Personality Discussion

 How would you describe your own personality?

 Is your personality the same as it was 5 years ago? Will it be the same in 5 years?

 Does your personality change based on the situation?

Chapter 10: Personality

Psychological qualities that bring continuity to an individual’s behavior in different situations and at different times

Used to explain…

 Stability in person’s behavior over time and across situations (consistency)  Behavioral differences between people reacting to the same situation (distinctiveness)  Theories – help understand the causes of similarities and differences among people

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

 Psychoanalytic theory: early childhood experiences, unconscious motives/conflicts, and methods used to cope with sexual & aggressive urges  Personality, behavior, and disorders are determined by basic drives and past psychological events.

 Unconscious: thoughts, memories, desires well below the surface of conscious awareness, but still exert great influence on behavior  Sexual & aggressive impulses – major source of conflict  Ambiguous social norms – inconsistent messages about what is appropriate  Thwarted more often than other urges

Drives and Instincts (psychic energy)

 Eros (life instincts) – drives people towards acts that are life giving  Libido (energy behind eros) – drives people to experience sensual pleasure  Thanatos (death instincts) – drives people toward aggressive and destructive behaviors

Freud’s Model of the Mind

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

Id

Superego Ego

Primitive, unconscious portion of personality; houses most basic drives and stores repressed memories

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

MORAL PRINCIPLE Id

Superego

Ego

Mind’s storehouse of values, moral attitudes learned from parents and society; same as common notion of conscience

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

REALITY PRINCIPLE Id Superego

Ego

Conscious, rational part of personality; charged with keeping peace between superego and id

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

 Ego defense mechanisms: Largely unconscious mental strategies employed to reduce the experience of anxiety or guilt  Repression: keeping distressing thought/feelings in the unconscious  Projection: attributing one’s own thoughts, feelings, or motives to another  Regression: reversion to immature patterns of behavior  Denial: arguing against an anxiety by stating that it doesn’t exist

More Defense Mechanisms

 Undoing: attempt to take back thoughts/ behaviors that are unacceptable  Displacement: diverting emotional feelings from their original source to a substitute target  Reaction Formation: acting in a way opposite of one’s true feelings  Sublimation: acting out unacceptable impulses in a socially acceptable way  Rationalization: creating false, but plausible excuses to justify unacceptable behavior

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

Psychosexual stages: Successive, developmental periods with a characteristic sexual focus that leave their mark on adult personality

Oral Stage Phallic Stage Anal Stage Latency Genital Stage

Assessing Unconscious Processes

 Projective tests: Personality assessment instruments based on Freud’s concept of projecting hidden motives, interests, conflicts; ambiguous stimuli  Rorschach inkblot technique  Sentence completion  Free association  Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Rorschach Inkblot

Thematic Apperception Test

Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theories

 Accepted basics: personality structure, unconscious, childhood influence, anxiety  Disagreed in two ways:  More emphasis on the conscious mind  Sex and aggression not main motivators  Alfred Adler and Karen Horney – emphasized social factors  Adler: Supported inferiority complex  Horney: Against penis envy; need for love and security  Carl Jung – still focused on unconscious  Collective unconscious: shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history

Humanistic Perspective

 Third Force – emphasized human potential; gave rise to positive psychology  Self-concept: thoughts and feelings about ourselves; central feature of personality  Self-esteem: How we evaluate ourselves  Abraham Maslow  Hierarchy of Needs  Self-actualization: fulfilling one’s potential  Carl Rogers  Unconditional positive regard: total acceptance toward another  Fully-functioning person: has a self-concept that is positive and congruent with reality

Trait Perspective

 Gordon Allport  Traits: Stable personality characteristics that are presumed to exist within the individual and guide his/her thoughts and actions under various conditions  Central traits form the basis of personality  Secondary traits include preferences and attitudes  Cardinal traits define peoples lives

Patterns in Personality Trait Theory  Type: Clusters of traits that are not only central to a person’s personality but are found with essentially the same pattern in many people  Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment  The Big Five (McCrae) – handout  Best approximation of the basic trait dimensions  NEO-PI assessment  Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) – abnormal assessment  Person-situation controversy: dispute over the relative contribution of personality factors and situational factors in controlling behavior (criticizes trait theory)

Social-Cognitive Theories

 Bandura – interaction between people’s traits (including thinking) and social context  Personality is a collection of learned behavior patterns (skills, attitudes, beliefs, fears) and the way we think about situations  Self efficacy: our learned sense of competency  What we do/try to do is largely controlled by our beliefs about our chances of success at it  Reciprocal determinism: Process in which cognitions, behavior and environment mutually influence each other

Reciprocal Determinism

Cognition Environment Behavior

Implicit Personality Theories

  Implicit personality theories: Assumptions about personality that are held by people to simplify the task of understanding others Fundamental attribution error: Assumption that another person’s behavior (especially undesirable behavior) is the result of a flaw in the personality, rather than in the situation