THEORIES OF PERSONALITY

Personality

the unique and relatively stable ways in which people think, feel, and behave.

Character

value judgments of a person’s moral and ethical behavior.

Temperament

the enduring characteristics with which each person is born.

Four Perspectives in the Study of Personality

• Psychodynamic

• Behavioristic

• Humanistic

• Trait Perspectives

Psychodynamic

• Emphasizes the importance of early childhood experiences and the unconscious mind.

• Hidden in the unconscious could be revealed in a number of different ways, including through dreams, free association, and slips of the tongue.

Sigmund Freud

founder of the psychoanalytic movement in psychology

Psychoanalysis

Freud’s term for both the theory of personality and the therapy based on it

Behavioristic

includes social cognitive theory

Preconcious mind

level of the mind in which information is available but not currently conscious.

Conscious mind

the level of the mind that is aware of immediate surroundings and perceptions.

Unconscious mind

• the level of the mind in which thoughts, feelings, memories, and other information are kept that are not easily or voluntarily brought into consciousness.

• It can be revealed in dreams and Freudian

  slips of the tongue.

Freud’s Theory: Parts of Personality

• Id

• Ego

• Superego

Id

part of the personality present at birth and completely unconscious.

Ego

part of the personality that develops out of a need to deal with reality, mostly conscious, rational, and logical.

Superego

part of the personality that acts as a moral center.

Psychological defense mechanisms

are unconscious distortions of a person’s perception of reality that reduce stress and anxiety.

Denial

A psychological defense mechanism in which the

person refuses to acknowledge or recognize a threatening situation.

Repression

A psychological defense mechanism in which the person refuses to consciously remember a threatening or unacceptable event, instead pushing those events into the unconscious mind.

Rationalization

A psychological defense mechanism in which a person invents acceptable excuses for unacceptable behavior.

Projection

psychological defense mechanism in which unacceptable or threatening impulses or feelings are seen as originating with someone else, usually the target of the impulses or feelings

Reaction formation

psychological defense mechanism in which a person forms an opposite emotional or behavioral reaction to the way he or she really feels to keep those true feelings hidden from self and others.

Displacement

redirecting feelings from a threatening target to a less threatening one.

Regression

A psychological defense mechanism in which a person falls back on childlike patterns of responding in reaction to stressful situations.

Identification

A defense mechanism in which a person tries to become like someone else to deal with anxiety.

Compensation

A person makes up for inferiorities in one area by becoming superior in another area.

Sublimation

Channeling socially unacceptable impulses and urges into socially acceptable behavior

Freud’s Theory: Stages of Personality Development

• Fixation

• Psychosexual stages

Fixation

A Disorder in which the person does not fully resolve the conflict in a particular psychosexual stage, resulting in personality traits and behavior associated with that earlier stage.

Psychosexual stages

Five stages of personality development proposed by Freud and tied to the sexual development of the child.

Mnemonic: OAPhaLaGE

Oral Stage

• Age: Birth to 1 or 1½ years old.

• Focus of Pleasure: Oral activities (such

as sucking, feeding, and making noises

with the mouth).

• Focus of Conflicts: Weaning.

• Later Difficulties (affecting personality):

  • Ability to form interpersonal attachments.

  • Basic feelings about the world.

  • Tendency to use oral forms of aggression, such as sarcasm.

  • Optimism or pessimism.

  • Tendency to take charge or be passive.

Anal Stage

• Age: 1 or 1½ to 3 years old

• Focus of Pleasure: Bowel and bladder

control.

• Focus of Conflicts: Toilet training.

• Later Difficulties (affecting personality):

  • Sense of competence and control.

  • Stubbornness or willingness to go along with others.

  • Neatness or messiness.

  • Punctuality or tardiness.

Phallic Stage

• Age: 3 to 6 years old.

• Focus of Pleasure: Genitals.

• Focus of Conflicts: Sexual awareness.

• Later Difficulties (affecting personality):

  • Development of conscience through identification with same-sex parent.

  • Pride or humility.

Latency Stage

• Age: 6 years old to puberty.

• Focus of Pleasure: Social skills (such as

the ability to make friends) and intellectual

skills. This is also described as a dormant

period in terms of psychosexual

development.

• Focus of Conflicts: School, play,

same-sex friendships.

• Later Difficulties (affecting personality):

  • Ability to get along with others.

Genital Stage

• Age: Puberty to death.

• Focus of Pleasure: Sexual behavior.

• Focus of Conflicts: Sexual relationship with partner.

• Later Difficulties (affecting personality):

  • Immature love or indiscriminate hate.

  • Uncontrollable working or inability to work

Neo Freudians

• Alfred Adler

• Carl Jung

• Karen Horney

• Erik Erikson

Alfred Adler

Individual Psychology

Carl Jung

Analytical Psychology

Karen Horney

Psychoanalytical social theory

Erik Erikson

• Ego

• Psychology/Post-Freudian Psychology

Behaviorism and Personality

• Emphasizes the importance of observational learning, self-efficacy, situational influences, and cognitive processes.

• Behaviorists define personality as a set of learned responses or habits.

Habits

In behaviorism, sets of well-learned responses that have become automatic.

Social cognitive learning theorists

Theorists who emphasize the importance of both the influences of other people’s behavior and of a person’s own expectancies on learning

Social Cognitive view

Learning theory that includes cognitive processes such as anticipating, judging, memory, and imitation of models.

Reciprocal determinism

Bandura’s explanation of how the factors of environment, personal characteristics, and behavior can interact to determine future behavior.

Self-efficacy

Individual’s perception of how effective a behavior will be in any particular circumstance (NOT the same as self-esteem)

Counseling and Therapy

• The first thing that we need to know is to

  identify the cognitive distortion. After that,

  we have some behavioural therapy na

  ginagawa such as systematic

  desensitization. Common in addressing

  different psychological disorders

  especially phobia, ptsd, anxiety.

Behaviorist Theorists

• Albert Bandura

• Ivan Pavlov

• B.F. Skinner

Albert Bandura

Social Learning Theory

Ivan Pavlov

Classical Conditioning

B.F Skinner

Operant Conditioning

Roger’s Theory of Personality

• Self-actualizing tendency

• Self-concept

• Self (Archetype)

• Real self

• Ideal self

• Positive regard

• Unconditional positive regard

• Conditional positive regard

• Fully functioning person

Self-actualizing tendency

The striving to fulfill one’s innate

capacities and capabilities.

Self-concept

The image of oneself that develops

from interactions with important,

significant people in one’s life.

Self (Archetype)

Works with the ego to manage

other archetypes and balance the

personality.

Real self

One’s perception of actual

characteristics, traits, and abilities.

Ideal self

One’s perception of who one

should be or would like to be

Positive regard

Warmth, affection, love, and

respect that come from significant

others in one’s life.

Your real self and ideal self should be

congruent. If they're not congruent,

sometimes, nagkakaroon ng mismatch,

and nagpo-proceed into different types of

anxiety.

Unconditional positive regard

Positive regard that is given without conditions or strings attached.

Conditional positive regard

Positive regard is given only when the person is doing what the providers of positive regard wish.

Fully functioning person

A person who is in touch with and

trusting of the deepest, innermost

urges and feelings

This is for the growth, for the psychological growth. What we need is to have this positive regard, the empathy, and genuineness. Basically, the positive regard may be in line with unconditional. We need to be more emphatic. We need to try to understand, and feel ‘yung nararamdaman niya. Yung genuineness (pagpapakatotoo) sa kaniya. Hindi natin siya tini-treat bilang patient, but as a

Victor Frankl

Logotherapy

Logotherapy

It talks about meaning in life, about the

freedom of will. In short, we need to find

our purpose in life. Sometimes, ginagamit

din sa therapeutic techniques, and it's also

in line with humanistic existentialism.

Trait Theories of Personality

Centered on identifying, describing, and

measuring the specific traits that make up

human personality

Trait theories

• Theories that endeavor to describe the characteristics that make up human personality in an effort to predict future behavior.

• Allport first developed a list of about 200 traits and believed that these traits were part of the nervous system.

• Cattell reduced the number of traits to between 16 and 23 with a computer method called factor analysis.

Trait

A consistent, enduring way

of thinking, feeling, or behaving

Surface traits

Aspects of personality that can easily be seen by other people in the outward actions of a person

The big five theory

• Openness

• Conscientiousness

• Extraversion

• Agreeableness

• Neuroticism

Five-factor model (Big Five)

A Model of personality traits that describes five basic trait dimensions

Openness

• High Scorer Characteristics: Creative, artistic, curious, imaginative, nonconforming.

• Low Scorer Characteristics: Conventional, down-to-earth, uncreative.

Conscientiousness

• High Scorer Characteristics: Organized, reliable, neat, and ambitious.

• Low Scorer Characteristics: Unreliable, lazy, careless, negligent, spontaneous.

Extraversion

• High Scorer Characteristics: Talkative, optimistic, sociable, and affectionate.

• Low Scorer Characteristics: Reserved, comfortable being alone, stays in the background.

Agreeableness

• High Scorer Characteristics: Good-natured, trusting, helpful.

• Low Scorer Characteristics: Rude, uncooperative, irritable, aggressive,

competitive.

Neuroticism

• High Scorer Characteristics: Worrying, insecure, anxious, temperamental.

• Low Scorer Characteristics: Calm, secure, relaxed, stable

Cultural Personality

Four basic dimensions of personality along which

cultures may vary:

1. Individualism/collectivism

2. Power distance

3. Masculinity/femininity

4. Uncertainty avoidance

Measuring Personality: Interviews

• Interview

• Halo Effect

Interview

A Method of personality assessment in which the professional asks questions of the client and allows the client to answer, either in a structured or unstructured fashion.

Halo effect

Tendency of an interviewer to allow positive characteristics of a client to influence the assessments of the client’s behavior and statements.

Measuring Personality: Projective Tests

• Projection

• Protective Tests

• Rorschach inkblot test

• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Projection (Defense Mechanism)

Placing, or "projecting," one’s own unacceptable thoughts onto others, as if the thoughts actually belonged to those others and not to oneself.

Projective tests

Personality assessments that present ambiguous visual stimuli to the client and ask the client to respond with whatever comes to mind.

Rorschach inkblot test

A projective test that uses 10 inkblots as the ambiguous stimuli.

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

A projective test that uses 20 pictures of people in ambiguous situations as the visual stimuli.

Subjective

Concepts and impressions that are only valid within a particular person’s perception and may be influenced by biases, prejudice, and personal experiences. This is a problem with projective tests.

Measuring Personality: Behavioral Measures

• Direct Observation

• Rating scale

• Frequency count

Direct observation

Assessment in which the professional observes the client engaged in ordinary, day-to-day behavior in either a clinical or natural setting.

Rating scale

An Assessment in which a numerical value is assigned to specific behavior that is listed in the scale.

Frequency count

Assessment in which the frequency of a particular behavior is counted.

Measuring Personality: Personality Inventory

Personality Inventory

• Paper-and-pencil or computerized test that consists of statements that require a specific,standardized response from the person taking the test.

  • NEO-PI: Based on the five-factor

  • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Based on Jung’s theory of personality types.

  • MMPI-2: Designed to detect abnormal personality

Personality Tests and the Internet

Numerous personality tests are available on the Internet. Not all are equal in quality, reliability, or validity. There is a lack of professional interpretation of the results of such tests

Early Explanations of Mental Illness

• In ancient times, holes were cut in an ill person’s head to let out evil spirits in a process called trepanning.

• Hippocrates believed that mental illness came from an imbalance in the body.

• In the Middle Ages, the mentally ill were labeled as witches

Psychopathology

The study of abnormal behavior.

Psychological disorders

• Any pattern of behavior that causes people significant distress, causes them to harm others, or harms their ability to function in daily life.

  • A ______ is often statistically rare.

  • A ______ is often deviant from social norms.

Situational context:

The social or environmental setting of a person’s behavior.

Subjective discomfort

emotional distress or emotional pain

Maladaptive

Anything that does not allow a person to function within or adapt to the stresses and everyday demands of life

Five D’s

• Deviant - Kakaiba ang kinikilos

• Dysfunction - Impaired (doesn't function)

• Distress - Intense worry that causes to harm others

• Danger - Delikado ka na, and your surroundings

• Duration - How long has this been going on

Sociocultural Perspective

• Cultural Relativity

• Culture-Bound Syndromes