Personality Studies and Assessment

1. Personality Studies and Assessment

2. The Marshmallow Experiment • How does this experiment relate to personality? • What does personality have to do with a person’s success?

3. The Big 5 Read and VERBALLY summarize the five-factor model of personality on pgs. 577-580 by answering the following questions. How do we know this model is accurate in describing personality traits? What are the different kinds of personality (focus on key words within each category)? Self-select your personality type. Why did you choose the personality that you did? You may choose a primary type and a secondary type. You have 15 minutes to complete this VERBAL task. No more than 3 to a group!

4. Defining Personality:Consistency and Distinctiveness • Personality Traits • Dispositions and dimensions • The Five-Factor Model • Extraversion • Neuroticism • Openness to experience • Agreeableness • Conscientiousness Which of these categories connect to traits of the “successful” children that you saw in the Marshmallow Experiment videos? Be sure to explain your conclusions.

5. (Spiral) Famous Studies on Personality • Answer the questions below for each study • #24: Are You the Master of Your Fate? • #25: Racing Against Your Heart • #26: The One; The Many • How do you think this experiment relates to the study of personality? Use the labels from the Five Factor Model to help explain your thoughts. • How was this experiment set up? • What do the results of this experiment indicate about personality? • What have your personal experiences been with the concepts portrayed in this study?

6. (Spiral) Personality Perspectives • Cover each personality perspective by (a)reading about it in your book and (b)writing a thorough description of it including the important bolded and otherwise important words associated with it. • #1 Psychodynamic beginning pg. 557 • Freud, personality structure, psychosexual stages, and defense mechanisms • The contributions of the Neofreudians (Adler, Horney, Jung) • #2 Humanistic beginning pg. 570 • Know the contributions of Maslow, and Rogers (“the self”) • #3 Trait beginning pg. 574 (including factor analysis) • #4 Biological beginning pg. 576 • #5 Situational beginning pg. 580 • #6 Social-Cognitive beginning pg. 583 • Know the contribution of Albert Bandura • Reciprocal Determinism (Influences) • Personal Control, Internal vs External Locus of Control

7. #1 Freud’s Levels of Awareness • Grew out of Freud’s decades of interactions with his clients. • This theory focuses on the influence of • early childhood experiences • unconscious motives and conflicts • the methods people use to cope with sexual and aggressive urges • Levels of awareness- THIS WAS THE BIG DISCOVERY! • Conscious: whatever one is aware of • Preconscious: material just beneath the surface of awareness that can easily be retrieved EX. Your middle name, what you ate for dinner last night, etc. • Unconscious: thoughts, memories, and desires well below the surface of the conscious that greatly impact behavior

8. #1 Psychodynamic Perspectives: We Begin with Freud • Freud’s psychoanalytic theory • Structure of personality • Id - Pleasure principle. Lives in unconscious. • Ego - Reality principle (delays the id’s urge for gratification until an appropriate outlet can be found). Lives in all levels on consciousness. • Superego – Morality principle. Lives in pre-conscious and conscious.

9. #1 Psychodynamic Perspectives: We Begin with Freud • Freud’s psychoanalytic theory • Internal Conflict Among the Id, Ego, and Superego • ID: Sex and Aggression- two impulses controlled by the id • EGO: Anxiety- (1) fear that the id will get out of control (2) fear that superego will get out of control and make you feel guilty about real or imagined transgressions • SUPEREGO: Defense Mechanisms- a technique used to satisfy the superego and control the id; unconscious reactions that protect a person from anxiety and guilt • EX. Defense Mechanisms are rationalization, repression, projection, displacement, etc.

10. Ego Superego Id

11. Intro to Defense Mechanisms

12. #1 A Focus on Defense Mechanisms • Focus on defense mechanisms. Take 3 of these defense mechanisms and verbally describe a situation in a book or movie wherein a character uses them: • Repression: • Regression: • Displacement: • Reaction Formation: • Projection: • Denial: • Rationalization: • Sublimation: • Identification: • Fixation: • Movie and Book Suggestions: • Emperor’s New Groove • Monsters, Inc. • The Soloist • The Blind Side • Harry Potter Series • The Kite Runner • Into Thin Air • Night • The Odyssey • Oedipus • Antigone • Hamlet

13. #1 Carl Jung’s Personality Theory: Another Neofreudian • Freud wouldn't accept any variations on his personality theory. • Carl Jung: Analytical Psychology: the unconscious mind is composed of two layers • Personal and collective unconscious: • 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: emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning. EX: symbols in dreams, culture, and religions like the circle • Other of Jung’s Ideas • Introversion/Extroversion • Jung was the first to describe the introverted (inner-directed) and extraverted (outer-directed) personality types.

14. #1 Alfred Adler’s Personality Theory: Another Neofreudian • Some psychologists thought that Freud had gone overboard with his focus on sexual conflict. Ya think? • Alfred Adler: Individual Psychology • Striving for superiority, not sex, is the foremost source of human motivation. • Compensation is feeling inferior and striving to overcome this feeling of inadequacy. • Inferiority complex/overcompensation results when feelings are excessive and people try to cover them up. People seek power, the appearance of wealth, and brag for this reason. These phenomenon begin in early childhood. • Birth order is also a factor that governs personality. • First-borns: rebellious • Only children: spoiled

15. #1 Karen Horney: Another Neofreudian • Worked closely with Adler. Childhood social, not sexual, tensions govern personality formation. • Anxiety caused by a child’s helplessness, which triggers desire for love and security. • Many females are born in male-dominated societies wherein they may be limited or oppressed due to their sex. • This experience leads many women to develop a masculinity complex, originating from feelings of inferiority, as well as frustration at the disparity between sexes. • Horney believed that a girl child’s familial interactions also played a role in how strongly the complex would manifest itself; if a female is intimidated by her own mother or disappointed by her father or brother, she may develop a disdain for the female sex - herself included

16. #1 Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives • Pros- Groundbreaking insights on • The unconscious • The role of internal conflict • The importance of early childhood experiences • Cons • Poor testability • Inadequate empirical base • Sexist views (male-centered)

17. #2 Humanistic Perspective: Divide your paper into three columns. Column #2: Descriptions of Key People and Terms Column #3: Examples and drawings Column #1: Key People and Terms: Carl Rogers self-concept unconditional regard congruence Abraham Maslow hierarchy of needs Self-actualization

18. #2 Humanistic Perspectives on Personality • Humanism emerged in the 1950’s as a backlash against the dehumanizing views of psychoanalysts and behaviorists. • Humanism emphasizes the unique qualities of humans, especially their freedom and their potential for personal growth.

19. #2 Humanistic Perspectives on Personality • Carl Rogers • Person Centered Theory • Self-concept (or “Self”)= a person’s overall view of him/herself • Self-concept is subjective, so it doesn’t necessarily represent reality • Conditional/unconditional positive regard from parents • Conditional regardcauses incongruence (disparity between self-concept and reality) • Unconditional regard causes congruence (person’s self-concept representative of reality) • Incongruence produces anxiety at the discrepancy between their actual and ideal selves, so people often lie, willfully misunderstand, or reinterpret reality to conform to their self-concept. Figure 12.9 Rogers’s view of personality structure

20. Figure 12.10 Rogers’s view of personality development and dynamics

21. #2 Abraham Maslow:Another Humanist • Self-actualization theory: people have an innate drive toward personal growth, and self-actualization is the highest level • Hierarchy of needs: human needs are prioritized into a hierarchy; most basic needs at the bottom, more abstract needs near the top. • “The healthy personality” exists in self-actualizing people who are continually growing personally

22. Figure 12.12 Maslow’s view of the healthy personality “What a man can be, he must be.” -Maslow Figure 12.11 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

23. #2 Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives • Pros • highlight the importance of a person’s subjective view of reality • focus attention on the issue of what constitutes a healthy personality • Cons • lacking a strong research base and have poor testability • an overly optimistic view of human nature (Maslow had a hard time finding live people who had self-actualized).

24. #3 Trait Psychology: The Advent of Modern Personality Testing • Trait: a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self-report inventories and peer reports. • Gordon Allport: 1919; was the first to define personality in terms of identifiable behavioral patterns, or traits. Less concerned (unlike Freud) with explaining them and more concerned with describing them • Kathleen Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers: 1987; wanted to describe important personality differences. Sorted people into Jung’s personality types based on their responses to 126 questions. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is still taken today on a scale of millions of people per year for counseling, leadership training, and work-team development.

25. Factor Analysis: a statistical procedure that has been used to identify clusters of test items that tap basic components of intelligence (such as spatial ability or verbal skill) • Also applied to personality testing. • Example: People who describe themselves as outgoing also tend to say that they like excitement and practical jokes and dislike quiet reading. This is a statically correlated cluster of behaviors that reflects a basic factor, or trait, called extraversion Developed by Hans and Sybil Eysenck in 1963. Two dimensions of personality are the introverted-extraverted scale and the stable-unstable axis. #3 Trait Ctd.

26. #4 Biological PerspectivesIt started with Eysenck . . . • Eysenck’s theory • Traits (study of traits=factor analysis) • Role of Genes • Temperament (inborn tendencies toward personality) can be characterized along three genetically-determined dimensions. • Competes with and correlates to Costa’s and McCrea’s Big 5. • 3 higher order traits • Extraversion-introversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism • Believes that genes influence nervous system reactivity, thereby influencing ease of acquiring conditioned responses such as “reacting.”

27. #4 Hans Eysenck Ctd. • (Note: these traits don’t mean that the person who possesses them is “neurotic,” etc., only that they have such tendencies) • extraversion-introversion (1947) • neuroticism (1947) • psychoticism (1970’s) Tendencies We Inherit • Extraversion (sociable, assertive, active, lively), neuroticism (anxious, tense, moody, low self-esteem), and psychoticism (egocentric, impulsive, cold, antisocial). • Extroverted people have an under-reactive nervous systems, so they can blow things off easily and have a low degree of conditionability. • Introverts have an over-reactive nervous systems, so they intensely notice and scrutinize situations. They have a high degree of conditionability. • People with neurotic traits have nervous systems that cause emotional over-reactions to mildly fearful stimuli. • People with psychotic traits have less-reactive systems that produce recklessness, a disregard for common sense or conventions, and a degree of inappropriate emotional expression . Correlates with the Big 5’s conscientiousness and agreeableness

28. #4 Biological Perspectives Ctd. • Twin studies • More recent research • Identical twins raised apart were more similar than fraternal twins raised together, with heritability estimates in the vicinity of 40%. • 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. • Olson, 2005: Brain scans of extroverts • Wacker, 2006: Dopamine-related activity higher in extroverts and frontal lobe activity lower. • Jones and Grosling, 2003-2005: Even dog personalities are stable, indicating they have a genetic basis!

29. #4 Biological Perspectives Ctd. • The evolutionary approach • Evolutionary analyses of personality suggest that certain traits and the ability to recognize them may contribute to reproductive fitness…a reproductive advantage. i.e. certain personality traits lead to survival

30. Figure 12.14 Twin studies of personality

31. #4 Evaluating Biological Perspectives • Pros • Cons • Convincing evidence for genetic influence • Heritability estimates vary depending on sampling procedures and other considerations, and should only be used as ballpark figures. • The results of efforts to carve behavior into genetic and environmental components are artificial, as they interact in complicated ways. • No comprehensive biological theory

32. #5 Situation vs Trait • Mischel’s views • The person-situation controversy • An advocate of social learning theory • Focus on the extent to which situational factors govern behavior, instead of person variables.

33. #6 Social-Cognitive Perspectives: Behaviorists, Cognitionists and Social Psychologists. Myers Module 47 Instructions • Step #1: You will be assigned a term. • Step #2: Study the term. • Step #3: Write a 3 sentence summary that captures the ideas and concepts of what you studied. • Step #4: Then prepare to act out a situation in which the term would be applicable. • Key People and Concepts • B.F. Skinner and personality (Weiten, 490-491) • Personality Structure and determinism • Personality and Conditioning • Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory • Cognitive Processes • Reciprocal Determinism • Observational Learning • Self-Efficacy (Weiten, 494) • Julian Rotter’s internal vs external locus of control • Self-esteem and self-serving bias

34. #6 Follow Up Questions How stable is personality according to the behaviorists, cognitionists, and social psychologists? Do we have a say in our personality according to Skinner, Bandura, Mischel, and Rotter? Explain. How do we gain our personalities?

35. #6 Behavioral Perspectives • Skinner’s views • Conditioning and response tendencies • Personality is learned through conditioning. • Little interest in unobservable cognitive processes • Environmental determinism • Determinism: behavior is fully determined by environmental stimuli, and free will is an illusion. • Personality is based in response tendencies; acquired through learning over the course of the lifespan.

36. #6 Behavioral Perspectives Ctd. • Bandura’s views • Social leaning theory • Cognitive processes and reciprocal determinism • cognitive factors such as expectancies regulate learning. His concept of reciprocal determinism is the idea that internal mental events, external environmental events, and overt behavior all influence one another. • Observational learning • behavior is shaped by exposure to models, or a person whose behavior they observe. • Models

37. Figure 12.7 Bandura’s reciprocal conditioning

38. #6 Bandura’s Views Ctd. • Self-efficacy • self-efficacy: one’s belief about one’s ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes. • Self-efficacy (or lack thereof) influences which challenges people tackle and how well they perform. • Researchers believe that self-efficacy is fostered by parents who are stimulating and responsive to their children.

39. Figure 12.5 A behavioral view of personality

40. Figure 12.6 Personality development and operant conditioning

41. #6 Julian Rotter’s Loci of Control • Your personality depends upon your perception of control over your environment. • Personal control: the extent to which people perceive control over their environment rather than feeling helpless. • External locus of control: the perception that chance or outside forces beyond your perosnl control determine your fate. • Internal locus of control: the perception that you control your own fate. • Learned helplessness: the passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events (remember Seligman’s dogs with the harnesses?)

42. Put it together and what do you get? PERSONALITY

43. Personality Evaluation Techniques: • Instructions: Use the Internet to answer the following questions in your spiral about the three following widely-used personality assessments: • What was this test created to measure? • What kinds of traits does this test measure? • What kind of scale or other measuring options does this test used? • What are criticisms or disadvantages you can think of for this test? • Myers-Briggs http://www.myersbriggs.org/ • Start by clicking on “My MBTI Personality Type and then on “MBTI Basics.” Then explore the site and even go beyond it to find the answers to the other questions. • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI] http://psychcentral.com/lib/2011/minnesota-multiphasic-personality-inventory-mmpi/ • The Thematic Apperception Test [TAT]) • http://www.cps.nova.edu/~cpphelp/TAT.html • http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=8216&cn=18 • http://projectivetests.umwblogs.org/popular-tests/thematic-apperception-test-tat/ for a great student video!

44. So, testing mental abilities is a theoretically-attractive idea, but what interferes with the objectivity of psychometric tests?Let’s take a look at intelligence for a moment . . .

45. (Spiral) The Ify-ness of Testing Mental Abilities How has our view of how to test mental abilities changed over time? • Key Points • Galton • Binet and Simon • Terman • IQ formula • Achievement vs Aptitude • Wechsler Scales • IQ Stability • Principles of test construction: • Standardization • Reliability • Validity • Notes

46. The Evolution of Intelligence Testing • Sir Francis Galton (1869) • Hereditary Genius: proposed that success runs in families because intelligence is inherited. Based on Darwin • Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon (1905) • Commissioned by the French government in 1904 to study the problem of children of newcomers to Paris being able to learn from a regular school curriculum. Basis for special-ed. • Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale: designed to single out youngsters in need of special training and alternate curriculum. • Mental age: EX. a 4 year-old child with a mental age of 6 performed like the average 6 year-old on the test. • Binet was eager to help children through the testing, but he feared that the test would be used to label children and limit their opportunities (Gould, 1981)

47. Verbal 1. Rearrange the following letters to make a word and choose the category in which it fits. RAPETEKA A. cityB. fruitC. birdD. vegetable 2. Find the answer that best completes the analogy people : democracy :: wealthy : A. oligarchyB. oligopolyC. plutocracyD. timocracyE. autocracy Mathematical/Spatial 3. Which number should come next in this series? 25,24,22,19,15 A. 4B. 5C. 10D. 14 4. Which diagram results from folding the diagram on the left?

48. The Evolution of Intelligence Testing • Binet’s fears were realized soon after his death in 1911, when others adapted his tests for use as a numerical measure of inherited intelligence. • Lewis Terman (1916) • Adapted Binet’s tests and re-normed them to test California school children. • Developed the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, which doesn’t precisely measure IQ but something similar. • U.S. Government latched onto this idea and Terman promoted large-scale intelligence testing that would “ultimately result in curtailing the reproduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency.” • New tests evaluated newly arriving immigrants and World War I army recruits. Only certain % of immigrants from the “dumber countries” aloud to immigrate to U.S. • BUT IT DIDN’T END THERE (NEXT SLIDE)!

49. German psychologist William Stern derived this formula from these tests: • Intelligence Quotient (IQ) = MA/CA x 100 • divides a child’s mental (MA) age by chronological age (CA) and multiplying by 100…this made it possible to compare children of different ages.

50. Modern Tests of Mental Abilities Achievement tests (reflect what you have learned) vs aptitude tests (predict your ability to learn a new skill. Ex. SAT is a “thinly disguised intelligence test (Garner, 1999). Aptitude intended to predict how well you’ll do in college.