Essentials of Understanding Psychology

1. Essentials of Understanding Psychology 9th Edition By Robert Feldman PowerPoints by Kimberly Foreman Revised for 9th Ed by Cathleen Hunt

2. Chapter 10:Personality

3. MODULE 31: Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality • How do psychologists define and use the concept of personality? • What do the theories of Freud and his successors tell us about the structure and development of personality?

4. MODULE 31: Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality • Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality • Based on the idea that personality is motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have little awareness and over which they have no control

5. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Psychoanalytic Theory • Sigmund Freud • Unconscious • Part of the personality that contains memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts of which one is not aware • Motivates much of our behavior • Preconscious • Holds material easily brought to mind

6. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego • Id • Raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality • Holds primitive drives • Pleasure principle

7. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego • Ego • Strives to balance the desires of the id and the realities of the objective, outside world • Reality principle • “Executive” of personality

8. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, & Superego • Superego • Represents the rights and the wrongs of society as taught and modeled by one’s parents, teachers, and other significant individuals • Includes the conscience

9. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Individuals encounter conflicts between the demands of society and their own sexual urges • Failure to resolve conflicts at any stage can result in fixation

10. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Oral stage • Baby’s mouth is focal point of pleasure • Weaning is main conflict • Fixation could include: • Eating • Talking • Smoking • Other oral interests

11. Psychosexual Stages

12. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Anal stage • Major source of pleasure is the anal region • Children obtain pleasure from both retention and expulsion of feces • Fixation may result in: • Rigidity • Orderliness • Punctuality • Disorderliness • Sloppiness

13. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Phallic stage • Focus is on genitals • Oedipal conflict • Castration anxiety • Identification

14. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages • Latency period • Lasts until puberty • Sexual interests become dormant • Genital stage • Extends until death • Focus is on mature, adult sexuality (sexual intercourse)

15. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: Mapping the Unconscious Mind • Defense Mechanisms • Unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by concealing its source from themselves and others • Repression Figure 3 of Module 31

16. The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud • Jung’s Collective Unconscious • Common set of ideas, feelings, images, and symbols that we inherit from our relatives, the whole human race, and even nonhuman animal ancestors from the distant past • Archetypes • Universal symbolic representations of a particular person, object, or experience

17. The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud • Horney’s Neo-Freudian Perspective • Women’s issues • Suggested that personality develops in the context of social relationships and depends particularly on the relationship between parents and child

18. The Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts: Building on Freud • Adler and the Other Neo-Freudians • Alfred Adler • Proposed that the primary human motivation is a striving for superiority in a quest for self-improvement and perfection • Inferiority complex • Describes situations in which adults have not been able to overcome the feelings of inferiority they developed as children • Erik Erikson • Anna Freud

19. MODULE 32: Trait, Learning, Biological, Evolutionary, and Humanistic Approaches to Personality • What are the major aspects of trait, learning, biological and evolutionary, and humanistic approaches to personality?

20. Trait Approaches:Placing Labels on Personality • Trait Theory • Seeks to explain, in a straightforward way, the consistencies in individuals’ behavior • Traits • Consistent personality characteristics and behaviors displayed in different situations

21. Trait Approaches:Placing Labels on Personality • Allport’s Trait Theory: Identifying Basic Characteristics • Cardinal trait • Single characteristic that directs most of a person’s activities • Central trait • Major characteristics of an individual • Secondary trait • Affect behavior in fewer situations

22. Trait Approaches:Placing Labels on Personality • Cattell and Eysenck: Factoring Out Personality • Factor analysis • Statistical method of identifying associations among a large number of variables to reveal more general patterns • Factors • Combinations of traits • Cattell: • Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) • Eysenck: • 3 major dimensions: • Extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism

23. Trait Approaches:Placing Labels on Personality • The Big Five Personality Traits • Openness to experience • Conscientiousness • Extraversion • Agreeableness • Neuroticism Figure 2 of Module 32

24. Learning Approaches:We Are What We’ve Learned • B. F. Skinner’s Behaviorist Approach • States that personality is a collection of learned behavior patterns

25. Learning Approaches:We Are What We’ve Learned • How much consistency exists in personality? • Walter Mischel • Personality is variable from one situation to another • Situationism • Cognitive-affective processing system theory (CAPS) • People’s thoughts and emotions about themselves and the world determine how they view, and then react, in situations

26. Learning Approaches:We Are What We’ve Learned • Self-esteem • The component of personality that encompasses our positive and negative self-evaluations • Relationship harmony

27. Biological and Evolutionary Approaches: Are We Born with Personality? • Suggest that important components of personality are inherited • Temperament • Innate disposition

28. Humanistic Approaches:The Uniqueness of You • Emphasize people’s inherent goodness and their tendency to move towards higher levels of functioning • Carl Rogers • Self-actualization • Self-concepts • Unconditional positive regard • Conditional positive regard

29. Comparing Approaches to Personality

30. MODULE 33: Assessing Personality: Determining What Makes Us Distinctive • How can we most accurately assess personality? • What are the major types of personality measures?

31. Psychological Tests • Standard measures devised to assess behavior objectively • Reliability • The measurement consistency of a test • Validity • When a test measures what it is designed to measure

32. Self-Report Measures of Personality • Self-Report Measures • Asks people about a relatively small sample of their behavior • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory -2 (MMPI-2) • Test standardization

33. Projective Measures • Projective Personality Tests • People are shown ambiguous stimulus and asked to describe it or tell a story about it • Rorschach test • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

34. Behavioral Assessment • Direct measures of an individual’s behavior designed to describe characteristics indicative of personality

35. Assessing Personality Assessments • Understand what the test claims to measure • Base no decision only on the results of any one test • Remember that test results are not always accurate