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Personality

Personality. Myers Chapter 13. Personality. An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Issues in Personality Theory. Free will or determinism? Nature or nurture? Past, present, or future? Uniqueness or universality? Equilibrium or growth?

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Personality

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  1. Personality Myers Chapter 13

  2. Personality • An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting

  3. Issues in Personality Theory • Free will or determinism? • Nature or nurture? • Past, present, or future? • Uniqueness or universality? • Equilibrium or growth? • Optimism or pessimism?

  4. Freud • Found that nervous disorders often made no neurological sense • Concluded disorders had psychological causes - “discovered” the unconscious • Thought hypnosis was the door to the unconscious • Patients had uneven capacity

  5. Freud • Free association: method of exploring the unconscious • Patient relaxes and says whatever comes to mind

  6. Freud • Psychoanalysis • Freud’s theory of personality • Attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts • The techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

  7. Freud • Unconscious • Freud: a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories • Modern: information processing of which we are unaware

  8. Freud - Personality Structure

  9. Freud - Psychosexual Stages of Development • Oral (0-18 months): pleasure centers on the mouth • Anal (18-36 months): pleasure centers on the bowel/bladder elimination

  10. Freud - Psychosexual Stages of Development • Phallic (3-6 years): pleasure centers on the genitals • Oedipus complex: unconscious sexual desires toward the mother & hatred of the father • Cope with threatening feelings through identification with the father

  11. Freud - Psychosexual Stages of Development • Latency (6 years to puberty): sexuality is dormant • Genital (puberty +): sexual interests mature

  12. Defense Mechanisms • The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality • Repression • Regression • Reaction formation • Projection • Rationalization • Displacement • Denial

  13. Defense Mechanisms • Repression • Underlies all other defense mechanisms • Banishes anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness • Can be incomplete • Slips of the tongue • Dream symbols

  14. Defense Mechanisms • Regression • Retreat to an earlier, more infantile stage of development • A child sucking their thumb on the first day of second grade

  15. Defense Mechanisms • Reaction formation • The ego unconsciously makes unacceptable impulses look like their opposites • A young man who is very interested in but unsuccessful with women acts like a “woman hater”

  16. Defense Mechanisms • Projection • One attributes threatening impulses to others • The spouse who is cheating makes accusations that their faithful partner is being flirtatious

  17. Defense Mechanisms • Rationalization • One offers self-justifying explanations for behavior • The alcoholic who insists they don’t enjoy drinking, but says she feels obliged to have a drink “just to be social”

  18. Defense Mechanisms • Displacement • One diverts impulses to a more acceptable object or person • “Kicking the dog”

  19. Defense Mechanisms • Denial • One refuses to believe or even perceive painful realities • Ignoring mounting credit card debt

  20. Neo-Freudians • Accepted Freud’s basic ideas • Personality structures (id, ego, superego) • Importance of the unconscious • Shaping of personality in children • Dynamics of anxiety and defense mechanisms

  21. Neo-Freudians • Differed from Freud • More emphasis on the conscious mind • Believed we have more positive motives than just sex and aggression

  22. Carl Jung • Neo-Freudian • Agreed with Freud’s emphasis on the powerful influence of the unconscious • Collective unconscious: a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history

  23. Contemporary Psychodynamic Theorists & Therapists • Reject the notion that sex is the basis of personality • Agree with Freud • Much of our mental life is unconscious • We struggle with inner conflicts • Childhood shapes our personalities and attachment styles

  24. Methods for Accessing the Unconscious • Projective tests: a personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) • Rorschach inkblot test

  25. Thematic Apperception Test

  26. Rorschach Inkblot Test • Participant is presented with a number of inkblots and asked to describe what the blot might be or what it brings to mind

  27. False consensus effect • The tendency to overestimate the extent to which others share our beliefs and behaviors • Similar to Freud’s idea of projection

  28. Critique of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis • Many ideas contradicted by current research • Theory offers after-the-fact explanations • Recent theories question • Overriding importance of childhood experiences • Degree of parental influence • Timing of gender-identity formation • Significance of childhood sexuality • Existence of hidden content in dreams

  29. Critique of Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis • Does repression occur? • Cognitive psychologists: “Freudian slips” are a natural by-product of how we process information and direct action

  30. The Humanistic Perspective • Focused on the ways “healthy” people strive for self-determination and self-realization • Rebelled against Freud and behaviorism • Emphasized importance of • Current environmental influences on our growth potential • Having our needs for love and acceptance satisfied

  31. The Humanistic Perspective • Abraham Maslow • Hierarchy of needs • Self-actualization: the motivation to fulfill one’s potential • Self-transcendence: the desire to find meaning and purpose beyond the self

  32. The Humanistic Perspective • Carl Rogers • Agreed with Maslow - we are basically good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies • Nurture growth in others • Be genuine, empathic, and accepting • Unconditional positive regard

  33. The Humanistic Perspective • Self concept: all the thoughts and feelings we have in response to “Who am I?” • Maslow and Rogers both saw as central feature of personality • Ideal self: we feel dissatisfied and unhappy if we fall short (Rogers)

  34. The Humanistic Perspective • Assessed personality using self-report questionnaires • Compare your actual self to your ideal self • Interviews and intimate conversations

  35. The Humanistic Perspective • Critiques • Vague and subjective concepts • Reflections of theorists values rather than descriptions • Very individualistic • Promotes selfishness, self-indulgence, erosion of moral restraints • Fails to appreciate human capacity for evil • Naïve optimism leads to social problems

  36. The Trait Perspective • Attempt to describe personality in terms of stable and enduring behavior patterns, or dispositions to feel or act • Dominant traits and their associated characteristics describe personality “types”

  37. The Trait Perspective • WWI Personal Data Sheet (1917) • Identify emotionally disturbed recruits • Several questions about symptoms

  38. The Trait Perspective • Factor analysis: a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of behaviors that tend to appear together • Simultaneously measure correlations among a group variables

  39. Hans J. Eysenck

  40. MMPI • Minnesota Multi-Phasic Personality Inventory • Empirically derived • Not valid in all situations

  41. The Big Five • Five distinct personality dimensions • Conscientiousness • Agreeableness • Neuroticism (emotional stability vs. instability) • Openness • Extraversion

  42. The Big Five

  43. Person-Situation Controversy • Traits persist over time but human behavior varies widely from situation to situation • Traits are weak predictors of behavior • Trait perspective: despite variations, a person’s average behavior across situations is consistent

  44. Person-Situation Controversy

  45. Person-Situation Controversy • Traits are socially significant • Health • Thinking • Job performance • Predict mortality, divorce, & occupational attainment • >Cognitive ability or socio-economic status

  46. Person-Situation Controversy • Behaviors can be inconsistent from situation to situation • Personality tests are weak predictors of behaviors • Knowing someone’s extraversion score will not tell us how sociable they will be in any given situation

  47. Person-Situation Controversy • People’s average behavior across many situations is predictable • More consistent in casual/informal situations • We have a hard time faking a different personality

  48. Expressive Styles • Our animation, manner of speaking, and gestures • Impressively consistent • Individual differences judged in a matter of seconds • The power of first impression

  49. Social-Cognitive Perspective • Applies principles of learning, cognition, and social behavior to the understanding of personality

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