Psychological Science, 3rd Edition Michael Gazzaniga Todd Heatherton Diane Halpern

1. Psychological Science, 3rd EditionMichael Gazzaniga Todd Heatherton Diane Halpern

2. Personality 13

3. Questions to Consider: How Have Psychologists Studied Personality? How Is Personality Assessed, and What Does It Predict? What Are the Biological Bases of Personality? How Do We Know Our Own Personalities?

4. How Have Psychologists Studied Personality? • Psychodynamic Theories Emphasize Unconscious and Dynamic Processes • Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Integrated Personal Experience • Type and Trait Approaches Describe Behavioral Dispositions • Personality Reflects Learning and Cognition

5. Learning Objectives List the major theorists and concepts associated with four general approaches to the study of personality.

6. Psychodynamic Theories Emphasize Unconscious and Dynamic Processes • Sigmund Freud developed one of the most influential theories of personality development by observing patients he treated • His underlying assumption was that unconscious forces, such as wishes and motives, influence behavior

7. Sigmund Freud theorized that mental activityoccurred in these three zones. He believedthat much of human behavior was influencedby unconscious processes.

8. Psychodynamic Theories Emphasize Unconscious and Dynamic Processes • There are three major components of Freud’s theory: • Topographical model • Conscious, unconscious, preconscious • Development of sexual instincts • Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital psychosexual stages

9. Psychodynamic Theories Emphasize Unconscious and Dynamic Processes • Structural model • Id, ego, superego • Defense mechanisms were described as strategies used by the ego to cope with the anxiety caused by conflicts between the id and the superego

10. Psychodynamic Theories Emphasize Unconscious and Dynamic Processes • Psychodynamic theory since Freud: • Neo-Freudians (Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney) all modified aspects of Freud’s original theory • Many later theorists rejected Freud’s emphasis on sexuality in favor of a focus on social interactions leading to object relations theory • Many psychologists have abandoned psychodynamic theories due to the lack of scientifically verifiable hypotheses

11. Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Integrated Personal Experience • Humanistic approaches to personality: • Emphasize subjective personal experience and belief systems • Propose that people seek to fulfill their human potential for personal growth through greater self-understanding • Self-actualization • At its core, humanism focuses on subjective human experience, or phenomenology, and views each person as inherently good

12. Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Integrated Personal Experience • The two most well-known humanistic psychologists are Maslow and Rogers • Abraham Maslow • Theory of motivation

13. Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Integrated Personal Experience • Carl Rogers • Advocated a client-centered approach • Focused on creating a warm, supportive, and accepting environment and dealing with clients’ problems and concerns as clients understood them • Recommended that parents provide unconditional positive regard to their children, thereby raising fully functional adults

14. Humanistic Approaches Emphasize Integrated Personal Experience • Only recently have psychologists begun using scientific methods to study the positive aspects of humanity • Seligman’s research into positive psychology • Broaden-and-build theory • Positive emotions prompt people to consider novel and creative solutions to their problems • May help resilient people cope effectively with setbacks or negative life experiences

16. Type and Trait Approaches Describe Behavioral Dispositions • Typologies: • Discrete categories in which we place people • Traits: • Behavioral dispositions that endure over time and across situations

17. Type and Trait Approaches Describe Behavioral Dispositions • Implicit personality theory: • Personality characteristics go together • Allowing for predictions about people on the basis of minimal evidence • Estimates of the number of traits have ranged from almost 18,000 to the 16 Cattell identified through factor analysis

18. Type and Trait Approaches Describe Behavioral Dispositions • Eysenck’s hierarchical model: • The specific response level • Observed behaviors • The habitual response level • Behaviors observed on several occasions • Traits • Eysenck proposed three superordinate traits: • Introversion-extraversion, emotional stability, and psychoticism (or constraint)

19. Extraversion is asuperordinate trait made up of sociability,dominance, assertiveness, activity, and liveliness. Each ofthese subordinate traits is madeup of habitual and specific responses.

20. Type and Trait Approaches Describe Behavioral Dispositions • The Big Five or Five Factor Model: • Five basic personality traits: • Openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism • Significant evidence supports the five factor model • Including some predictive studies and cross-cultural studies

21. The acronym OCEAN is a good wayto remember these terms.

22. Personality Reflects Learning and Cognition • Early learning theorists: • B. F. Skinner • Viewed personality as result of the individual’s history of reinforcement • Dissatisfaction with this view led to Kelly’s personal construct theory: • Individuals develop personal theories about the world

23. Personality Reflects Learning and Cognition • Julian Rotter: • Behavior is a function of people’s expectancies for reinforcement, as well as the value they ascribe to the reinforcer • Locus of control (internal vs. external) • Describes people’s beliefs about the success of their efforts

24. Personality Reflects Learning and Cognition • Incorporation of cognition into learning theories led to the development of cognitive-social theories of personality • Emphasize how personal beliefs, expectancies, and interpretations of social situations shape behavior and personality • Albert Bandura • Self-efficacy

25. Personality Reflects Learning and Cognition • Walter Mischel’s cognitive-affective personality system (CAPS) • People’s responses in a given situation are influenced by: • How they encode or perceive the situation • Their affective (emotional) response to the situation • The skills and competencies they have to deal with challenges • Their anticipation of the outcomes that their behavior will produce

26. Mischel andShoda believed personality traits alone couldnot predict behavior.

27. Personality Reflects Learning and Cognition • Personality models such as CAPS emphasize self-regulatory capacities • People set personal goals, evaluate their progress, and adjust their ongoing behavior in pursuit of those goals

28. How Is Personality Assessed, and What Does It Predict? • Personality Refers to Both Unique and Common Characteristics • Researchers Use Objective and Projective Methods to Assess Personality • Observers Show Accuracy in Trait Judgments • People Sometimes Are Inconsistent • Behavior Is Influenced by the Interaction of Personality and Situations • There Are Cultural and Gender Differences in Personality

29. Learning Objectives Identify strengths and limitations of different methods of personality assessment. Explain why personality does not always predict behavior.

30. Personality Refers to Both Unique and Common Characteristics • Allport divided the study of personality into two types of approaches: • Idiographic • Person centered • Nomothetic • Focused on traits

31. Personality Refers to Both Unique and Common Characteristics • Idiographic theorists are more likely to use case studies or the narrative approach • Nomothetic theorists tend to compare people by using common trait measures • Questionnaires or other similar methods

32. Objective and Projective Methods to Assess Personality • Choice of which personality measures to use tends to be determined by theoretical orientation of the user

33. Objective and Projective Methods to Assess Personality • Projective techniques: • Rorschach Inkblot Test and the TAT • Reflect psychodynamic theories as • Based on the assumption they people will project their unconscious processes onto the ambiguous stimuli (projective hypothesis)

34. Objective and Projective Methods to Assess Personality • Objective measures: • NEO Personality Inventory and the California Q Sort • Do not rest on the assumptions of psychodynamic theories • Consist of self-report questionnaires or direct observations of behavior

35. These are three of the cards participants sort when taking the Q-Sort assessment.

36. Observers Show Accuracy in Trait Judgements • Researchers have found that close acquaintances may be more accurate at predicting your behavior than you are • In one study, ratings of assertiveness and other traits made by friends predicted these traits in the lab better than did the person’s own ratings

37. People Sometimes Are Inconsistent • Situationism • Mischel proposed that behaviors are determined as much by situations as by personality traits • This affected the field for more than a decade and caused considerable rifts between: • Social psychologists, who tended to emphasize situational forces • Personality psychologists, who focused on individual dispositions

38. People Are Sometimes Inconsistent • The basic argument made by personality researchers in the person-situation debate is • The extents to which traits predict behavior depends on: • The centrality of the trait • The aggregation of behaviors over time • The type of trait being evaluated

39. Behavior Is Influenced by Personality and Situations • Personality dispositions are meaningful constructs that predict people’s behavior over time and across many circumstances • Yet people are also highly sensitive to social context, and most conform to situational norms

40. Behavior Is Influenced by Personality and Situations • Most trait theorists are interactionists • They believe that behavior is jointly determined by situations and underlying dispositions • Individuals choose many of the situations in which they find themselves (e.g., go to the party or stay home) • A reciprocal interaction occurs between the person and the environment • They simultaneously influence each other

41. There Are Cultural and Gender Differences in Personality • Studying cross-cultural differences is problematic: • Do the same questions have the same meaning? • Sampling • Accurate translation of measures

42. There Are Cultural and Gender Differences in Personality • More than 120 scientists conducted a careful investigation of personality differences across 56 nations: • From Argentina to Zimbabwe • Found support for the Big Five personality traits across all countries • Supports the argument that those traits are universal for humans

43. There Are Cultural and Gender Differences in Personality • Gender differences: • Women • More empathetic and agreeable than men • More neurotic and concerned about feelings • Men • More assertive • These differences are largest in North America and Europe • More equal opportunities and treatment • Smallest in Asian and African communities

44. A team of more than 120scientists investigated the Big Five personality traitsaround the world, from Argentina to Zimbabwe.

45. What Are the Biological Bases of Personality? • Animals Have Personalities • Personality Is Rooted in Genetics • Temperaments Are Evident in Infancy • Personality Is Linked to Specific Neurophysiological Mechanisms • Personality Is Adaptive • Critical Thinking Skill: Avoiding Single-Cause Explanations • Personality Traits Are Stable over Time

46. Learning Objectives Describe the causal links among genes, temperament, and personality traits. Recognize empirical findings supporting biological bases of personality.

47. What Are the Biological Bases of Personality? • A person’s genetic makeup may predispose certain traits or characteristics, but whether these genes are expressed depends on the unique circumstances that each child faces during development

48. Animals Have Personalities • Researchers have found that traits similar to the Big Five traits of extraversion, neuroticism, and agreeableness could be seen in most species • Sam Gosling and Oliver John • Openness to experience was found in approximately 50% of species • But only chimpanzees showed conscientiousness

50. Personality Is Rooted in Genetics • Nearly all personality traits have a genetic component • Genetic influence accounts for approximately half of the variance (40–60 percent) between individuals in personality traits