Understanding Personality: A Comprehensive Exploration of Human Behavior

1. Myers’PSYCHOLOGY Personality Taken from:James A. McCubbin, PhD Clemson University Worth Publishers

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

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

4. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Psychoanalysis • Freud’s theory of personality that attributes our thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts • techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

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

6. The Psychoanalytic Perspective • Unconscious • according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories • contemporary viewpoint- information processing of which we are unaware

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

8. Personality Structure Superego • Superego • provides standards for judgement (the conscience) and for future aspirations • The voice of conscience that forces the ego to consider not only the real but the ideal, and focuses solely on how one ought to behave

9. Personality Structure • Ego • operates on the reality principle • the largely conscious, “executive” part of personality • mediates among the impulsive demands of the id, the restraining demands of the superego, and the real-life demands of the external world • seeks to gratify the id’s impulses in realistic ways that will bring long-term pleasure rather than pain or destruction EGO

10. Personality Structure • Freud’s idea of the mind’s structure

11. Personality Development • Psychosexual Stages • the childhood stages of development during which the id’s 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 • Fixation • a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

14. Defense Mechanisms Repression Regression • Defense Mechanisms • the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality Projection Displacement Reaction Formation Rationalization

15. Defense Mechanisms • Repression • defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness • Regression • defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats 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. The Neo-Freudian & Psychodynamic Theorists • 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--TAT This clinician presumes that the hopes, fears, and interests expressed in this boy’s descriptions of a series of ambiguous pictures in the TAT are projections of his inner feelings

22. 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

23. Assessing the Unconscious--Rorschach In this projective test, people tell what they see in a series of symmetrical inkblots. Some who use this test are confident that the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli will reveal unconscious aspects of the test - taker's personality. Others use it as an icebreaker or to supplement other information.

24. Humanistic Perspective • Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) • studied self-actualization processes of productive and healthy people (e.g., Lincoln)

25. Humanistic Perspective • Self-Actualization • the ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psycholo- gical needs are met and self-esteem is achieved • the motivation to fulfill one’s potential

26. Humanistic Perspective • Carl Rogers (1902-1987) • focused on growth and fulfillment of individuals • genuineness • acceptance • empathy

27. Humanistic Perspective • Unconditional Positive Regard • an attitude of total acceptance toward another person • Self-Concept • all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in an answer to the question, “Who am I?”

28. 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

29. The Trait Perspective Mapmakers can tell us a lot by using two axes (north - south and east - west). Hans Eysenck and Sybil Eysenck use two primary personality factors-extraversion - introversion and stability - instability-as axes for describing personality variation. Varying combinations define other, more specific traits. (From Eysenck & Eysenck, 1963.)

30. 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

31. The Trait Perspective

32. Social-Cognitive Perspective • Social-Cognitive Perspective • views behavior as influenced by the interaction between persons and their social context

33. Social-Cognitive Perspective • Reciprocal Determinism • the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors • Different people choose different environments • Our personalities shape how we interpret and react to events • Our personalities help create situations to which we react

34. Social-Cognitive Perspective

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 • Internal Locus of Control • the perception that one controls one’s own fate

36. Social-Cognitive Perspective Michael Devlin(kidnapper) • Learned Helplessness • the hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events Shawn Hornbeck Ben Ownby

37. Exploring the Self • Spotlight Effect • overestimating others noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders • Self Esteem • one’s feelings of high or low self-worth • Self-Serving Bias • readiness to perceive oneself favorably

38. The End!!