Personality

Personality definition by Child

• more of less stable internal factors that make one person’s behavior consistent from one time to another, and different from the behavior of other people in comparable situations

Personality

• stable → relatively constant

• internal → personality lies within us, how we behave is determined by our personality

• consistent → if personality remains constant we would expect people ot behave fairly consistently

• different → people behave differently

Culture and Personality

individualist cultures → higher levels of loneliness and depression, independence is highly valued, more tolerant to individual quirks

collectivistic → group harmony over personal desires or self-advancement, less loneliness, most severe loneliness tends to be found among international students which come from collectivistic cultures and move to individualistic

Social - Desirability Bias

• limitation in self report questionnaires, they want to make themselves look good

• Likert-type statements (i am often rude) (strongly agree disagree type)

Psychodynamic Theory

• many processes underlying behavior are unconscious

  • unconscious, preconscious and conscious

• Conscious mind → all mental processes we are aware of

• Preconscious → all thoughts and feelings a person is not currently aware of, but can be brought back to consciousness (if traumatic not easily accessed)

• Unconscious → mental activity we are unaware of but influence our behaviour. influenced by our past experiences which are kept in the unconscious through repression

  • We can see repression in our day to day → Freudian Slip, sexual and aggressive urges accidentally slipping out of our unconscious.

Structural Model

• Id; irrational, emotional, impulsive part of the mind, seeks immediate gratification (primitive desires, hunger, thirst and sex)

• Ego; rational part of the mind which balances out the id and superego. weighs pros and cons of the actions - part of personality seen by the others

• Superego; moral part of the mind, rule following, social norms. pushes people to act in accordance with their values and ideals

→ our personality is a result of the efforts to balance these forces out

What happens when the ego is not strong and the two forces arent properly balanced

• neurosis, anxiety disorders → ego’s inability to mediate the conflict between the id and superego, when this happens defense mechanisms seek to protect us and reduce anxiety

• id domination; narcissistic and impulsive

• dominant superego; guilt, deny socially acceptable pleasures

• superego is weak - psychopathy

Defense mechanisms

• mental strategies that we use automatically and unconsciously when we feel threatened, help us navigate upsetting events

• all involve distortion of reality

List of Freuds Defense Mechanisms

• Denial → refusal to acknowledge something

• Repression → pushing something out of your mind, you dont deny it you just decide not to think about it and eventually forget it

• Reaction Formation → convincing urself the opposite of what is actually true

• Projection → attributing an unwanted trait or thought to someone else

• Rationalization → logical and false explanation for a shameful thought or action

• Displacement → redirecting an unwanted impulse toward something more acceptable

• Regression → reverting to an earlier stage of life development

• Sublimation → shameful impulses into something more noble

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages - outline not stages individually

• adults are the way they are mostly because of what happened to them as children

• people progress through a sequence of 5 sexual stages, if they dont this creates a fixation

• Fixation is a lingering focus of pleasure seeking energies at an early psychosexual stage during which conflicts were unresolved

Fixations and resulting adult characteristics

Oral Fixation; birth - 18 months, children enjoy activities involving mouth and lips

• Forceful feeding → oral receptive; very trusting and dependent on others

• Overfeeding → oral aggressive personality; aggressive and dominating

Anal Fixation; 18months -3.5 yrs, main source of satisfaction is the anal area

• toilet training is too harsh → anal retentive; mean, stubborn and obsessively tidy

• toilet training is too lax → anal receptive; very generous and giving

Phallic Fixation; 3.5 years to 6 years, penis or clitoris becomes the major source of satisfaction,

• Abnormal Family set up → Phallic Personality self assured vain and impulsive, overly sexualized or under sexualized

Latency Stage - no fixation or sexual feelings

Genital Stage - Puberty onwards main source of sexual pleasure is in the genitals and sexual pleasure with another person.

• settling down in a loving relationship → Genital Personality, well- adjusted mature able to love and be loved

Two Humanistic Theories - relating to personality

• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

• Roger’s Theory of Self - Actualization

Hierarchy of Needs

1. Physiological Needs (essentials for survival)

2. Safety Needs

3. Belongingness Needs (relationships etc)

4. Self- Esteem and Status

5. Self - Actualization (discovering and fulfilling one’s own potential)

• Example of Self Actualized person was albert einstein

Barriers to Self actualization

• loosing a job, divorce etc mean that lower level needs often resurface through life meaning many people will not reach self actualization

• todays world is very competitive, pushing us to work harder, socialize more which deprives us of quiet reflection time needed for personal growth

Roger’s Self-Concept and Ideal self

• personality is determined by how congruent the ideal self (Self you want) is to the self-concept (the self you currently have)

• happier people see more congruence between these two selves, while maladjusted people experience incongruence

Congruence

• when out thoughts about self concept and ideal self are very similar

• parents help lead their children to congruence by giving them unconditional positive regard

• Q SORT METHOD → MEASURE DISCREPANCY BETWEEN IDEAL AND SELF CONCEPT

  • sort descriptive statements on cards

Actualizing Tendency

• natural tendency to want to grow, motivates baby to walk, makes us curious so we learnt

• arouses us to do healthy generous and loving things

• need to be open to experience and to express ones own true self

Unconditional Positive Regard

• needed to achieve self actualization

• ppl who have difficulties struggle with self confidence

• condition positive regard can stifle self confidence

• people who only love under certain conditions (conditions of worth), only worthy of love under these conditions of worth

Empathetic Understanding

• genuine appreciation by another person of how one feels

  • husband who doesn’t know or appreciate what it is like to be a woman, makes married life difficult.

Summary - What 3 components influence ones personality according to Rogers

• Unconditional Positive Regard

• Empathetic understanding

• Congruence (ideal and self concept are aligned)

Critics of Humanism

• ignores biology and unconscious mind

• approach is unscientific because goal of self realisation cannot accurately be measured

Trait Theorist Approach

• trait; stable aspects of a person that influence their behaviour

• Cattel’s 16PF

• Eysenck’s Trait Theory

• Big Five Model (Ocean)

Cattel’s 16PF

• Identified 16 personality traits

  • warmth, social boldness, vigilance, perfectionism, privateness etc

• Fundamental lexical hypothesis; idea that concepts important to us will be represented in our language

  • surface traits → observable

  • source traits → underlying

Tried to understand personality in a scientific way

• Watching how people behave in real life (L-data).

• Asking them about themselves through questionnaires (Q-data).

• Testing them in controlled situations (T-data).

• continuum scoring, high → low not present or absent

Eysencks Trait Theory

• biology and genetic factors govern genetic personality

  • responsiveness of parts of the physiological system, introverts have higher level of cortical arousal, danger of becoming over aroused so stay inside to read

    • personality has 3 dimensions

      • neuroticism → anxious overactive sympathetic nervous system

      • extraversion → sociable and outgoing

      • psychoticism → impulsive, cold, impulsive and antisocial

Five Factor Model

OCEAN

• Openness; creativity appreciation, like to try new things, low in openness stick to routine, value consistency

• Conscientiousness; following rules, tidy, strive to achieve high grades, low is messy forgetful, less hardworking etc

• Extroversion; talkativeness, sociability, assertiveness, low is introversion, reserved and quiet

• Agreeableness; co-operative, friendly and compassionate, conform more easily, low - cold, more confrontational but stand up to what they think is right, stubborn

• Neuroticism; anxiety, self doubt, vigilant and aware of risks, low are relatively calm, harder to upset and less vulnerable to stress