Chapter 9: Personality Theories

• Personality: an individual's characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings & behaviors

Freudian's Classical Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality

• developed by Sigmund Freud
• believed that sex was a primary cause of emotional problems (critical component of his personality theory)
• important influence in Western culture

• three levels of awareness:

1. conscious mind: what you think and are presently aware of
2. preconscious: stored in memory, presently unaware of, but can gain access to it.
3. unconscious: part in mind which we cannot be aware of, primary motivations for all of our actions and feelings

• 3 part personality structure

1. Id (original personality – the devil)

• only part present @ birth
• in unconscious mind
• includes biological instinctual drives
• pleasure principle: demands immediate gratification for those drives without concern of the consequences

2. Ego (me, the human)

• executive manager of personality
• partly unconscious & conscious + preconscious
• reality principle: finds gratification for instinctual drives within constraints of norms, reality & laws of society

3. Superego (the angel)

• one's conscience & idealized standards of behavior in their culture
• morality principle: threatening to overwhelm us with guilt & shame

Defense Mechanisms

• the id & superego's demands come into conflict
• the ego uses these processes to distort reality & protect us from anxiety

Repression	Unknowingly placing unpleasant memory / thoughts in the unconscious (pushing them behind your mind)
Regression	Revert back to immature behaviors from an earlier age (throwing tantrums)
Displacement	Redirecting unacceptable feelings from the original source to safer subsitute target (venting your anger on a punching bag)
Sublimation	Replace socially unacceptable impulses with socially acceptable behavior (do sports to suppress the urge to smoke)
Reaction Formation	Acting exactly opposite to one's unacceptable impulses (smiling at your enemies)
Projection	Attributing one's own unacceptable feelings & thoughts to others (putting blame on others)
Rationalization	Create false excuses for one's unacceptable feelings / thoughts / behaviors (finding excuses)

** unhealthy personalities develop when we depend too much on defense mechanisms, id / superego unusually strong, ego unusually weak.

Freudian's Psychosexual Stage Theory

1. erogenous zone

• area of body
• id's pleasure seeking psychic energy focused during particular stage of psychosexual development
• change in erogenous zones = beginning of new stage

2. fixation

• portion of id's pleasure seeking energy remains in a stage
• excessive gratification / frustration of instinctual needs
• continues throughout person's life
• impacts behavior & personality traits

Stage	Erogenous Zones	Activity focus
Oral (birth – 1 ½ )	Mouth, lips, tongue	Sucking, biting, chewing
Anal (1½ - 3)	Anus	Bowel retention, elimination
Phallic (3 – 6)	Genitals	Identify with same sex parent, learn gender role & morality sense
Latency (6 – puberty)	None	Cognitive & social development
Genital (puberty – adulthood)	Genitals	Development of sexual relationships, intimate adult relationships

*ANAL STAGE - Child's reaction to harsh toilet training:

1. trying to get even with parents

• withdrawing bowel movements
• anal-retentive personality: orderliness, neatness, stinginess, obstinacy

2. rebel

• has bowel movements whenever & wherever desired
• anal-expulsive personality

*PHALLIC STAGE

Conflicts

1. Oedipus

• boy turns sexually attracted to mother
• fears that father (rival) finds out & castrate him

2. Electra

• girl attracted to father because... he has a penis
• she wants one; feels inferior without one aka penis envy

Identification

• child adopts same-sexed parents' characteristics
• learns their gender role – behavioral set expected of individual of particular sex
• superego develops

Neo-Freudian Theories of Personality

1. Carl Jung: Collective Unconscious

• accumulated universal experiences of humankind;
• everyone inherits the same cumulative storehouse of all human experiences
• experiences manifested in archetypes – image & symbols of all important themes in mankind history (God, mother, hero,etc)
• Beliefs of collective unconscious & archetypes are more mystical than science – can't be tested empirically
• two main personality attitudes: extraversion & introversion
• 4 functions / styles of gathering information
  • sensing: reality function in which the world is carefully perceived
  • intuiting: more subjective perception
  • thinking: logical deduction
  • feeling: subjective emotional function

2. Alfred Adler: Striving for Superiority

• to overcome sense of inferiority felt as infants; totally helpless & dependent state
• inferiority complex: strong inferior feeling of those never overcome this inferior initial feeling

2. Karen Horney: Need for Security

• deals with need for security rather than inferiority
• 3 neurotic personality patterns:
  • moving towards people: complaint, submissive person
  • moving against people: aggressive, domineering person
  • moving away from people: detached, aloof person

Humanistic Approach & Social-Cognitive Approach to Personality

Humanistic Theories

• developed in 1960s as part of response to deterministic psychoanalytic & strict behavioral psychological approach (dominated psychology & personalities' study)
• social-cognitive theorists explain personality development by emphasizing social & cognitive factors + conditioning
  • conscious free will in one's actions, uniqueness of individual & personal growth

1. Abraham Maslow

• father of humanistic movement
• studied healthy & creative people's lives to develop theory of personality
• self-actualization:
  • accept themselves, others & nature of the world for what they are
  • privacy needs & small dose of emotional relationships
  • autonomous, independent, democratic, creative
  • peak experiences: experiences of deep insights in which you experience whatever you are doing as fully as possible
• critique
  • non-empirical, indeterminate studies of small number of people subjectively selected as self-actualized
    

2. Carl Roger: Self Theory

• positive regard: be accepted & have affection of others especially the significant other in life
• conditions of worth: behaviors & attitudes for which we would be given positive regards by parents
  • meeting conditions of worth is lifelong & person develops self-concept of what others think he should be
• unconditional positive regard: acceptance & approval unconditionally
  • emphathy from others & having others be genuine with respect to their own feelings is necessary if we are to self-actualize

**neither Maslow's nor Roger's theories are research-based

Social-Cognitive Approach to Psychology

• Research based, combining elements of 3 major research perspectives:
  • cognitive
  • behavioral
  • sociocultural
• maintains that learning through environmental conditioning contributes to personality development
  • social learning / modelling & cognitive processes (perception, timing..) are involved [actually more important to personality development]

1. Bandura: Self-System

• set of cognitive processes by which a person observes, evaluates & regulates his / her social behavior
• conscious decision to choose what behavior to engage in, in accordance with the assessment of whether the behavior will be reinforced
• self-efficacy: judgement of one's effectiveness in dealing with particular situations (plays major role in determining behavior)
  • low: depression, anxiety, helplessness
  • high; self-confidence, positive outlook, minimal self-doubt

2. Rotter: Locus of Control

• person's perception of extent to where one controls oneself
  • external: chance / external forces beyond one's control determines one's fate
  • internal: one controls one's own fate
• person with internal locus of control:
  • perceive their success as dependant upon their own needs
  • may / may not feel that they have the efficacy to bring about successful outcomes in various situations
  • psychologically & physically better off
• personal with external locus:
  • may contribute to learned helpnessless
  • sense of hopelessness – one thinks that one is unable to prevent unpleasant events

Self-Perception

• Attribution: we explain our own behavior & that of others
  • internal attribution: outcome is attributed to the person him/herself
  • external: outcome attributed to factors outside the person

Learned Helpnessless & Depression

• Internal attributions for negative outcomes
  • “I failed addmath because I am soooo baaaad at the subject”
• External attributions for positive outcomes
  • “I got A+ for Bio because it's just a piece of cake”
• Pessimistic explanations:
  • Permanent causes: “I will always be baaaaaad at (something)”
  • Global: “I am just a total stupiddd”

Trait Theories of Personality & Personality Assessment

• Personality Traits: internally-based, relatively stable relationships that define individual's personality
  (each trait is a dimension, a continuance ranging from one extreme of the dimension to the other)
• Factor Analysis: identifies clusters of test items that measure the same factor / trait
  • used by trait theorists (+ other statistical techniques) to tell how many basic personality factors (for traits) are needed to describe human personality as well as what these factors are

Number & Kind of Personality Traits

1. Raymond B. Cattell

• used factor analysis
• 16 traits – necessary to describe human personality

2. Hans Eysenck (more general, inclusive level of abstraction than Cattell)

• also used factor analysis (different level)
• 3 trait dimensions – 3-factor theory
  • biological basis for extraversion-introversion trait is level of cortical arousal – neuronal activity
    • introverts have higher normal-levels of arousal than an extravert (extraverts need to seek out external stimulation to raise arousal level in the brain to more optimal level)
  • people high on neuroticism-emotional stability dimension tend to be overly anxious, emotionally unstable & easily upset because of a more reactive symphathetic nervous system
  • psychotism-impulse control trait is concerned with aggressiveness, impulsiveness & empathy
    • related to differing androgen levels (controls male sex traits, influence female sexual behavior)

3. Gordon Allport: Trait Theory (3 levels)

• cardinal: dominate individual's whole life that one is known specifically for these traits (etc.: Freudian, Narcissism, Christ-like)
• central: general characteristics – form basic foundation of personality. Not as dominating as cardinal traits but are the major characteristics that might be used to describe person (etc.: intelligent, honest, shy)
• secondary: sometimes related to attitudes / preferences, often appear only in certain situations / under specific circumstances (etc.: some people get anxious when speaking to a group)

Five-Factor Model of Personality

• appear to be universal, consistent from about age 30 to late adulthood
• measured using assessment instrument NEO-PI

Dimension	High end	Low end
Openness	Independent, imaginative, broad interests, receptive to new ideas	Conforming, practical, narrow interests, closed to new ideas
Conscientiousness	Well-organized, dependable, careful, disciplined	Disorganized, undependable, careless, impulsive
Extraversion	Sociable, talkative, friendly, adventurous	Reclusive, quiet, aloof, cautious
Agreeableness	Sympathetic, polite, good-natured, soft-hearted	Tough-minded, rude, irritable, ruthless
Neuroticism	Emotional, insecure, nervous, self-pitying	Calm, secure, relaxed, self-satisfied

Personality Assessment

1. Personality Inventories
2. Projective Tests

1. Personality Inventories

• designed to measure multiple personality traits & disorders (in some cases)
• series of questions/statements, test taker indicate whether they apply to him
• MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory)
  • most widely used
  • uses “true/false/cannot say” format with 567 simple statements
  • developed to be a measure of abnormal psychology – 10 clinical scales such as depression, schizoprenia
  • items develpoed & tested to differentiate different groups of people – representative sample of people suffereing specific disorder & group of normal people – on certain dimensions; to be retained both groups generally responded to an item in opposite ways

2. Projective Tests

• series of ambiguous stimuli to which the test taker must respond about his perceptions about the stimuli

1. Rorschach Inkblot Test
2. TAT – Thematic Apperception Tests

1. Rorschach Inkblot Test

• 10 symmetric inkblots
• test taker asked to clarify responses – identify parts of the inkblot that led to response
• assumes test taker's response = projections of their personal conflicts & personality dynamics
• widely used but not demonstrated to be reliable & valid

2. TAT (Thematic Apperception Tests)

• 19 cards – black & white pics of ambiguous settings + one blank card
• test taker makes up a story for each card he sees – what happened before, is happening now, what the people feel & think, how things will turn out
• looks for recurring themes in responses
• scoring yet to be demonstrated to be either reliable/valid

(the inkblots ... OMG they're fascinating, I mean that they look sooooooo mystical)

--by qxchxn (qiqi)