

• a questionnaire (often with true-false items)
  used to assess selected personality traits

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The Trait Perspective

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
  (MMPI)
• most widely researched and clinically used
• developed to identify emotional disorders

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MMPI

• Validity scales
• Is it measuring what it is intending to measure?
• Clinical scales
• Psychological disorders

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MMPI Validity scales

• Cannot say (?) evasive
• Lie scale (L) present oneself in a favorable
  way
• Infrequency scale (F) rare answer, indicates
  confusion or faking illness
• Subtle defensiveness (K) protecting self

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MMPI Clinical scales

• Hypochondriasis body complaints, somatoform
• Depression moody, pessimistic, distressed
• Hysteria denial, repression, dependence

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MMPI Clinical scales

• Psychopathic deviation antisocial personality
  disorder
• Masculinity/femininity
• Paranoia
• Psychasthenia anxiety

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MMPI Clinical scales

• Schizophrenia delusions/hallucinations,
  withdrawn
• Hypomania manic episode
• Social introversion shy

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MMPI Clinical scales

• Pages 511-514
• Profile

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The Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Freud
• childhood experience
• unconscious motivations influence personality

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Psychoanalysis

• techniques used in treating psychological
  disorders by seeking to expose and interpret
  unconscious tensions

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Free association

• in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the
  unconscious
• person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind,
  no matter how trivial or embarrassing

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Dream analysis

• Interpreting and finding meaning in dreams
• Different levels
• Latent content
• Manifest content

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Personality Structure

• Freuds idea of the minds structure

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The Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Unconscious
• Mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings
  and memories
• Not in our awareness

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Personality Structure

• Id
• unconscious
• basic sexual and aggressive drives
• pleasure principle
• The little devil on your shoulder

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Personality Structure

• SUPERego
• IDEALS and standards for judgement

The little angel on your shoulder
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Personality Structure

• Ego
• mediates among the demands of the id and the
  superego
• operates on the reality principle

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Personality Development

• Psychosexual Stages
• the childhood stages of development during which
  the ids pleasure-seeking energies focus on
  distinct erogenous zones

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Personality Development
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Personality Development

• Identification
• children incorporate their parents values into
  their superegos
• Fixation
• Unresolved conflict

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Personality Development

• Oedipus Complex
• a boys sexual desires for mom and feelings of
  jealousy and hatred for dad
• Electra Complex
• a girls sexual desires for dad and feelings of
  jealousy and hatred for mom

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Defense Mechanisms

• the egos protective methods of reducing anxiety
  by unconsciously distorting reality
• Briar Patch questions!

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Defense Mechanisms

• Repression
• the basic defense mechanism that banishes
  anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories
  from consciousness

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Defense Mechanisms

• Regression
• defense mechanism in which an individual faced
  with anxiety retreats to a more infantile
  psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy
  remains fixated

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Defense Mechanisms

• Reaction Formation
• defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously
  switches unacceptable impulses into their
  opposites

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Defense Mechanisms

• Projection
• defense mechanism by which people disguise their
  own threatening impulses by attributing them to
  others

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Defense Mechanisms

• Rationalization
• defense mechanism that offers self-justifying
  explanations in place of the real, more
  threatening, unconscious reasons for ones actions

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Defense Mechanisms

• Displacement
• shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a
  more acceptable or less threatening object or
  person

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Concept check 12.1

• Identifying defense mechanisms

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Projective Tests

• a personality test that provides ambiguous
  stimuli designed to trigger projection of ones
  inner dynamics
• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
• Rorschach Inkblot Test

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Projective Tests

• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
• a projective test in which people express their
  inner feelings and interests through the stories
  they make up about ambiguous scenes

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Projective Tests

• Rorschach Inkblot Test
• a set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann
  Rorschach
• seeks to identify peoples inner feelings by
  analyzing their interpretations of the blots

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Neo-Freudians

• Carl Jung
• Analytical psychology
• Emphasized the collective unconscious and
  archetypes

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Neo-Freudians

• Alfred Adler
• Individual psychology
• Importance of childhood social tension and birth
  order

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Neo-Freudians

• Alfred Adler
• Striving for superiority
• Compensation
• Inferiority complex

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Neo-Freudians

• Karen Horney
• Feminist perspective
• Penis envy as symbolic
• Womb envy

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Evaluating Psychodynamic theory

• Poor testability
• Inadequate evidence
• Sexism
• Dont throw the baby out with the bath water!

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Behaviorists

• Skinner operant conditioning
• Bandura
• Observational learning
• Social cognitive theory

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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Social-Cognitive Perspective
• views behavior as influenced by the interaction
  between persons and their social context

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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Reciprocal Determinism
• the interacting influences between personality
  and environmental factors

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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Mischel and Shoda
• Person X situation
• Example
• Niki is consistently quiet in class
• Niki is consistently talkative with her friends

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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Self-efficacy
• Ones belief about ones ability to perform
  behaviors

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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Internal Locus of Control
• the perception that one controls ones own fate
• External Locus of Control
• the perception that chance or outside forces
  beyond ones personal control determine ones fate

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Seligman

• Not discussed in detail in your book, take good
  notes!
• Learned Helplessness
• Optimism
• Positive Psychology

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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Learned Helplessness
• the hopelessness and passive resignation an
  animal or human learns when unable to avoid
  repeated aversive events

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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Learned Helplessness

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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Positive Psychology
• the scientific study of optimal human functioning
• aims to discover and promote conditions that
  enable individuals and communities to thrive

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Humanistic Perspective

• focus on growth and fulfillment of individuals
• Maslow
• Rogers

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Humanistic Perspective

• Self-Actualization
• the motivation to fulfill ones potential
• Be all that you can be

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Humanistic Perspective

• Maslows hierarchy of needs
• Figure 12.11
• Page 498

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Humanistic Perspective

• Rogers client-centered therapy
• Focus on unconditional positive regard

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Humanistic Perspective

• Unconditional Positive Regard
• an attitude of total acceptance toward another
  person

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Concept check 12.2

• Recognizing key concepts in personality theories

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Biological perspectives

1. Eysencks theory
2. Behavioral genetics
3. Evolutionary approach

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Eysencks theory

1. Genetics gt personality
2. Three higher order traits
3. Extraversion
4. Neuroticism
5. Psychoticism

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Behavior genetics

• Empirical research
• Twins
• Minnesota study
• Identical twins more alike than fraternal twins

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Behavior genetics

• Are identical twins treated more alike too?
• Shared family environment still has influence

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Evolutionary approach

• Natural selection favors specific traits
• Buss suggests Big Five factors more adaptive
  (think Survivor!)

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Big Five

• What are the Big Five factors?

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The Big Five

1. Openness to experience
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extroversion
4. Agreeableness
5. Neuroticism

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Evolutionary approach

• Think Survivor
• Who will make a good member of my coalition?
• Who can I depend on?
• Who will share?

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Concept check 12.3

• Who said this?

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Approaches to Personality

• Psychodynamic
• Behavioral
• Humanistic
• Biological
• Review pages 504-505

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Approaches to Personality

• Dont forget trait and social-cognitive

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Approaches to Personality

• You need to know the strengths and weaknesses of
  each approach as well

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Dont forget

1. Contemporary empirical approaches
2. Culture and personality
3. Understanding personality assessment
4. Hindsight

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Featured Study

• Can rooms really have personality?

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Featured Study

• Can rooms really have personality?
• Findings suggest rooms do indicate personality
• Bedrooms better predictors than offices