Personality

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Chapter 13
Personality
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Personality

• An individuals characteristic pattern of
  thinking, feeling, and acting.

Each dwarf has a distinct personality.
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Psychodynamic Perspective

• Freuds clinical experience led him to develop
  the first comprehensive theory of personality,
  which included the unconscious mind, psychosexual
  stages, and defense mechanisms.

Culver Pictures
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
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Divisions of Consciousness

• Conscious mind - level of the mind that is aware
  of immediate surroundings and perceptions.
• Preconscious mind - level of the mind in which
  information is available but not currently
  conscious.
• Unconscious mind - level of the mind in which
  thoughts, feelings, memories, and other
  information are kept that are not easily or
  voluntarily brought into consciousness.
• Can be revealed in dreams and Freudian slips of
  the tongue.

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Exploring the Unconscious

• A reservoir (unconscious mind) of mostly
  unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and
  memories. Freud asked patients to say whatever
  came to their minds (free association) in order
  to tap the unconscious.

http//www.english.upenn.edu
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Psychoanalysis

• The process of free association (chain of
  thoughts) leads to painful, embarrassing
  unconscious memories. Once these memories are
  retrieved and released (treatment
  psychoanalysis) the patient feels better.

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Id, Ego, Superego

• The ego functions as the executive and mediates
  the demands of the id and superego. (rational and
  logical)
• Reality principle - principle by which the ego
  functions the satisfaction of the demands of the
  id only when negative consequences will not
  result.
• The superego provides standards for judgment (the
  conscience) and for future aspirations moral
  center
• Ego ideal - part of the superego that contains
  the standards for moral behavior.
• Conscience - part of the superego that produces
  pride or guilt, depending on how well behavior
  matches or does not match the ego ideal.

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Id, Ego and Superego

• The Id- unconsciously strives to satisfy basic
  sexual and aggressive drives, operating on the
  pleasure principle, demanding immediate
  gratification.
• Libido - the instinctual energy that may come
  into conflict with the demands of a societys
  standards for behavior.
• Pleasure principle - principle by which the id
  functions the immediate satisfaction of needs
  without regard for the consequences.

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Fig. 12-2, p. 473
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Personality Development

• Freud believed that personality formed during the
  first few years of life divided into 5
  psychosexual stages. During these stages the ids
  pleasure-seeking energies focus on pleasure
  sensitive body areas called erogenous zones.
• Fixation - disorder in which the person does not
  fully resolve the conflict in a particular
  psychosexual stage, resulting in personality
  traits and behavior associated with that earlier
  stage.

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Stages of Personality Development

• Oral stage - first stage occurring in the first
  year of life in which the mouth is the erogenous
  zone and weaning is the primary conflict. Id
  dominated.
• Fixation smoking, drinking, excessive eating,
  sucking thumb

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Stages of Personality Development

• Anal stage - second stage occurring from about 1
  to 3 years of age, in which the anus is the
  erogenous zone and toilet training is the source
  of conflict. Ego develops.
• Anal expulsive personality - a person fixated in
  the anal stage who is messy, destructive, and
  hostile.
• Anal retentive personality - a person fixated in
  the anal stage who is neat, fussy, stingy, and
  stubborn.

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Stages of Personality Development

• Phallic stage - third stage occurring from about
  3 to 6 years of age, in which the child discovers
  sexual feelings. Superego develops.
• Oedipus complex- situation occurring in the
  phallic stage in which a child develops a sexual
  attraction to the opposite-sex parent and
  jealousy of the same-sex parent. A girls desire
  for her father is called the Electra complex.
• Penis Envy for girls
• Identification - defense mechanism in which a
  person tries to become like someone else to deal
  with anxiety.

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Stages of Personality Development

• Latency - fourth stage occurring during the
  school years(6-Puberty), in which the sexual
  feelings of the child are repressed while the
  child develops in other ways.
• Becomes more social.
• Genital fifth stage sexual feelings reawaken
  with appropriate targets.

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Defense Mechanisms

• The egos protective methods of reducing anxiety
  by unconsciously distorting reality.

• Repression banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts,
  feelings, and memories from consciousness.
• Physical or sexual abuse in childhood
• Regression an individual faced with anxiety
  retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage
  childlike behaviors
• College student sucking their thumb

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Defense Mechanisms

• Reaction Formation causes the ego to
  unconsciously switch unacceptable impulses into
  their opposites.
• People may express feelings of purity when they
  may be suffering anxiety from unconscious
  feelings about sex.
• Projection leads people to disguise their own
  threatening impulses by attributing them to
  others.
• Accusing people of being loud, when its really
  you

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Defense Mechanisms

• Rationalization offers self-justifying
  explanations in place of the real, more
  threatening, unconscious reasons for ones
  actions.
• I'm on a diet but if I didnt eat that cheesecake
  it would have went to waste
• Displacement shifts sexual or aggressive impulses
  toward a more acceptable or less threatening
  object or person, redirecting anger toward a
  safer outlet.
• Teacher has a bad day yell at the students!

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Defense Mechanisms

• 7. Denial is rejecting the truth of a painful
  reality
• Refusal to accept a frightening medical diagnosis
• 8. Sublimation an undesirable emotion or drive is
  substituted with a socially acceptable one
• Want to hit someone join boxing
• 9. Suppression is a conscious attempt to push
  something out of memory

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The Neo-Freudians

• Neo-Freudians - followers of Freud who developed
  their own competing theories of psychoanalysis.

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The Neo-Freudians

• Like Freud, Adler believed in childhood tensions.
  However, these tensions were social in nature and
  not sexual. A child struggles with an inferiority
  complex during growth and strives for superiority
  and power.

National Library of Medicine
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
Birth Order Theory- first born child more goal
oriented than the next
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The Neo-Freudians

• Like Adler, Horney believed in the social aspects
  of childhood growth and development. She
  countered Freuds assumption that women have weak
  superegos and suffer from penis envy instead
  men suffer from womb envy.
• Basic anxiety - anxiety created when a child is
  born into the bigger and more powerful world of
  older children and adults.

The Bettmann Archive/ Corbis
Karen Horney (1885-1952)
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The Neo-Freudians

• Jung believed in the collective unconscious,
  which contained a common reservoir of images
  derived from our species past.
• This is why many cultures share certain myths and
  images such as the mother being a symbol of
  nurturance.
• Personal unconscious - Jungs name for the
  unconscious mind as described by Freud.
• Collective unconscious Jungs name for the
  memories shared by all members of the human
  species.
• Archetypes - Jungs collective, universal human
  memories.

Carl Jung (1875-1961)
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The Modern Unconscious Mind

• Modern research shows the existence of
  non-conscious information processing. This
  involves

1. schemas that automatically control perceptions
   and interpretations
2. the right-hemisphere activity that enables the
   split-brain patients left hand to carry out an
   instruction the patient cannot verbalize
3. parallel processing during vision and thinking
4. implicit memories
5. emotions that activate instantly without
   consciousness
6. self-concept and stereotypes that unconsciously
   influence us

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Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective

• The scientific merits of Freuds theory have been
  criticized.
• He is too male-centered.
• Psychoanalysis is meagerly testable.
• Most of its concepts arise out of clinical
  practice, which are the after-the-fact
  explanations.

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Assessing Unconscious Processes

• Evaluating personality from an unconscious minds
  perspective would require a psychological
  instrument (projective tests) that would reveal
  the hidden unconscious mind.

Projective tests personality assessments that
present ambiguous visual stimuli to the client
and ask the client to respond with whatever comes
to mind.
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Rorschach Inkblot Test

• The most widely used projective test uses a set
  of 10 inkblots and was designed by Hermann
  Rorschach. It seeks to identify peoples inner
  feelings by analyzing their interpretations of
  the blots.

Lew Merrim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.
http//theinkblot.com/
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Most Popular Responses Bat (53), Butterfly
(39) When seeing card I, subjects often inquire
on how they should proceed, and questions on what
they are allowed to do with the card (e.g.
turning it) are not very significant. Being the
first card, it can provide clues about how
subjects tackle a new and stressful task. It is
not, however, a card that is usually difficult
for the subject to handle, having readily
available popular responses.
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Thematic Apperception Test(TAT)

• Developed by Henry Murray, the TAT is a
  projective test in which people express their
  inner feelings and interests through the stories
  they make up about ambiguous scenes.

Lew Merrim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.
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Projective Tests Criticisms

• Critics argue that projective tests lack both
  reliability (consistency of results) and validity
  (predicting what it is supposed to).

• When evaluating the same patient, even trained
  raters come up with different interpretations
  (reliability).
• Projective tests may misdiagnose a normal
  individual as pathological (validity).
• Subjective - concepts and impressions that are
  only valid within a particular persons
  perception and may be influenced by biases,
  prejudice, and personal experiences. This is a
  problem with projective tests.

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Humanistic Perspective

• By the 1960s, psychologists became discontent
  with Freuds negativity and the mechanistic
  psychology of the behaviorists.
• Person-centered and positive about human potential

http//www.ship.edu
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
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Self-Actualizing Person

• Maslow proposed that we as individuals are
  motivated by a hierarchy of needs. Beginning with
  physiological needs, we try to reach the state of
  self-actualizationfulfilling our potential.

http//www.ship.edu
Ted Polumbaum/ Time Pix/ Getty Images
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Karl Rogers Theory of Personality

• Self-concept - the image of oneself that develops
  from interactions with important, significant
  people in ones life.
• Who am I? (How do I think of myself?)
• Self - archetype that works with the ego to
  manage other archetypes and balance the
  personality.
• Real self - ones perception of actual
  characteristics, traits, and abilities.
• Ideal self - ones perception of whom one should
  be or would like to be.

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Rogers Theory of Personality

• Positive regard warmth, affection, love, and
  respect that come from significant others in
  ones life.
• Unconditional positive regard - positive regard
  that is given without conditions or strings
  attached.
• Conditional positive regard- positive regard that
  is given only when the person is doing what the
  providers of positive regard wish.
• Fully functioning person a person who is in
  touch with and trusting of the deepest, innermost
  urges and feelings.

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Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective

• Humanistic psychology has a pervasive impact on
  counseling, education, child-rearing, and
  management with its emphasis on a positive
  self-concept, empathy, and the thought that
  people are basically good and can improve.
• Opponents view it as unrealistically positive and
  hard to measure empirically

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The Trait Perspective

• An individuals unique constellation of durable
  dispositions and consistent ways of behaving
  (traits) constitutes his or her personality.

Examples of Traits
Honest Dependable Moody Impulsive
Each personality is uniquely made up of multiple
traits.
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Exploring Traits

• Gordon Allport first developed a list of about
  171 traits and believed that these traits were
  part of the nervous system.
• Cardinal Trait- single most dominant
• Central Traits- 5-10 significant tendencies
• Secondary Traits- often present but not as
  defining
• Raymond Cattell reduced the number of traits to
  between 16 and 23 with a computer method called
  Factor Analysis.
• 16 Personality Factors (16 PF)

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Trait Theories of Personality

• Factor analysis, a statistical approach used to
  describe and relate personality traits.
• Surface traits - aspects of personality that can
  easily be seen by other people in the outward
  actions of a person.
• Source traits - the more basic traits that
  underlie the surface traits, forming the core of
  personality.
• Example Introversion - dimension of personality
  in which people tend to withdraw from excessive
  stimulation

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Hans Eysenck

• Hans and Sybil Eysenck suggested that personality
  could be reduced down to two polar dimensions,
  extraversion-introversion and emotional
  stability-instability.
• PEN- Psychoticism- emotional caring
• Extroversion- outgoing
• Neuroticism- emotional stability

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MMPI

• Personality inventories are questionnaires (often
  with true-false or agree-disagree items) designed
  to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors
  assessing several traits at once.
• The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
  (MMPI) is the most widely researched and
  clinically used of all personality tests. It was
  originally developed to identify emotional
  disorders.

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MMPI Test Profile
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The Big Five Factors

• Todays trait researchers believe that earlier
  trait dimensions, such as Eysencks personality
  dimensions, fail to tell the whole story. So, an
  expanded range (five factors) of traits does a
  better job of assessment.

Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Openness
Extraversion
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The Big Five Factors

• Conscientiousness - thoughtfulness of others
  responsibility or dependability reliable
• Agreeableness the range from easygoing,
  friendly, and likeable to grumpy, crabby, and
  unpleasant honest, considerate, likable
• Neuroticism - degree of emotional instability or
  stability anxious, self conscious
• Openness - willingness to try new things and be
  open to new experiences.
• Extraversion - referring to ones need to be with
  other people outgoing, expressive
• Extraverts - people who are outgoing and
  sociable.
• Introverts - people who prefer solitude and
  dislike being the center of attention.

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Endpoints
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Questions about the Big Five
Quite stable in adulthood. However, they change
over development.
1. How stable are these traits?
Fifty percent or so for each trait.
2. How heritable are they?
These traits are common across cultures.
3. How about other cultures?
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Evaluating the Trait Perspective

• The Person-Situation Controversy
• Walter Mischel (situationist) (1968, 1984, 2004)
  points out that traits may be enduring, but the
  resulting behavior in various situations is
  different. Therefore, traits are not good
  predictors of behavior.
• Average behavior remains the same

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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Albert Bandura (1986, 2001, 2005) believes that
  personality is the result of an interaction that
  takes place between a person and their social
  context.
• Blends cognitive, social, and behavioral elements.

Albert Bandura
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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Reciprocal determinism We develop through
  watching others, but we choose our environments,
  which exposes us to certain people and
  situations, which in turn leads to make other
  choices, which exposes us to different
  experiences etc.
• Self-efficacy individuals perception of how
  effective a behavior will be in any particular
  circumstance (NOT the same as self-esteem).
• Control the outcomes in ones environment

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Individuals Environments

• Specific ways in which individuals and
  environments interact

The school you attend and the music you listen to
are partly based on your dispositions.
Different people choose different environments.
Our personalities shape how we react to events.
Anxious people react to situations differently
than relaxed people.
Our personalities shape situations.
How we view and treat people influences how they
treat us.
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Julian Rotters Social Learning Theory

• Social-cognitive psychologists emphasize our
  sense of personal control, whether we control the
  environment or the environment controls us.
• External locus of control refers to the
  perception that chance or outside forces beyond
  our personal control determine our fate.
• Internal locus of control refers to the
  perception that we can control our own fate.
• ie. Why you cant get an A?

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Optimism vs. Pessimism

• Martin Seligman
• An optimistic or pessimistic attributional style
  is your way of explaining positive or negative
  events.

• ie. How long bad periods will last?
• Optimistic- wont last!
• Pessimistic- forever
• Positive psychology aims to discover and promote
  conditions that enable individuals and
  communities to thrive.

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Learned Helplessness

• When unable to avoid repeated adverse events an
  animal or human learns helplessness and will stop
  trying all together.

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Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective
The social-cognitive perspective on personality
sensitizes researchers to the effects of
situations on and by individuals. It builds on
learning and cognition research.

• Critics say that social-cognitive psychologists
  pay a lot of attention to the situation and pay
  less attention to the individual, his unconscious
  mind, his emotions, and his genetics.

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Self-Serving Bias

• We accept responsibility for good deeds and
  successes more than for bad deeds and failures.
  Defensive self-esteem is fragile and egotistic
  whereas secure self-esteem is less fragile and
  less dependent on external evaluation.
• Self-handicapping is how many protect their
  self-image by creating a ready excuse for
  failure. We protect our self-image by
  attributing our failure to external factors
  rather than to ourselves, creating a no-lose
  situation for our self-esteem. .