Personality & Self-Concept

10/20 Lecture Notes

The Big Five Personality Traits

• Extroversion - Introversion

• Agreeableness - Antagonism

• Conscientious (on time, complete tasks) - Undirectedness

• Neuroticism (emotional, irritable, anxious) - Stability

• Opennes - Nonopenness

Temperament

• In-born traits in emotional, motor, an attentional reactivity and self-regulation that can be seen shortly after birth

• Passive effect

• Genotypes usually decide temperament

• Temperament is biologically based

Temperament Dimensions

• Emotional Reactivity

• Activity Level

• Sociability

Temperament Traits

• Emotional Reactivity:

  • Fearful distress

  • Irritable distress (upset when you don’t get what you want)

• Activity Level:

  • Activity level (how much you move)

  • Rythmicity (routine, do you get into a rhythm easily)

• Sociability:

  • Attention space and persistence

  • Positive affect (way you smile, what you show on your face)

Temperament Traits

• Easy babies

  • 40% of infants

  • Adjust easily to new situations

  • Quickly establish routines, generally cheerful, easy to calm

• Difficult babies

  • 10% of infants

  • Slow to adjust to new experiences

  • Likely to react negatively and intensely to stimuli and events

• Slow-to-warm-up babies

  • 15% of infants

  • Somewhat difficult at first but become easier over time

Self-Concept

• Set of attitudes, abilities, attributes, and values that an individual believes defines who they are

• Self concept comprises:

  • A descriptive component (who am I?)

  • An evaluative component (am I good?)

Trends in Development of Self-Concept

• Focus on physical characteristics —> focus on internal qualities

• Uniformly positive —> more integratred and complex

• Focus on oneself —> comparison to others —> focus on oneself

Milestones in Infancy & Toddlerhood

• Infants develop a sense of self-awareness by 18-20 months

• By 2 years, children use language (me, I) to refer to themselves and assert their will against their parents’

• By 2 years, children may exhibit self-conscious emotions like shame and embarrassment, signifying concerns about how others view them

Milestones in Early Childhood

• By 3-4 years, children understand themselves in terms of:

  • Concrete characteristics: age, gender, physical characteristics, “I have blue eyes, I run fast”

  • Concrete preferences: “I love my dog”

  • General Context-Specific Characteristics: “i’m strong” when lifting a chair

• Prescholers’ self-evaluations tend to be unrealistically positive

  • Base judgements only on prior success

  • Separate evaluations

Milestones in Middle Childhood

• By 6-8 years, understand themselves in terms of abilities/traits in academics, social, athletics, and physical appearance

• By elementary school children’s self-evaluations become more realistic

  • Base judgements on both success and failures

  • Engage in social comparison: “he can run faster than I can”, partly on the basis of objective measures

Milestones in Adolescence

• By 12-17 years: Concern with social competence and social acceptance

• By 14 years: Think of themselves as different depending on context; become increasingly reflective/bothered by this

• By 17+ years, self-conceopt based on internalized values and standards (vs. social comparison)

4 Categories of Identity Status

1. Identity-diffusion status: No firm commitment and not making progress

2. Foreclosure status: Established vocational or ideological status based mostly on choices of others

3. Moratorium status: Exploring choices and not yet made commitment

4. Identity-achievement status: Achieved coherent identity based on personal decisions

Nature and Nurture

• Self-concept and self-esteem is a product of…

  • Nature:

    • Genes

    • Attractiveness

    • Gender

    • Temperament

  • Nurture:

    • Parental love and support

    • Academic success

    • Peer acceptance

    • Cultural values (self vs. group)