Exploring Personality Traits and Theories

1. Chapter 10 Personality

2. Module 10.1: Learning Objectives Overview of Personality • Define the term personality, and explain how personality differs from character and temperament • Explain what a personality trait is, and discuss the stability of personality traits • Define behavioral genetics, and describe the findings of the twin studies regarding the contribution of heredity and environment • Explain how some of the “amazing similarities” between twins can be explained, including the fallacy of positive instances. • Define the term personality type • Describe the characteristics of introverts and extroverts • Explain the advantages and disadvantages of using types to classify personalities

3. Module 10.1: Learning Objectives Overview of Personality (Continued) • Explain the terms self-concept and self-esteem and how they affect behavior and personal adjustment • Explain the differences in how Eastern and Western cultures view self-esteem • Define the term personality theory • Describe Eysenck’s dimensions of personality that were first recognized by the early Greeks • Explain the best way to judge a theory • Compare and contrast the trait theories, psychoanalytic theory, behavioristic and social learning theories, and the humanistic theory

4. Do You Have a Personality? • Everyone has a unique personality • Personality (Burger, 2008; Mischel, 2004) : • A person’s unique pattern of thinking, emotion, and behavior • The consistency of who you are, have been, and will become • Character: • Personal characteristics that have been judged or evaluated; desirable or undesirable qualities • Temperament: • Hereditary aspects of personality, including sensitivity, moods, irritability, and distractibility

5. Personality Traits • Stable qualities that a person shows in most situations • Behavioral Genetics: • The study of behavioral traits • Twin Studies: • Heredity is responsible for about 25 to 30 percent of the variation in many personality traits

8. Personality Types • People who have several traits in common • Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist who was a Freudian disciple, believed that we are one of two personality types: • Introvert: • Shy, self-centered person whose attention is focused inward • Extrovert: • Bold, outgoing person whose attention is directed outward

9. Understanding Personality • Self-Concept: • Your ideas, perceptions, and feelings about who you are • Self-Esteem: • How we evaluate ourselves • A positive evaluation of oneself • Based on accurate appraisal of strengths and weaknesses

10. Personality Theories: An Overview • Personality Theory: • System of concepts, assumptions, ideas, and principles proposed to explain personality • Includes four perspectives: • Trait Theories • Psychodynamic Theories • Behavioristic and Social Learning Theories • Humanistic Theories

11. Personality Theory Perspectives • Trait Theories: • Attempt to learn what traits make up personality and how they relate to actual behavior • Psychodynamic Theories: • Focus on the inner workings of personality, especially internal conflicts and struggles

12. Personality Theory Perspectives(Continued) • Behavioristic and Social Learning Theories: • Behavioristic theories focus on external environment and on the effects of conditioning and learning • Social learning theories attribute differences in personality to socialization, expectations, and mental processes • Humanistic Theories: • Focus on private, subjective experience and personal growth

13. Module 10.2: Learning Objectives Trait Theories • Explain how each of the trait theories describes personality and which theory is currently the most influenential: Rentfrow and Gosling’s musical personalities, Gordon Allport, Raymond Cattell, and the Five-Factor Model of Personality • Discuss unhealthy perfectionism and what is meant by trait-situation interaction

14. Gordon Allport (1961) and Traits • Allport identified several kinds of common personality traits • Common Traits: • Characteristics shared by most members of a culture • Individual Traits: • Define a person’s unique personal qualities

16. Gordon Allport (1961) and Traits • Allport made the distinction between cardinal, central, and secondary traits • Cardinal Traits: • So basic that all of a person’s activities can be traced back to the trait • Central Traits: • Core qualities of an individual’s personality • Secondary Traits: • Inconsistent or superficial aspects of a person

17. Raymond Cattell and Traits • Cattell measured surface traits of a large number of people in an attempt to determine whether a personality trait is central or secondary • Surface Traits: • Features that make up the visible areas of personality • Visible or observable traits • Source Traits: • Underlying characteristics of a personality • Each one is reflected in many surface traits

18. Cattell’s 16PF • Cattell used factor analysis to look for connections among traits • Factor Analysis: • A statistical technique used to correlate multiple measurements and identify underlying factors • Cattell also created 16PF, personality test • Gives a “picture” of an individual’s personality • Produces trait profile, or graph of person’s score on each trait

19. The “Big Five” Personality Factors (Cattell) • A system that identifies the five most basic dimensions of personality • Extroversion • Agreeableness • Conscientious • Neuroticism • Openness to experience

21. Traits and Situations • Trait-Situation Interactions: • When external circumstances influence the expression of personality traits

22. Personality Traits PLAY VIDEO

23. Module 10.3: Learning Objectives Psychoanalytic Theory • Discuss Freud’s view of personality development, including the three parts of the personality, neurotic and moral anxiety, the three levels of awareness, the psychosexual stages and fixations, and the positive and negative aspects of Freud’s theory

24. Psychoanalytic Theory and Sigmund Freud, M.D. • Freud was a Viennese physician who thought his patients’ problems were more emotional than physical • Freud began his work by using hypnosis and eventually switched to psychoanalysis • Freud had many followers, Jung and Adler, to name a couple • More than 100 years later, his work is still influential and very controversial

25. The Structure of Personality • Freud’s model portrays personality as a dynamic system directed by three mental structures: • Id • Ego • Superego

26. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: The Id • Innate biological instincts and urges • Self-serving, irrational, and totally unconscious • Works on Pleasure Principle: • Wishes to have its desires (pleasurable) satisfied NOW, without waiting and regardless of the consequences

27. Some Key Freudian Terms • The id acts as a well of energy for the entire psyche • Psyche: • Freud’s term for the personality; • Libido: • Energy which flows from the life instincts • Eros: • Life instincts • Thanatos: • Death instinct

28. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: The Ego • Executive, which directs id energies • Partially conscious and partially unconscious • Works on Reality Principle: • Delays action until it is practical and/or appropriate

29. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: The Superego • Judge or censor for thoughts and actions of the ego • Superego comes from our parents or caregivers • Guilt comes from the superego • Ego Ideal: • Second part of the superego that is a source of goals and aspirations • Pride comes from ego ideal

31. Freudian Dynamics of Personality and Anxieties • Ego is always caught in the middle of battles between superego’s desires for moral behavior and the id’s desires for immediate gratification • Neurotic Anxiety: • Caused by id impulses that the ego can barely control • Moral Anxiety: • Comes from threats of punishment from the superego

32. Freud: Levels of Awareness • Unconscious: • Holds repressed memories and emotions and the id’s instinctual drives • Conscious: • Everything you are aware of at a given moment (e.g., thoughts, perceptions, feelings) • Preconscious: • Material that can easily be brought into awareness

33. Freudian Personality Development • Develops in stages; everyone goes through same stages in same order • Majority of personality is formed before age six • At each stage, a part of the child’s body becomes the primary erogenous zone • Erogenous Zone: • Area on body capable of producing pleasure • Freud believed adult personalities could be traced to fixations in one or more of the stages • Fixation: • Unresolved conflict or emotional hang-up caused by overindulgence or frustration

34. Freudian Personality Development: Anal Stage • Ages 1–3 • Attention turns to process of elimination • Child can gain approval or express aggression by letting go or holding on • Ego develops • Harsh or lenient toilet training can make a child: • Anal Retentive: • Stubborn, stingy, orderly, and compulsively clean • Anal Expulsive: • Disorderly, messy, destructive, or cruel

35. Comments on Freud’s Theories • Freud was first to suggest that first years of life, feeding, toilet training, and early sexual experiences shaped adult personality • Among first to propose development via a series of stages • Freud’s theories are criticized because they are impossible to test scientifically

36. Module 10.4: Learning Objectives Behavioral and Social Learning Theories • Describe how behavioral theorists view personality • Explain how strict behaviorists differ from social learning theorists by discussing the behavioral concepts of situational determinants, habit, drive, cue, response, and reward • Explain the social learning concepts of psychological situation, expectancy, reinforcement value, self-efficacy, and self- reinforcement • Explain why Freud and the behaviorists both considered the first six years of life important to personality development • Define social reinforcement • Describe Dollard and Miller’s critical situations in development • Discuss the role of imitation and identification in personality development and how Western cultures encourage boys to engage in instrumental behaviors and girls, in expressive behaviors

37. Learning Theories • Behavioral Personality Theory: • Model of personality that emphasizes learning and observable behavior • Learning Theorist: • Rejects the idea that personality is made of traits • Believes that learning shapes our behavior and explains personality • Situational Determinants: • External causes of our behaviors

38. Dollard and Miller’s Theory • Propose that personality is made of habits • Habit: • Learned behavior pattern driven by drive, cue, response, and reward

39. Dollard and Miller’s Theory(Continued) • Drive: • Any stimulus strong enough to goad a person into action (like hunger) • Cue: • Signals from the environment that guide responses • Response: • Any behavior, either internal or observable; actions • Reward: • Positive reinforcement

40. Social Learning Theory (Rotter & Hochreich, 1975) • An explanation that combines learning principles, cognition, and the effects of social relationships • Psychological Situation: • How the person interprets or defines the situation • Expectancy: • Anticipation that making a response will lead to reinforcement • Reinforcement Value: • Subjectivevalue attached to a particular activity or reinforcer

41. More Social Learning Theory Concepts • Self-Efficacy (Bandura): • Capacity for producing a desired result • Self-Reinforcement: • Raising or rewarding yourself for having made a particular response • Social-Reinforcement: • Based on praise, attention, or approval from others

42. Personality and Gender • Identifying with a “masculine” or “feminine” personality • Identification and imitation are important for personality development and sex training • Identification: • Feeling emotionally connected to admired adults, especially those who provide love and care • Imitation: • Desire to act like an admired person • Instrumental and expressive behaviors

43. Module 10.5: Learning Objectives Humanistic Theories • Briefly explain how humanism differs from the Freudian and behaviorist viewpoints of personality • Discuss Maslow’s concept of self-actualization, the characteristics of self-actualizers, and ways to promote self-actualization • Describe the six human strengths that contribute to well-being and life satisfaction • Discuss Rogers’ views of a fully functioning individual • Define his concepts of the self, self-image, incongruence, being authentic, ideal self; conditions of worth, organismic valuing, positive self-regard, and unconditional positive regard • Explain how possible selves and the narrative approach can help to direct our future behavior

44. Humanism • Approach that focuses on human experience, problems, potentials, and ideals • Human Nature: • Traits, qualities, potentials, and behavior patterns most characteristic of humans • Free Choice: • Ability to choose that is NOT controlled by genetics, learning, or unconscious forces

45. More About Humanism • Personality is a product of the choices you make as well as subjective experience • Subjective Experience: • Private perceptions of reality • Self-Actualization (Maslow): • Process of fully developing personal potentials • Peak Experiences: • Temporary moments of self-actualization

46. Characteristics of Self-Actualizers (Maslow, 1954) • Efficient perceptions of reality • Comfortable acceptance of self, others, and nature • Spontaneity • Task centering • Autonomy

47. Characteristics of Self-Actualizers (Continued) • Continued freshness of appreciation • Fellowship with humanity • Profound interpersonal relationships • Comfort with solitude • Non-hostile sense of humor • Peak experiences

48. Positive Psychology (Seligman, 2003) • Scientifically studies positive personality traits that contribute to happiness and well-being

49. Positive Personality Traits • All of these contribute to well-being and to life satisfaction • Wisdom and knowledge • Courage • Humanity • Justice • Temperance • Transcendence

50. Carl Rogers’ Self Theory • Rogers emphasizes the capacity for inner peace and happiness • Fully Functioning Person: • Lives in harmony with his/her deepest feelings and impulses • Self: • Flexible and changing perception of one’s identity • Self-Image: • Total subjective perception of your body and personality