Chapter 14 Personality

1. Chapter 14 Personality

2. What is Personality? • Personality • an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting • four basic perspectives • Psychoanalytic • Trait • Humanistic • Social-cognitive

3. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • From Freud’s theory which proposes that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality

4. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Psychoanalysis • technique of treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions • Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality sought to explain what he observed during psychoanalysis

5. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Free Association • method of exploring the unconscious • person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

6. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Unconscious • Freud-a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories • Contemporary-information processing of which we are unaware • Preconscious • information that is not conscious, but is retrievable into conscious awareness

7. Personality Structure • Id • a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy • strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives • operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification

8. Personality Structure • Superego • the part of personality that presents internalized ideals • provides standards for judgement and for future aspirations

9. Personality Structure • Ego • the largely conscious, “executive” part of personality • mediates among the demands of the id, superego and ego • operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain

10. Ego Conscious mind Unconscious mind Superego Id Personality Structure • Freud’s idea of the mind’s structure

11. Personality Development • Psychosexual Stages • the childhood stages of development during which the pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones • Oedipus Complex • a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father

12. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages Stage Focus Oral Pleasure centers on the mouth-- (0-18 months) sucking, biting, chewing Anal Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder (18-36 months) elimination; coping with demands for control Phallic Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with (3-6 years) incestuous sexual feelings Latency Dormant sexual feelings (6 to puberty) Genital Maturation of sexual interests (puberty on) Personality Development

13. Personality Development • Identification • the process by which children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos • Gender Identity • one’s sense of being male or female • Fixation • a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

14. Defense Mechanisms • Defense Mechanisms • the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality • Repression • the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness

15. Defense Mechanisms • Regression • defense mechanism in which an individual retreats, when faced with anxiety, to a more infantile psychosexual stage where some psychic energy remains fixated

16. Defense Mechanisms • Reaction Formation • defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites • people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings

17. Defense Mechanisms • Projection • defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others • Rationalization • defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions

18. Defense Mechanisms • Displacement • defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person • as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet

19. Neo-Freudians • Alfred Adler • importance of childhood social tension • Karen Horney • sought to balance Freud’s masculine biases • Carl Jung • emphasized the collective unconscious • concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history

20. Assessing the Unconscious • Projective Test • a personality test, such as the Rorschach or TAT, that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) • a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes

21. Assessing the Unconscious • Rorschach Inkblot Test • the most widely used projective test • a set of 10 inkblots designed by Hermann Rorschach • seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots

22. Assessing the Unconscious- Rorschach

23. The Trait Perspective • Trait • a characteristic pattern of behavior • a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports • Personality Inventory • a questionnaire (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors • used to assess selected personality traits

24. UNSTABLE Moody Touchy Anxious Restless Rigid Aggressive Sober Excitable Pessimistic Changeable Reserved Impulsive Unsociable Optimistic Quiet Active choleric melancholic INTROVERTED EXTRAVERTED Passive phlegmatic sanguine Sociable Careful Outgoing Thoughtful Talkative Peaceful Responsive Controlled Easygoing Reliable Lively Even-tempered Carefree Calm Leadership STABLE The Trait Perspective • Hans and Sybil Eysenck use two primary personality factors as axes for describing personality variation

25. The Trait Perspective • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) • the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests • originally developed to identify emotional disorders (still considered its most appropriate use) • now used for many other screening purposes

26. Evaluating the Trait Perspective • Situational influences on behavior are important to consider • People can fake desirable responses on self-report measures of personality • Averaging behavior across situations seems to indicate that people do have distinct personality traits

27. Humanistic Perspective • Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) • studied self-actualization processes of productive and healthy people (e.g., Lincoln) • Self-Actualization • the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved • the motivation to fulfill one’s potential

28. Humanistic Perspective • Carl Rogers (1902-1987) • focused on growth and fulfillment of individuals • requires three conditions: • genuineness • acceptance - unconditional positive regard • empathy • Unconditional Positive Regard • an attitude of total acceptance toward another person

29. Humanistic Perspective • Self-Concept • all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in an answer to the question, “Who am I?’ • Self-Esteem • one’s feelings of high or low self-worth • Self-Serving Bias • a readiness to perceive oneself favorably

30. Humanistic Perspective • Individualism • giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications • Collectivism • giving priority to the goals of one’s group (often one’s extended family or work group) and defining one’s identity accordingly

31. Value Contrasts Between Individualism and Collectivism Concept Individualism Collectivism Self Independent Interdependent (identity from individual traits) identity from belonging) Life task Discover and express one’s uniqueness Maintain connections, fit in What matters Me--personal achievement and fulfillment; We--group goals and solidarity; rights and liberties social responsibilities and relationships Coping method Change reality Accommodate to reality Morality Defined by individuals Defined by social networks (self-based) (duty-based) Relationships Many, often temporary or casual; Few, close and enduring; confrontation acceptable harmony valued Attributing behavior Behavior reflects one’s personality Behavior reflects social norms and attitudes and roles Humanistic Perspective

32. Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective • Concepts like self-actualization are vague • Emphasis on self may promote self-indulgence and lack of concern for others • Theory does not address reality of human capacity for evil • Theory has impacted popular ideas on child-rearing, education, management, etc.

33. Internal personal/ cognitive factors (I think about /like volleyball) Environmental factors (volleyball playing friends) Behavior (Ill play volleyball) Social-Cognitive Perspective • Reciprocal Determinism • the interacting influences between personality, thinking, and environmental factors

34. Reciprocal Determinism • For example: Playing basketball (a behavior) leads to thinking about basketball, which in turn may lead to playing basketball. Seeing a basketball (in the environment) leads to thinking about basketball, which in turn increases the chances of noticing people playing basketball. Playing basketball may lead to environmental rewards, which in turn reinforce basketball playing. All three elements—behavior, thought, and environment—take turns influencing or being influenced by each other.

35. Social-Cognitive Perspective • Personal Control • our sense of controlling our environments rather than feeling helpless • External Locus of Control • the perception that chance or outside forces beyond one’s personal control determine one’s fate

36. Social-Cognitive Perspective • Internal Locus of Control • the perception that one controls one’s own fate • Learned Helplessness • the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events

37. Social-Cognitive Perspective • Built from research on learning and cognition • Fails to consider unconscious motives and individual disposition • Today, cognitive-behavioral theory is perhaps predominant psychological approach to explaining human behavior

38. The Four Perspectives on Personality Perspective Behavior Springs From Assessment Techniques Evaluation Psychoanalytic Unconscious conflicts Projective tests aimed at A speculative, hard-to-test between pleasure-seeking revealing unconscious theory with enormous cul- impulses and social restraints motivations tural impact Trait Expressing biologically (a)Personality inventories A descriptive approach crit- influenced dispositions, such that assess the strengths icized as sometimes under- as extraversion or introversion of different traits estimating the variability (b)Peer ratings of behavior of behavior from situation patterns to situation Humanistic Processing conscious feelings (a)Questionnaire A humane theory that about oneself in the light of assessments reinvigorated contemporary one’s experiences (b)Empathic interviews interest in the self; criticized as subjective and sometimes naively self-centered and optimistic Social-cognitive Reciprocal influences between (a)Questionnaire assessments Art interactive theory that in- people and their situation, of people’s feelings of control tegrates research on learning, colored by perceptions of (b) Observations of people’s cognition, and social behavior, control behavior in particular criticized as underestimating situations the importance of emotions and enduring traits Personality- Summary