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Chapter 12: Personality: Theory, Research, and Assessment. Defining Personality: Consistency and Distinctiveness. Personality Traits
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Defining Personality:Consistency and Distinctiveness • Personality Traits • used to explain the stability in a person’s behavior over time and across situations (consistency) and the behavioral differences among people reacting to the same situation (distinctiveness). • Personality refers to an individual’s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits
Defining Personality:Consistency and Distinctiveness • Dispositions and dimensions • adjectives like honest, moody, impulsive, and excitable describe dispositions that represent personality traits • Raymond Cattell used the procedure of factor analysis correlating many variables to identify closely related clusters of variables – to reduce Gordon Allport’s (1937) list of 171 personality traits to just 16 basic dimensions
Defining Personality:Consistency and Distinctiveness • The Five-Factor Model (McCrae and Costa ) • Openness to experience: curiosity, flexibility, vivid fantasy, imaginativeness, artistic sensitivity, and unconventional attitudes • Conscientiousness: diligent, disciplined, well organized, punctual, and dependable (related to high productivity in a variety of occupational areas) • Extraversion: outgoing, sociable, upbeat, friendly, assertive, and gregarious (positive emotionality)
Defining Personality:Consistency and Distinctiveness • The Five-Factor Model (McCrae and Costa) cont. • Agreeableness: sympathetic, trusting, cooperative, modest, and straightforward • Neuroticism: anxious, hostile, self-conscious, insecure, and vulnerable (negative emotionality)
Psychodynamic Perspectives • Freud’s psychoanalytic theory (unconscious motives and conflicts, and the methods people use to cope with sexual and aggressive urges) • Structure of personality • Id - Pleasure principle, demands immediate gratification and engages in primary-process thinking • Ego - Reality principle, seeking to delay gratification of the id’s urges until appropriate outlets can be found, thus mediating between the id and the external world • Superego – Morality, incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong (emerges around 3-5 years of age)
Psychodynamic Perspectives • Levels of awareness (the Iceberg) • Conscious: what you are aware of right now • Unconscious: things well below the surface that exert influence on your daily life • Preconscious: those things barely beneath consciousness that can be easily recalled
Psychodynamic Perspectives • Freud’s psychoanalytic theory • Freud saw behavior as the outcome of an ongoing series of internal conflicts between the id, ego, and superego • conflicts centering on sex and aggressive impulses having far reaching consequences • conflicts lead to anxiety • causes the ego to construct defense mechanisms, exercises in self-deception, as protection
Freud on Development:Psychosexual Stages • Freud believed that the foundation of personality is laid by the age of 5 • Sexual = physical pleasure • Psychosexual stages (each with a characteristic erotic focus and developmental challenge) • He proposed 5 psychosexual stages
Freud on Development:Psychosexual Stages • Fixation is a failure to move forward from one stage to another as expected. • Fixation can occur due to excessive gratification or frustration during a particular stage • leads to an overemphasis on the psychosexual needs prominent during the fixated stage in adulthood.
Freud on Development:Psychosexual Stages • Oral: Mouth, Weaning • Anal: anus, toilet training (hostility toward trainer) • Phallic: genitals, identify with adult role models • Oedipal; penis envy • Latency: none, social contracts • Genital: sexual intimacy, intimate relationships
Other Psychodynamic Theorists • Freud had many followers in the early 1900s. Many of these followers had theories of their own, but Freud was not willing to accept radical departures from psychoanalytic theory. • Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, founded their own brands of psychodynamic psychology
Other Psychodynamic Theorists • Carl Jung: Analytical Psychology • proposing that the unconscious mind is composed of two layers • Personal unconscious: houses material that is not within one’s conscious awareness because it has been repressed or forgotten • Collective unconscious: houses latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past • Archetypes: ancestral memories– emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning…the mandala. • Introversion/Extroversion: first to describe
Other Psychodynamic Theorists • Alfred Adler: Individual Psychology (argued that Freud had gone overboard with his focus on sexual conflict) • Striving for superiority: foremost source of human motivation • Compensation: everyone feels some inferiority and works to overcome it • Inferiority complex/overcompensation: People can also conceal, even from themselves, their feelings of inferiority, resulting in overcompensation, seeking status and power, and flaunting their success to cover up underlying inferiority • Birth order: first to stress the possible importance
Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives • Pros • The unconscious • The role of internal conflict • The importance of early childhood experiences • Cons • Poor testability • Inadequate empirical base • Sexist views
Behavioral Perspectives • Skinner’s views • Skinner’s views on personality were similar to his views on all other human behavior; it is learned through conditioning. • He had little interest in unobservable cognitive processes and embraced a strong determinism • asserting that behavior is fully determined by environmental stimuli, and free will is but an illusion. • acquired through learning over the course of the lifespan
Figure 12.6 Personality development and operant conditioning
Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory • Argue that pure behaviorism does not take into account cognitive processes • Behavior is largely shaped through learning, but humans are not passive (we make our own decisions) • Reciprocal Determinism: internal mental events, external environmental conditions, and overt behaviors all influence one another • We use observational learning to learn from “models” • Self-efficacy influences personality and how well you perform
Mischel and the Person-Situation Controversy • Focuses on how the situational factors govern behavior • People look at the possible outcomes to choose a behavior • Does away with the personality consistency component • Found that, when looking at small chunks of behavior are examined, there is a variety, but when large chunks of life are examined there is consistency
Behavioral Perspectives • Mischel’s views • The person-situation controversy If you believe your job will pay off, you will be more industrious.
Evaluating Behavioral Perspectives • Pros • Based on rigorous research • Insights into effects of learning and environmental factors • Cons • Over-dependence on animal research • Fragmented view of personality (carving up personality into stimulus-response relations with no unifying structural concepts tying these pieces together) • Dehumanizing views (free will is an illusion)
Humanistic Perspectives • Humanistic Perspectives • Emphasize the unique qualities of humans (freedom, potential for growth, etc.) • Very optimistic view • A person’s subjective view of the world is more important than objective reality • How you think you will behave will affect your behavior • Phenomenological Approach: you must look at personal subjective experiences to understand behavior • Quote on 487
Humanistic Perspectives • Carl Rogers: Person Centered Therapy • Viewed personality structure in terms of “self-concept” or the beliefs about ones own behavior, nature, and qualities • Individuals are aware, it is not unconscious • Most people distort reality to promote favorable self-concepts • Incongruence is the degree of difference b/w self-concept and actual experience (if it is accurate, it is congruent)
Humanistic Perspectives • Carl Rogers: Person Centered (cont.) • Concerned with how childhood experiences promote cong. or incong. • Conditional Parental Love (love based on good behavior or living up to expectations) • Children block out experiences that make them feel unworthy of love • Unconditional Love: • Less need to block out exp. B/c children are assured they are worthy of love
Humanistic Perspectives • Carl Rogers: Person Centered (cont.) • Experiences that threaten personal views are principle cause of anxiety • To avoid anxiety, we behave defensively • Ignore, deny, twist reality • How would that work for someone who is told their outfit is ugly?
Figure 12.10 Rogers’s view of personality development and dynamics
Humanistic Perspectives • Abraham Maslow: proposed that human motives are organized into a hierarchy of needs – a systematic arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused • Like Rogers, Maslow argued that humans have an innate drive toward personal growth, culminating in the need for self-actualization, which is the need to fulfill one’s potential (the highest need in his hierarchy). “What a man can be, he must be.”
Humanistic Perspectives • The healthy personality: • open and spontaneous and sensitive to others’ needs, • marked by continued personal growth, • not dependent on others for approval, • comfortable in solitude • thrive at work (good sense of humor) • Maslow found that these people are tuned in to reality and at peace with themselves, making for rewarding interpersonal relations.
Humanistic Perspectives • Self-actualization theory: the need to fulfill one’s potential
Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives • Humanistic theories are credited with highlighting the importance of a person’s subjective view of reality. They are also applauded for focusing attention on the issue of what constitutes a healthy personality. • They are criticized for lacking a strong research base, poor testability, and what may be an overly optimistic view of human nature (Maslow had a hard time finding live people who had self-actualized).
Biological Perspectives • Biological theories stress the genetic origins of personality • He believes that genes influence physiological functioning, thereby influencing ease of acquiring conditioned responses. • Eysenk’s theory • 3 higher order traits • Extraversion: sociable, outgoing people • Neuroticism: anxious, tense, moody, low self-esteem • Psychoticism: egocentric, cold, antisocial • Determined by genes
Biological Perspectives • Eysenk (cont.) • The big three traits are a combination of a conglomeration of much smaller traits • Your maturation process makes it easier to be conditioned toward certain behaviors
Biological Perspectives • Based on twin studies, theorist say genetic factors exert considerable influence over personality • Is it nature or nurture? • Studies suggest it is more nature…
Biological Perspectives • Twin studies • Twin studies indicate that identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins in personality characteristics, with heritability estimates in the vicinity of 40%. • Interestingly, shared family environment does not lead to similar personality characteristics among siblings, leading some theorists to assert that parents matter very little in how their children develop.
Biological Perspectives • Some studies have suggested that there is a specific gene for novelty seeking, which involves being impulsive, exploratory, excitable, and extravagant. Evidence is, at this point, inconclusive. • Evolutionary analyses of personality suggest that certain traits and the ability to recognize them may contribute to reproductive fitness…a reproductive advantage
The evolutionary approach • Traits conducive to reproductive fitness • Natural selection has favored certain traits over human history and those traits become more apparent • Who will be a good member of my coalition, can I depend on, and share resources • Bond with others (extraversion • Cooperate (agreeableness) • Reliable (conscientious) • Innovative (open to experience) • Handle stress (low neuroticism)