Personality

• An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
• Four basic perspectives
• Psychoanalytic
• Trait
• Humanistic
• Social-cognitive
• From Freud’s theory which proposes that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality

 

The Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Psychoanalysis
• Technique of treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions
• Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality sought to explain what he observed during psychoanalysis
• Free Association
• Method of exploring the unconscious
• Person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
• Unconscious
• Freud-a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes. Feelings and memories
• Contemporary-information processing of which we are unaware
• Preconscious-  information that is not conscious, but is retrievable into conscious awareness

 

Personality Structure

• ID
• A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy
• Strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
• Operates on the pleasure principle. Demanding immediate gratification
• SUPEREGO
• The part of personality that presents internalized ideals
• Provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations
• EGO
• The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality
• Mediates among the demands of the id, superego and ego
• Operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

 

Personality Development

• Psychosexual Stages-  the childhood stages of development during which the pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
• Oedipus Complex-  a boy’s sexual desires towards his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father

•  Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

STAGE                                     FOCUS

Oral (0-18 months)              Pleasure centers on the mouth---sucking, biting, chewing

Anal (18-36 months)            Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control

Phallic (3-6 years)                Pleasure zone in genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feeling

Latency ( 6 to puberty)        Dormant sexual feelings

Genital (puberty on)             Maturation of sexual interests

 

Personality Development

• Identification-  the process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos
• Gender Identity-  one’s sense of being male or female
• Fixation- a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

Defense Mechanisms

• Defense Mechanisms-  the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
• Repression-  the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness
• Regression-  defense mechanism in which an individual retreats, when faced with anxiety, to a more infantile psychosexual stage where some psychic energy remains fixated
• Reaction Formation- defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites.  People may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings.
• Projection-  defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
• Rationalization-  defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions
• Displacement-  defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person…as when redirecting anger towards a safer outlet

 
 

Neo-Freudians

• Alfred Adler-  importance of childhood social tension
• Karen Horney-  sought to balance Freud’s masculine biases
• Carl Jung-  emphasizes collective unconscious…concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history

Assessing The Unconscious

• Projective Test-  a personality rest, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provided ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics
• 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
• Rorschach Inkblot Test- the most widely used projective test, uses a set of 10 inkblots designed by
• Hermann Rorschach to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.

 
 

The Trait Perspective

• Trait-  a characteristic pattern of behavior; a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports
• Personality Inventory-  a questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; used to assess selected personality traits

• The “Big Five” personality Factors

Trait Dimension                    Description

Emotional Stability                 Calm versus anxious

Secure versus insecure

Self-satisfied versus self-pitying

Extraversion                            Sociable versus retiring

Fun-loving versus sober

Affectionate versus reserved

Openness                                 Imaginative versus practical

Preference for variety versus preference for routine

Independent versus conforming

Extraversion                            Soft-hearted versus ruthless Trusting versus suspicious Helpful versus uncooperative

Conscientiousness                   Organized versus disorganized Careful versus careless Disciplined versus impulsive

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
• The most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests
• Originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use)
• Now used for many other screening purposes
• Empirically Derived Test-  a test developed by testing a pool of  items and then selecting those that discriminate between groups…similar to MMPI

Evaulating The Trait Perspective

• Situational influences on behavior are important to consider
• People can fake desirable responses on self-report measures of personality
• Averaging behavior across situations seems to indicate that people do have distinct personality traits

 

Humanistic Perspective

• Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)-  studied self-actualization processes of productive and healthy people
• Self-Actualization-  the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to fulfill one’s potential
• Carl Rogers (1902-1987)-  focused on growth and fulfillment of individuals
• Requires three conditions

1. Genuineness
2. Acceptance- unconditional positive regard
3. Empathy

• Unconditional Positive Regard- an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
• Self-Concept- all of our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in an answer to the question “Who am I”?”
• Self-Esteem- one’s feelings of high or low self-worth
• Self-Serving Bias- a readiness to perceive oneself favorably
• Individualism- giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications
•  Collectivism- giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly

 

Evaluating The Humanistic Perspective

• Concepts like self-actualization are vague
• Emphasis on self may promote self-indulgence and lack of concern for others
• Theory does not address reality of human capacity for evil
• Theory has impacted popular ideas on child rearing, education, management, etc.

 

Social-Cognitive Perspecitve

• Reciprocal Determinism- the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors
• Personal Control- our sense of controlling our environments rather than feeling helpless
• External Locus of Control- the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal control determine one’s fate
• Internal Locus of Control- the perception that one controls one’s own fate
• Learned Helplessness- the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events
• Built from research on learning and cognition
• Fails to consider unconscious motives and individual disposition
• Today, cognitive-behavioral theory is perhaps predominant psychological approach to explaining human behavior

 

Bibliography

Myers, David G., Psychology Fifth Edition. Worth Publishers, Inc. New York, NY ©1998