Personality
Personality: The pattern of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
that distinguishes one person from another
- Persists over time and situations
- Personality traits
- Traits that most of us possess in some degree
- Constellation of traits gives us each our own unique personality
- States
- Temporary ways of being and behaving
- Brought about by situational variables
Approaches to Personality
- Psychoanalytic approach
- Relates personality to the interplay of conflicting forces within the
individual
- Humanistic approach
- Deals with consciousness, values, and abstract beliefs
- Trait approach
- Assumes consistent personality characteristics that can be measured and
studied
- Learning approach
- Assumes the major factor in shaping our personality are our experiences
- Personality is learned on a situation-by-situation basis
Trait Approach
- Distinctive, internal, personal characteristics
- Consistent across situations
- Stable over time
- Influence behavior, thoughts and feelings
- Ignores source of traits
- Emphasizes
- Measurement of personality traits
- Use of traits to predict behavior
- Traits are usually continuous dimensions
- Extremes of trait at endpoints
- Individuals placed on continuum
- Many traits
- Researchers try and identify basic traits
- More useful for prediction and measurement
- Cattell
- Reduced initial set of personality traits (18,000)
- 4500 items
- Further reduced set
- 171 items
- Applied a variety of statistical techniques
- Determine clusters of items
- Correlated highly with one another
- Correlated little or not at all each other
- 16 trait factors
- Collected data from individuals
- Score on 16 traits
- Match with behavior in interview situations
- Personality profile
- Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)
- Determines where a person falls on the continuum for each of the 16 traits
- Used to measure a person's suitability for a certain line of work
- Overall profile or constellation important for determining personality
or job suitability
- "Big Five" personality traits
- Can describe most of the variance in human personality
- Each trait pertains to behavior in a wide variety of situations
- Emotional Stability (Changed from "Neuroticism")
- The tendency to experience emotions relatively easily
calm vs anxious, secure vs insecure, self-satisfied vs self-pitying
- Extroversion
- The tendency to seek stimulation and to enjoy the company of other people
sociable vs retiring, fun-loving vs sober, affectionate vs reserved
- Agreeableness
- Tendency to be compassionate towards others and not antagonistic
soft-hearted vs ruthless, trusting vs suspicious, helpful vs uncooperative
- Conscientiousness
- Tendency to show self-discipline, be dutiful, and strive for achievement
and competence
organized vs disorganized, careful vs careless, disciplined vs impulsive
- Openness to experience
- Tendency to enjoy new intellectual experiences and new ideas
imaginitive vs practical, preference for variety vs preference for routine,
independent vs conforming
Biological origins of personality
- Genetics and temperament
- Present at birth
- Suggests genetic origin
- Some traits or temperament may be more adaptive than others
- Twin studies
- Adoptive children's personalities resemble their birth mother more than
their adoptive parents
- Correlations for extroversion and neuroticism
- Approx. .50 for MZ twins
- Approx. .25 for DZ twins
- Contribution of environment (Learning approach)
- Classical conditioning
- Pairing of certain situations or types of people with pleasant or negative
emotional
- Can result in classical conditioning
- Can be enduring enough to become a personality trait
- Attachment theory
- Operant conditioning
- Depends on rewards and punishments.
- Reinforced behaviors are more likely to be repeated
- Punished behaviors are less likely to be repeated
- Observational learning
- Occurs when an organism's responding is influenced by the observation
of others
- Suggests a more active role for the participant of social learning
- Gender roles
- Parents
- Peers
Freud and Personality Theory
- History
- Born in 1856 in a middle class Jewish home in Vienna, Austria
- Went to medical school at age 17 to study physiology
- Started his own practice as a physician in order to support a wife and
family
- Patients were upper-class Jewish females
- Era marked by extreme sexual repression
- Specialized in nervous disorders
- Saw many patients with paralysis or neurological disorders
- Started realizing that many of his patients' disorders were psychological
in origin
- Hysterical paralysis of the hand
- Glovelike pattern
- Hysterical blindness and loss of speech
- Started using hypnotism to explore his patient's psyches
- Developed the technique of psychoanalysis
- Started formulating his theories about the mind
- Biological theories of personality
The mind
- Unconscious
- The part of the mind that is inaccessible to us yet which still exerts
observable effects on our behavior
- Contains the destructive and life urges within us
- Energy force which drives our personality
- Inaccessible to our conscious mind outside of dreams or psychoanalysis
- Suppress or repress many of our urges and feelings
- Keep hidden from the conscious mind
- Still exert powerful influences on us
- Express themselves in disguised forms
- Freudian slip
- Conscious
- All we are aware of
- All that we are thinking about
- The part of our minds and personality which is accessible to us
- Preconscious
- Subcategory of the conscious mind
- Contains accessible memories that we are not presently thinking about
- Conflicts within the mind
- Unconscious
- The source of powerful sexual and aggressive energies
- Energy arises from biological drives but transforms itself into psychological
energy
- Sexuality
- Includes a broad spectrum of erotic and life-enhancing activities
- Pleasure principle
- Aggression
- Includes a wide range of behaviors and urges
- Harmful and destructive
- Sexual and aggressive energies need to be released
- Aggressive and sexual energies are often at odds with each other, which
causes conflict
- Expression of urges is frowned upon by society
- Thinking about some of our powerful sexual or aggressive urges can be
anxiety provoking
- Anxiety
- Neurotic
- Result from unconscious urges surfacing to the conscious mind
- Occurs when the defense mechanisms are weak
- Realistic
- Based upon a real threat to a person's safety
- Moral
- Also known as shame
I- s what we feel when we are about to break or have broken a moral law
- Used to protect the conscious mind from anxiety
- Repression
- Most fundamental defense mechanism
- Involves keeping unacceptable thoughts in the unconscious
- Repress painful memories or childhood sexual desire for a parent
- Denial
- Permits unacceptable material to enter conscious mind only to be negated
as if it did not exist
- Likely to happen immediately after a trauma such as the death of a loved
one
- Can also protect us more generally from uncomfortable facts
- Intellectualization
- Acknowledges unacceptable or threatening material, but drain it of its
emotional impact
- Projection
- “Relocate” unacceptable aspects of ourselves onto others
- Reaction Formation
- Deals with unacceptable impulses or thoughts by turning them into their
opposite
- Rationalization
- Find a “perfectly reasonable” justification for a behavior that really
stems from an entirely different, unacceptable motive
- Displacement
- Involves expressing unacceptable desires through alternative channels
- Sublimation
- Is a form of displacement that produces something of value
- Parts of Personality
- The ID (the “it”)
- Reservoir of psychic energy
- Strictly unconscious
- Present from birth
- Energy is the source of all motivation
- Characterized by primary process thinking
- Logic is unknown and contradictory images might coexist
- Operates on the pleasure principle
- Demands instant gratification of all its urges
- Ego
- Emerges from the id to help satisfy the id's demands
- Provides the practical knowledge and techniques that are required to
reach one's goals
- Keeps the id in check
- Delayed gratification
- Obeys the reality principle
- To gain satisfaction, one must temper ones’ demands
- Must develop secondary process thinking
- Generally rational
- Superego
- The part of the personality devoted to ideals and to “right and wrong”
- Develops in early childhood from the resolution of the Oedipal and Electra
crises
- Ego ideal
- Sets high standards of virtue
- Reflects a child's own sense of what he or she would like to be
- Conscience
- Inflicts guilt
- Reflects what a child's parents want him to be
- Standards are extremely primitive
- Oedipal complex
- Results in the formation of the superego for males
- Castration anxiety
- Identification with the aggressor
- The boy internalizes his image of his father
- Desire for mother and fear of father are permanently repressed into the
unconscious
- Electra complex
- Explains female's acquisition of the superego
- Penis envy
- Identify with mother to attract someone like father
- Weaker version of the Oedipal crises
- Suggested that women don't mature fully in a moral sense
- Puberty and childbirth necessary for full moral maturation
- Personality development
- Early childhood is a very important time for personality development
- Several distinct psychosexual stages of development
- Each stage refers to a different sexually charged zone of the body
- Issues of concern to the developing child are focused on this zone
- Frustration or overindulgence at a stage of psychosexual development
can lead to a fixation
- An excessive focus on the area of the body associated with that stage
and on symbolic activities related to that stage lasting into adulthood
- Fixations permanently affect our behavior
- The Oral Stage
- Occupies the first 18 mo. of life.
- Centers on eating, biting, sucking
- Mouth is the primary libidinal zone
- Oral fixation
- May be especially gullible or sarcastic
- May indulge in oral activities, especially when upset
- The Anal Stage
- Begins around 2 yrs of age when toilet training begins
- Focus on bowel and bladder elimination
- Anal fixation
- Symbolized by conflict between holding on and letting go
- May develop a stingy or compulsively orderly and neat personality style
- May become highly creative, generous, and productive
- Develops strong dependence on mother and becomes anxious in her absence
- To relieve this anxiety the child introjects the image of mother as perfection
which then becomes the ego ideal of the superego
- The Phallic Stage
- Occurs between the stages of 3-6.
- Attention focuses on the genitals
- Oedipal and Electra complexes need to be resolved
- Proper resolution results in the identification with same sex parent
and subsequently with their gender role
- The Latency Stage
- The period from age 6 until puberty
- Period of psychosexual calm
- The Genital Stage
- Begins with the hormonal changes of puberty
- Child begins to mature sexually
- Develops a strong interest in forming heterosexual relationships with
people outside of the family
- Lasting contribution of Freud's work
Personality Tests
- Assessing the unconscious (psychoanalytic perspective)
- Need indirect techniques that bypass the ego defenses
- Dream analysis
- Assumes that dream symbology provides clues to the dreamer's unconscious
- Expressions
- Free form creations analyzed for clues to the creator's personality
- Free association
- Patient expresses whatever thoughts or images come to mind
- Based on assumption that people's thoughts reflect underlying mental
states
- Projective tests
- Provide more formal measures of the unconscious
- Subjects respond to a series of ambiguous stimuli
- Rorschach inkblot test
- Most widely used projective test
- Subjects report what they see on each card
- Point out the aspects of the card that influenced their response
- Interpretation
- Symbolic objects
- Responses interpreted in relation to other responses
- Generalization
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
- Consists of a series of pictures presented one at a time.
- Subjects tell stories about the pictures
1.) What is happening
2.) Who are these people
3.) What led up to the scene in the picture
4.) What are they thinking and feeling
5.) What will happen next
- Scoring
- Identify emotional themes
- Projections of unconscious needs and current concerns
- Difficulties of test
- Interpretation subjective
- Objective tests
- Have specific questions which have specific answers
- Only a limited number of responses to each question
- Answers carry a specific meaning with them
- Most often self-report personality tests
- First personality test
- Designed to identify emotionally disturbed U. S. Army recruits during
WWI
- "Adjustment inventory"
- List of questions that dealt with various symptoms or problem areas
- Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
- Designed to assess a person's similarity to different types of psychiatric
patients
- Introduced in 1940
- Still widely used today
- Hathaway and McKinley (1943)
- Use empirical method to develop
- Compiled a large set of test items taken from previously published inventories,
from psychiatric examination forms, and from their own clinical hunches
- Eliminated all items that did not discriminate between different disorders
and the normal controls
- First MMPI
- 550 items
- Responses could be analyzed by reference to ten major scales
- Second edition MMPI (MMPI2)
- Published in 1989
- Standardized on a larger group of people
- More representative of other ethnic groups
- Scoring
- Absolute scores
- Various scale values in relation to each other
- Lying scale
- Bizarre statements