Theories of personality 2

Allport’ visit to Freud

• writes Freud a letter stating that he would be in town and he wanted to meet

• tells him about a boy he saw on the train who had an intense phobia of getting dirty

• Freud asked “was that little boy you“

• felt that Freud was digging for unconscious motives that did not exist and left

Allport’s wide ranging contributions

• Challenged depth theories and behaviorism. Shifted to observable and self-report  

• An understanding of how personality theories differ from one another (ideographic and nomothetic) 

• An emphasis on uniqueness 

• Earliest paper and pencil personality tests  

• The advancement of personality as an American science  

Functional autonomy

an adult's current motives, interests, and habits become independent of (autonomous from) the original childhood or biological needs that first created them

Allport and uniqueness 

human personality is deeply unique and cannot be fully understood by simply grouping people into general categories

• Uniqueness  

• Conscious experiences

Two definitions of trait

• A neuropsychic structure having the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent and to initiate and guide equivalent (consistent) forms of adaptive and expressive behavior. 

• A family of habits or widely generalized habit systems

Theory of values 

measures an individual's relative preference across six basic types of interests and values

• Theoretical

• Economic

• Aesthetic

• Social

• Political

• Religious

Trait theory allport

• 4 to 5 thousand traits with 17,500 names  

• Traits exist more than a name, can be viewed  

• Traits are determinative (trait NOT stimulus determines behavior) 

• Act inconsistent with trait is not proof of non-existence of that trait 

How are traits studied

idiographic approaches (examining unique, individual personalities rather than just general group averages)

Difficulty studying traits

No observable physical process

No single behavior is due to a single trait

No set number of traits per person

Traits ebb and flow within an individual

Development of the proprium

• a self-system that organizes experiences

• We have an inherited tendency to learn and growth

• We develop unique modes of adjusting to and mastering the environment around us

• Self-awareness- what matters to each of us

Cattell vs Allport

• Believed in grouping traits into manageable groups  

• Theory based in psychoanalytic ideas  

• Psychology has to be objective and mathematical  

• Traits are “erg” driven- not autonomous  

• Traits can be accurately measured  

• Behavior can be accurately predicted  

• Personality: that which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a specific situation 

Factor analysis

• renders the data more orderly by organizing the variables studied into factors 

• The “factor loadings” are the correlations between each variable and the hypothetical factor 

criticisms of factor analysis

t reduces unique, dynamic individual personalities into artificial, statistical averages that fail to reflect real-world behavior

human psychology cannot be accurately captured by mathematical reductionism alone

Cattell's trait theory

defines human personality as a combination of underlying building blocks called traits, which can be measured and used to predict behavior

16 personality factors

• Complex scientific names  

• Current use has more simple names

• all traits fall into 16 groups 

• Might not be the most accurate or useful answers

Specification Equation

• How a person will behave in a specific situation 

• Performance= (importance of trait in situation) (trait) + (importance of trait2 in situation) (trait2)+ etc.

The big five

• Extraversion- Warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, positive emotions 

• Agreeableness- Trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, tendermindedness 

• Neuroticism- Anxiety, angry hostility, depression, self consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability 

• Openness- Fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, values 

• Conscientiousness- Competence, order, dutifulness, achievement, striving, self-discipline, deliberation 

Postulates of five factor theory

Basic tendencies 

• All adults can be characterized by 5 basic traits 

• Traits are endogenous (like Allport) 

• Traits develop during childhood and mature afterward 

Characteristic adaptations 

• Interaction with environment affects expression of traits 

• Room for maladjustment- Plasticity  

Objective biography 

• Multiple determinism- hard to trace behavior 

• Life course- we make plans consistent with our traits

Extreme personality

Trait	Too low	Too high
Agreeableness	Heartless, violent	Dependent, transparent
Conscientiousness	Careless, heedless	Overcautious, stringent
Extraversion	Aloof, reclusive	Bluster, showy
Openness	Dogmatic, unimaginative	Overindulgent, unconformable
Emotional stability	Defensive, hypersensitive	Emotionless

Evolution and traits

Two main components 

• Natural selection- survival benefits, fitness 

• Sexual selection- mating benefits  

Inclusive fitness theory- selection for traits that increase survival of genetic relatives  

• Great for explaining Traits that apply to the whole group, Gender differences, Cross cultural differences (very controversial) 

• Less useful for explaining Individual differences between people  

Ethnic and National differences

Has been studied particularly in terms of intelligence 

• Often poorly studied (inappropriate sampling, test bias) 

• Often misinterpreted and overstated (the bell curve) 

• Often misapplied (1920s immigration reforms, etc.) 

Always controversial  

• Still a taboo topic  

• Can selective pressure lead to personality and differences in types of intelligence 

• Cultural transmission and other “nurture” make it difficult to demonstrate  

Heritability and traits

• heritability and environment are about the same

• genetic factors account for roughly 40-50% of differences

Neurotransmitter based theories

• Neurotransmitters communicate between neurons  

• They can be very specific in their actions and have different effects on different parts of the CNS 

• Strongly implicated in certain disorders 

• Serotonin: depression 

• Dopamine: schizophrenia

DRD4 genetic theory

Molecular genetic 

Associated with risk taking and novelty seeking (fast drivers, risky sex, promiscuity, infidelity, drug use, risking money) 

Explanation: 

• Gene codes for dopamine receptors  

• Variant of gene leads to less dopamine receptive person 

• People with variant will seek excitement elsewhere 

The association is small, inconsistent, and difficult to measure  

Neuropeptide oxytocin

• The love hormone or liquid trust 

• Strengthens maternal/ protective bonds in female rats 

• Human results very mixed, but implicated in pair bonding 

• Release in humans is triggered by: Sexual stimulation, Breast feeding, Empathy 

• Results in cuddling 

• Laboratory manipulated increases (typically nasal spray) can result in increased trust and generosity 

Hormonal variation

• Online diary with repeated saliva hormone assays 

• Premenstrual increases in neuroticism and decreases in extraversion. 

• Fertile states associated with higher extraversion and lower neuroticism 

• Suggests “fertility-induced shift in motivational priorities.” 

Eysenck’s PEN

Psychoticism: Possibly male sex hormones, Associated with under arousal

Introversion/ extroversion: Weak/ strong nervous system, Introverts require less stimulation to achieve optimal arousal, Extraverts tolerate/ seek greater stimulation

Neuroticism: Limbic system, Higher level of emotional arousal

Kagan: a developmental approach

Infant temperament  

• Highly heritable  

• The biological foundation for personality 

• Stable over time (shyness research) 

Two temperament groups 

• Inhibited-more fearful 

• Uninhibited-less fearful 

• Differences attributed to amygdala 

Cloninger

divides your personality into two main parts: Temperament (your hardwired, automatic emotional reactions) and Character (your mature, learned goals and values)

Watson

• Environment over everything 

• No racial differences in intelligence  

• Watson & Rayner and little albert  

• Rejects studying consciousness 

• 3 unlearned responses (URs): Fear (US: loud sounds, falling), Rage (US: restraint), Love (US: stroking skin, sex organs) 

• No inheritance of: Capacity, Talent, Mental constitution, Characteristics 

Behaviorism as a personality theory

a school of psychology and theory of learning stating that all behaviors are acquired through interaction with the environment via conditioning

Skinnerian concepts and assumptions

• Empiricism- mentalism must be abandoned 

• Unit of analysis must be observable behavior 

• Principles of behavior are universal to all species  

• All behavior is a consequence of previous experience (never of planning or thinking or any internal mental process) 

• Individual differences reflect different reinforcement histories  

The power of the environment (conflicting contingencies)

A behavior can be reinforced in one situation and punished in another

“The body that behaves heterosexually most of the time is the same body that is occasionally homosexual” 

Operant conditioning and evolution