Transcript Personality - Warren Wilson College

Personality
Defining and Measuring
Personality
• “Who am I?” – what makes a personal quality
part of your personality?
– characteristic, enduring pattern of thinking,
feeling, and acting
My observations of you
Results from personality testing
Assessing Personality
Rorschach Inkblot Test
TAT
Assessing Personality
Objective measures (examples from
your text?)
Different perspectives on
personality
• psychoanalytic
• biological / trait
• humanistic
• social-cognitive
The Psychoanalytic
Perspective
• Psychoanalysis
– Background
– Freud’s theory in a
nutshell -- thoughts
and actions are
driven by
unconscious motives
and conflicts
Psychoanalysis
• Free Association
• Interpretation of dreams
and “slips”
Freud’s Personality
Theories
1. Personality Structure
2. Personality Development
Personality
Structure
Internalized
ideals:
Superego
Mediator:
Ego
Unconscious
psychic
energy: Id
Personality Development
• Psychosexual Stages
– stages of development: pleasure-seeking
energies focus on erogenous zones (i.e.,
oral, anal, phallic…)
• Oedipus Complex
Fixation
• Freud’s belief that we can get “stuck” at an
earlier stage (where conflicts were
unresolved)…
• Nail-biting, etc.?
• Don’t be so “anal”
Defense Mechanisms
• The Ego’s methods of reducing anxiety – by
unconsciously distorting reality
– Repression
– Regression
– Displacement
(“mechanisms of defense” exercise)
What can we say about Freud?
•Scientific?
•Impact
•Psychology & madness
•Everyday language
•Why?
•Sex
•Turn-of-the-century
science
•Applicable
Biological / Trait perspective
We’ve discussed this perspective a
lot already this semester…
Examples…?
Humanistic Perspective
• Background
• Major theorists:
– Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) -- self-actualization (the
motivation to fulfill one’s potential)
– Carl Rogers (1902-1987) -- growth and fulfillment of
individuals -- requires:
– genuineness
– acceptance - unconditional positive regard
– empathy
Humanistic Perspective
• Recognizes the impact of culture on
personality
– Individualism vs. Collectivism
Social-Cognitive Perspective
Internal personal/
cognitive factors
(enjoy high-risk
activities)
Behavior
(learning to
rock climb)
Environmental
factors
(rock-climbing
friends)
• Reciprocal
Determinism
– the interacting
influences between
personality,
behavioral, &
environmental
factors
Social-Cognitive Perspective
• Personal Control
– our sense of how well we control our environments
• Locus of control scale (handout – if we have time)
– 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
Social-Cognitive Perspective –
Learned Helplessness
• Learned Helplessness
Uncontrollable
bad events
Perceived
lack of control
Generalized
helpless behavior
Personality- Summary
The Four Perspectives on Personality
Perspective
Behavior Springs From
Assessment Techniques
Evaluation
Psychoanalytic
Unconscious conflicts
between pleasure-seeking
impulses and social restraints
Projective tests aimed at
revealing unconscious
motivations
A speculative, hard-to-test
theory with enormous cultural impact
Trait
Expressing biologically
influenced dispositions, such
as extraversion or introversion
(a)Personality inventories
that assess the strengths
of different traits
(b)Peer ratings of behavior
patterns
A descriptive approach criticized as sometimes underestimating the variability
of behavior from situation
to situation
Humanistic
Processing conscious feelings
about oneself in the light of
one’s experiences
(a)Questionnaire
assessments
(b)Empathic interviews
A humane theory that
reinvigorated contemporary
interest in the self; criticized
as subjective and sometimes
naively self-centered and
optimistic
Social-cognitive
Reciprocal influences between (a)Questionnaire assessments
people and their situation,
of people’s feelings of control
colored by perceptions of
(b) Observations of people’s
control
behavior in particular
situations
Art interactive theory that integrates research on learning,
cognition, and social behavior,
criticized as underestimating
the importance of emotions
and enduring traits