Chapter 15: Personality 03/15/2011

Personality: An individual's characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting.

I. The Psychoanalytic Perspective
 In his clinical practice, Freud encountered patients suffering from nervous
disorders. Their complaints could not be explained in terms of purely physical
causes.
 Freud’s clinical experience led him to develop the first comprehensive theory
of personality, which included the unconscious mind, psychosexual stages,
and defense mechanisms.
 A. Exploring the Unconscious
o 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.
o Free Association: In psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the
unconscious in which the person relaxes and says whatever comes to
mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.
o Psychoanalysis: Freud's theory of personality that attributes thoughts
and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts; the techniques used
in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret
unconscious tensions.
o Unconscious: According to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable
thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories. According to contemporary
psychologists, information processing of which we are unaware.
o Another method to analyze the unconscious mind is through
interpreting manifest and latent contents of dreams.
o 1. Personality Structure
 Personality develops as a result of our efforts to resolve
conflicts between our biological impulses (id) and social
restraints (superego).
 Id: Unconsciously strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive
drives, operating on the pleasure principle, demanding
immediate gratification.
 Ego: Functions as the “executive” and mediates the demands of
the id and superego.
 Superego: Provides standards for judgment (the conscience)
and for future aspirations.
o 2. Personality Development
  Freud believed that personality formed during the first few years
of life divided into psychosexual stages. During these stages the
id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on pleasure sensitive body
areas called erogenous zones.
 Psychosexual Stages: The childhood stages of development
(oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital). The id's pleasure-seeking
energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.
 Oedipus Complex: A boy’s sexual desire for his mother and
feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father. A girl’s desire
for her father is called the Electra complex.
 Identification: Children incorporate their parents' values into their
developing superegos.
 Fixation: A person's pleasure-seeking energies at an early
psychosexual stage-conflict unresolved.
o 3. Defense Mechanisms
 Defense Mechanisms: The ego’s protective methods of
reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
 Repression: banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts,
feelings, and memories from consciousness.
 Regression: leads an individual faced with anxiety to
retreat to a more infantile psychosexual stage.
 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.
 Rationalization: offers self-justifying explanations in place
of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for
one’s actions.
 Displacement: shifts sexual or aggressive impulses
toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or
person, redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.
 B. The Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists
 o Collective Unconscious: Carl Jung's concept 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.
o 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.
o Like Adler, Horney believed in the social aspects of childhood growth
and development. She countered Freud’s assumption that women
have weak superegos and suffer from “penis envy.”
 C. Assessing Unconscious Processes
o Evaluating personality from an unconscious mind’s perspective would
require a psychological instrument (projective tests) that would reveal
the hidden unconscious mind.
o Projective Tests: a personality test that would reveal the hidden
unconscious mind
o Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT): projective test in which people
express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make
up about ambiguous scenes.
o Rorschach Inkblot Test: projective test that seeks to identify people’s
inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots.
o Critics argue that projective tests lack both reliability (consistency of
results) and validity (predicting what it is supposed to).
 D. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective
o 1. Contradictory Evidence from Modern Research
 1. Personality develops throughout life and is not fixed in
childhood.
 2. Freud underemphasized peer influence on the individual,
which may be as powerful as parental influence.
 3. Gender identity may develop before 5-6 years of age.
 4. There may be other reasons for dreams besides wish
fulfillment.
 5. Verbal slips can be explained on the basis of cognitive
processing of verbal choices.
  6. Suppressed sexuality leads to psychological disorders.
Sexual inhibition has decreased, but psychological disorders
have not.
o 2. Is Repression a Myth?
 Freud's psychoanalytic theory rests on the repression of painful
experiences into the unconscious mind.
 The majority of children, death camp survivors, and battle-
scarred veterans are unable to repress painful experiences into
their unconscious mind.
o 3. The Modern Unconscious Mind
 Modern research shows the existence of non-conscious
information processing.
 1. Schemas that automatically control perceptions and
interpretations
 2. Parallel processing during vision and thinking
 3. Implicit memories
 4. Emotions that activate instantly without consciousness
 Terror-Management Theory: proposes that faith in one's
worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem provide protection
against a deeply rooted fear of death
o 4. Freud's Ideas as Scientific Theory
 The scientific merits of Freud’s theory have been criticized.
Psychoanalysis is meagerly testable. Most of its concepts arise
out of clinical practice, which are the after-the-fact explanation.
II. The Humanistic Perspective
 By the 1960s, psychologists became discontent with Freud’s negativity and
the mechanistic psychology of the behaviorists.
 A. Abraham Maslow's Self-Actualizing Person
o Self-Actualization: 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-actualization—fulfilling our potential.
 B. Carl Rogers' Person-Centered Perspective
o Unconditional Positive Regard: Carol Rogers said an attitude of
acceptance of others despite their failings
o Self-Concept: All of our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in an
answer to the question, “Who am I?”
 C. Assessing the Self
o In an effort to assess personality, Rogers asked people to describe
themselves as they would like to be (ideal) and as they actually are
(real). If the two descriptions were close the individual had a positive
self-concept.
 D. Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective
o 1. Humanistic psychology has a pervasive impact on counseling,
education, child rearing, and management.
o 2. Concepts in humanistic psychology are vague and subjective and
lack scientific basis.
o 3. Gender identity may develop before 5-6 years of age.
III. The Trait Perspective
 Trait: A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act
 A. Exploring Traits
o 1. Factor Analysis
 Factor analysis is a statistical approach used to describe and
relate personality traits.
 Cattell used this approach to develop a 16 Personality Factor
(16PF) inventory.
 Cattell found that large groups of traits could be reduced down
to 16-core personality traits based on statistical correlations.
 Hans and Sybil Eysenck suggested that personality could be
reduced down to two polar dimensions, extraversion-
introversion and emotional stability-instability.
 B. Assessing Traits
o Personality Inventories: questionnaires (often with true-false or agree-
disagree items) designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and
behaviors assessing several traits at once.
o Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): the most widely
researched and clinically used of all personality tests. It was originally
developed to identify emotional disorders.
o Empirically Derived Test: A test developed by testing a pool of items
and them selecting those that discriminate between groups
 C. The Big Five Factors
o Conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism (emotional stability vs.
instability), openness, extraversion
 o How stable are these traits? Quite stable in adulthood. However, they
change over development.
o How heritable are they? Fifty percent or so for each trait.
o How well do they apply to various cultures? These traits are common
across cultures.
o Do the Big 5 traits predict other personal attributes? Yes.
Conscientious people are morning type and extraverted are evening
type.
 D. Evaluating the Trait Perspective
o 1. The Person-Situation Controversy
 Walter Mischel points out that traits may be enduring, but the
resulting behavior in various situations is different. Therefore,
traits are not good predictors of behavior.
 Trait theorists argue that behaviors from a situation may be
different, but average behavior remains the same. Therefore,
traits matter.
 Traits are socially significant and influence our health, thinking,
and performance
o 2. Consistency of Expressive Style
 Expressive styles in speaking and gestures demonstrate trait
consistency
 Observers are able to judge people’s behavior and feelings in
as little as 30 seconds and in one particular case as little as 2
seconds.
IV. The Social-Cognitive Perspective
 Social-Cognitive Perspective: Bandura believes that personality is the result
of an interaction that takes place between a person and their social context.
 A. Reciprocal Influences
o Reciprocal Determinism: The three factors, behavior, cognition, and
environment, are interlocking determinants of each other.
o Different people choose different environments.-The school you attend
and the music you listen to are partly based on your dispositions.
o Our personalities shape how we react to events.-Anxious people react
to situations differently than calm people.
o Our personalities shape situations.-How we view and treat people
influences how they treat us.
 B. Personal Control
o Personal Control: our sense of controlling our environment rather than
feeling helpless
o 1. Internal Versus External Locus of Control
 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.
o 2. Learned Helplessness Versus Personal Control
 Learned Helplessness: When unable to avoid repeated adverse
events an animal or human learns helplessness
o 3. Optimism Versus Pessimism
 An optimistic or pessimistic attributional style is your way of
explaining positive or negative events.
 Positive psychology aims to discover and promote conditions
that enable individuals and communities to thrive.
 C. Assessing Behavior in Situations
o Social-cognitive psychologists observe people in realistic and
simulated situations because they find that it is the best way to predict
the behavior of others in similar situations.
 D. Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective
o 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.
o
V. Exploring the Self
 Spotlight Effect: how we overestimate our concern that others evaluate our
appearance, performance, and blunders
 1. Research focuses on the different selves we possess. Some we dream and
others we dread.
 2. Research studies how we overestimate our concern that others evaluate
our appearance, performance, and blunders (spotlight effect).
 3. Research studies the self-reference effect in recall.
 A. The Benefits of Self-Esteem
 o Maslow and Rogers argued that a successful life results from a healthy
self-image (self-esteem). The following are two reasons why low self-
esteem results in personal problems.
o 1. When self-esteem is deflated, we view others and ourselves
critically.
o 2. Low self-esteem reflects reality, our failure in meeting challenges, or
surmounting difficulties.
o Self-Esteem: One's feeling of high or low self-worth
 B. Culture and Self-Esteem
o People maintain their self-esteem even with a low status by valuing
things they achieve and comparing themselves to people with similar
positions.
 C. Self-Serving Bias
o 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.
o Self-Serving Bias: A readiness to perceive oneself favorably
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