Psychology of Personality - Unit 2

Basic Adler Assumptions

• Focus on what motivates people’s behavior

• Focus was on complete person 

  • Society for Individual Psychology

• All behavior has social meaning

• All behavior has a purpose and is goal-directed

  • We work to overcome inferiorities/perceived weaknesses to become stronger 

• Behavior represents unity and has a pattern

• Behavior is designed to overcome feelings of inferiority and move toward feelings of superiority

• Behavior is the result of our subjective perceptions

The Fundamental Human Motive:

Adler

• Search for success

• Superiority

• Freedom from helplessness

• Escape from fear

• Perfection and personal completeness

Inferiority Complex:

• Overcome by a feeling of lack of worth which leads to the impossibility for self-improvement

• If repressed, this may be felt as a superiority complex

  • Behave arrogantly (which personality disorder = narcissistic)

  • Exaggerate their achievements

    • Ex: people who claim telepathic powers

Organ inferiority

• All people succumb to disease in the most poorly developed organ 

  • We may compensate for poor development (ex: stutterer -> orator)

• See early states biological limitation -> later (subjective)

Aggressive Drive

• People develop a hostile reaction to their perceived helplessness (e.g., baby’s first cry) 

• Aggression may be expressed outright (e.g., fighting, cruelty) or may be transformed (e.g., competition, striving for dominance or mastery)

Masculine Protest

• “Masculinity” implies greater competence or superiority 

• People strive for competence & superiority 

• Adler generally rejected gender roles – Marks shift from biology to psychology

Superiority Striving and Perfection Striving

• Masculine protest leads to “mask” of compensatory traits designed to spark self-improvement 

• People create “fictional goals” and strive to attain them 

  • This is more “realistic” than it may sound; NOT perfectionism

3 Social Interest Tasks

• Societal Tasks

  • To be interested in others to make friends

• Work Tasks

  • Interest in cooperative activity for the benefit of others, provides a sense of worth in society

• Love

  • Ability to take more interest in another than self

Style of Life

• Each of us sculpts our own personality

• Work on inferiority and move to superiority

• Established by 4 or 5

• Individual’s attitudes toward society, work, and love

  • The individual’s choice -> the creative life force tries to lead to fulfillment

• Begins as a compensatory process

  • Develop a consistency in personality while trying to make up for an inferiority 

• Law of movement: direction taken by the person that originates in his or her ability to exercise free choice

Law of movement

• direction taken by the person that originates in his or her ability to exercise free choice

Mistaken Styles of Life:

• Ruling Type

  • Dominate others, confront problems in a selfish way

  • High achievers, but are vain and competitive 

• Getting Type

  • Dependent; adopt a passive toward others

  • More likely to be depressed

• Avoiding type

  • Tend to isolate themselves, appear cold to others

  • Hide a subtle superiority belief

Appropriate Style of Life:

• Socially Useful Type

  • Act in a way that benefits others

• Consistent from childhood to adulthood

Early recollections (age 3.5)

• Used by adlerian therapists

• Used to assess people’s lifestyles

  • Indicates how a person views himself, his/her personal strivings, others

• Fact is not important

  • Present determines the past

  • A first memory remains because it has been thought about repeatedly during life.

  • Subjectively important to person

• These recollections are reminiscent of way you interact with other people

Family’s Impact on personality development:

• Mother is greatest influence

  • Guides development of social interest

• Father is second greatest influence

  • Provides encouragement to pursue interests

• Birth order

  • Family size and sex of siblings cause individual differences

Adlerian Advice to Parents

• Encourage child rather than punish

• Be firm, show respect, emphasize cooperation, don’t give child too much attention but don’t neglect, don’t struggle for power with the child, don’t show excessive sympathy

Adler’s Hypothesis on Birth Order:

• First born

  • Doesn’t do well with dethronement

  • More likely to act antagonistically against others, will seek others

• Second born

  • Stimulated to higher achievement via competition with older siblings

    • More likely to be successful

    • Likely isolate themselves in pursuit of success

• Later-born

  • pampered/spoiled

  • More likely to be getting type

  • expect over-indulgence from others

• Only children

  • Exaggerated sense of self-importance, center of attention

Most differences are between first-born and others:

• 1st born are higher in achievement motivation 

• Tend to have higher levels of success

• Tend to be more self-centered (narcissistic) 

• Tend to be Type A, especially if female 

• Tend to be anxious, especially if male

Adlerian Therapy Stages (first set):

• Empathy and relationship: 

  • establish a working relationship 

• Information Gathering: 

  • client’s history, current functioning, early memories

• Clarification: 

  • client’s core beliefs about self, others, and life

• Encouragement: 

  • encourage progress towards a new style of life

• Interpretation and recognition: 

  • helping client to reconsider their functional finalism

• Knowing: 

  • client can monitor their behavior with less input from therapist

Adlerian Therapy Stages (second set):

• Emotional Breakthrough: 

  • old patterns are discovered via imagery (imagining) and roleplay, developing behavior skills about how to be empathetic, something foreign

• Doing differently: 

  • client behaves differently in real life

• Reinforcement: 

  • client begins to pay more attention to others’ needs rather than their own

• Social Interest: 

  • a sense of community is established

• Goal redirection: 

  • a new goal to strive for

• Support and launching: 

  • client strives towards new goal in the spirit of social interest

Fictional Finalism:

• “As If” you had options and can live your life the way you want

• What we think about during final days

• The nature of goals/ideals, whether imagined or determining how to achieve them (spirit of social interest) instead of past experiences

• Guided Self-Ideal

  • Subjective and personally meaningful

  • Memento mori: How you stay directionally correct to end state when confronted with a difficult decision

  • Created by the individual to navigate through life’s obstacles

Memento mori

How you stay directionally correct to end state when confronted with a difficult decision

Basic Thoughts of Erikson

• Provided some common used terms like identity crisis

  • Like adler

• Erikson spoke more about how cultures help guide personality development

• Limitations: Some descriptions are somewhat ambiguous

  • Willpower

  • Wisdom

• Diverged from freud

  • Development covers lifespan

  • Emphasized ego more than id

  • Introduced impact of culture on individuals
    

Erikson developmental stages

• Universal- all people encounter them

• Culture organizes the experience of its members

• Cultures not only provide setting in which crises are encountered by provide continuing support for the ego development that has occurred

  • Especially when threatened in later life

Psychosocial stages:

• Psychosocial refers to culture’s expectation, refers to union of Freud’s physical yearnings (id) and cultural forces

• Epigenetic Principle: describes the process of development

  • Emerging one on top of another over time

• Resolution depends on the positive to negative ratio

  • Positive outcomes yield virtues 

Crises:

• rise to the surface when the environment makes demands of us

• Involves a shift in perspective, new strengths can develop

• Can choose adaptive or maladaptive solutions

  • More adaptive responses lead to virtues

• Passage is not automatic, and environment can help or hinder our progress – 

  • Ritualizations help resolve a conflict

    • E.g., social opportunities to support growth 

  • Ritualisms don’t: They are too rigid 

    • E.g., elitism

Stage 1: Trust vs. Mistrust 

• Basic trust: The sense that others are dependable and will provide what is needed

  •  Food, milk, and sensory stimulation

•  Otherwise, basic mistrust is formed – Some sense of mistrust is inevitable, as no parent can provide exactly what is needed exactly when it is needed! (Trust me)

• About caregiving

Stage 2: Autonomy versus Shame/Doubt 

• Child becomes adequate (autonomous) in:

  •  Toilet training (emphasized by Freud)

  •  Ambulation

  •  Interpersonal relationships

•  Otherwise, there is shame in Self

  •  Some degree of Shame is necessary and good, but a high degree of autonomy should prevail

• Feeling confident in ability to do things, need support

Stage 3: Initiative versus Guilt 

• The child begins determining what type of person they are going to be, as they begin to interact more with others (“intruding others’ space”) 

• Child develops a conscience (Freudian)

•  If the child is supported and acts appropriately, they will have more initiative than guilt

Stage 4: Industry versus Inferiority 

• The child “learns to win recognition by producing things.” 

  • If the child perseveres and creates good, quality objects, they will become industrious – If not, this leads to a feeling of inferiority

• About developing abilities

Stage 5: Identity versus Identity Confusion

•  In adolescence, the task is to answer the question, “Who am I?” 

  • Must be agreed upon by individual and society

• Identity confusion: occurs when a coherent identity cannot be established

•  A negative identity may also be established 

  •  Based on social norms

•  A moratorium may be established 

  • Adolescents are encouraged to explore possibilities (e.g., change majors, etc.) 

  • Society provides it to us to get through Stage 5

• Fidelity: Sustaining loyalties despite possible aversive consequences

  • Support your friends

moratorium

• Adolescents are encouraged to explore possibilities (e.g., change majors, etc.) 

• Society provides it to us to get through Stage 5

Fidelity

• Sustaining loyalties despite possible aversive consequences

  • Support your friends

Stage 6: Intimacy vs. isolation

• Cannot occur until identity has been established

• Intimacy is the fusion or merging of identities with a friend or lover

• Kinship/loving

  • One’s own identity is not threatened

• Not the same as sexual intimacy

• DIFFERENT FROM FREUD: Fixation does not equal stagnation, can still work on additional future areas

  • Except from stage 5 to 6 (fixation -> stagnation applies)

• Intimacy increases during early adulthood

Stage 7: Generativity vs Stagnation

• Generativity is interest in guiding the next generation

  • Caring for next gen

• Highly involved in their work and the growth of young people

• Concerned about broad social issues

• Are able to strike a balance between self-serving and societal-serving needs

  • Ex: parenting, teaching, mentoring

• Alternative is stagnation

  • Not caring

• Momentary: someday I will die, Will I have an impact that lasts beyond life?

Stage 8: Integrity vs Despair

• Integrity is being able to look back and say that life was meaningful and valuable

  • Not wishing that things had been different

• Wisdom

• The alternative is despair

Erikson’s Research

• Cross-cultural differences in psychosocial stages

• McClain (1975): South African blacks scored lower of self-identity development than whites

  • To erikson, an indication of ritualism (racism) that prevent them from being able to reach their goals

• Male and Female Differences: 

  • Women emphasize interpersonal issues

  • Men emphasize occupational issues

• Male and Female Similarities:

  • Men and women do not differ in their level of achieved identity

  • Process is different even though result is the same

Erikson’s Differences from Freud:

• De-emphasized the importance of unconsciousness

• Focused on psychosocial stages

• Decreased role of sexual stages

• Fixation doesn’t cause stagnation, generally speaking, but identity must be established for intimacy to occur

Karen Horney’s Background:

• Wrote of the value of women in society

• Went to medical school

• Stress of school/parenthood led to depression

• Freud said she wasn't allowed to join Psychoanalytic institute

  • Created American Institution of Psychoanalysis

Horney vs. Freud

• Psychosexual stages are not entirely correct (penis envy and electra complexes)

• Personality is largely driven by results of interpersonal conflicts (not sexual ones)

• Gender differences are the result of socialization

Normal Personality Development:

• Children develop basic confidence in themselves and others

• Most likely when parents convey:

  • Predictable warmth

  • Interest

  • Respect

Abnormal Development:

• Child feels small helpless, deserted, endangered in a world out to abuse, cheat, attack, humiliate, and betray

• Caused by parents who

  • Belittle

  • Are indifferent

  • Make false promises

  • Abuse

• Leads to basic anxiety (root of neurosis)

  • Freud said this was pushing things into unconscious (repression)

Basic Anxiety:

• A child’s feeling of being isolated and helpless in a hostile world

• Wants to be helpless/dependent, but can’t

• Wants to be angry/aggressive (basic hostility), but can’t

Basic Hostility:

• A reaction to parental neglect or rejection

• Child cannot act in a hostile manner, for fear that it results in further punishment or neglect

  • Child can’t act in a dependent manner for fear of further rejection

• Increased anxiety

  • Child needs parents and wants to approach them

  • But simultaneously hates them and wants to punish them

3 Interpersonal Orientations:

Means of Interpersonal control and coping

• Moving Toward (adler’s getting type)

  • Self-effacing solution

  • Ingratiating, human doormats

  • Support others, find values in relationship with others

  • Going into background, under wave

  • Women!

• Moving against (adler’s ruling type)

  • Expansive solution

  • Aggressive and domineering

  • Becoming better than wave

  • Men!

• Moving away (adler’s avoiding type)

  • Resignation solution

  • Avoid people altogether/ conflict

    • See people as being troublesome and demanding

Moving Toward: Self-effacing

• Morbid dependency: the need for a partner

• Feeling weak and helpless

• Assuming others are superior to themselves

• Sacrificing for others

• Need for love

Moving Against: the expansive solution

• Narcissistic: love their own high self-image

• Perfectionistic 

• Arrogant

• Need to be right, argumentative

• Need for recognition

Moving Away: the detached personality

• Resigned, strive for little

• Desire freedom

• On-looker, detached from emotional experiences

• Self-sufficient and independent

• Remain uninvolved with others

• Need for privacy

Neuroticism

• Everybody changes their stances to others from time to time 

• Neurotic people are unable to shift posture

  • Indiscriminate application to all persons

The Neurotic Needs:

• Moving toward 

  •  For affection and approval 

  • A partner who will take over one’s life 

• Moving Against

  • For power, control over others, or for omnipotence 

  • To exploit others and get the better of them 

  • For social recognition and prestige

  • For personal admiration 

  • For personal achievement

  • For perfection

• Moving Away 

  • To restrict one’s life within narrow borders 

  • For self-sufficiency and independence

Explanation of Neurotic Needs

• None of these needs is abnormal by itself, incessant craving for needs no matter the environment = abnormal

• The overlap with today’s personality disorders is obvious

• Horney categorized the 10 discrete trends into descriptors of personalities (normal + abnormal)

• Neurotic needs resemble healthy values but differ in 4 key ways

  • Disproportionate in intensity

  • Indiscriminate in application to all people

  • Evidence extreme disregard for reality

  • Provoke intense anxiety when unsatisfied

Application to Problems:

• Jealousy

• Tyranny of Shoulds: belief that one should do things

• Neurotic Search for Glory: striving for idealized self

• Fear of Success:

Application to Problems - jealousy

fear of losing a relationship that is viewed as the best means of satisfying an insatiable need for affection and incessant demand for unconditional love

• Value in yourself is the relationship with person

• Jealousy can be normal or pathological

• Pathological = carry-over form childhood neurosis involving unresolved basic anxiety and attachment to parents

Tyranny of Shoulds:

• belief that one should do things

  • Can generate guilt and anxiety

  • Is part of the process of turning away from one’s real self and toward their ideal self

Neurotic Search for Glory:

• striving for idealized self

  • Need for perfection

  • Moving against orientation

Fear of Success:

• belief that women are likely to undermine their abilities because men are competitive and lead women to believe they are bad if they are successful

How neurotic people deal with basic anxiety:

•  use defense mechanisms, some of which we have already studied (Freud) but also some new ones

Major Adjustments to Basic Anxiety:

• Eclipsing the conflict: 

• Detachment

• The Idealized Self

• Externalization (like projection)

Eclipsing the conflict

• raising the opposite to predominance

• Hostile -> Dependent (moving towards)

• Dependent -> hostile (moving against)

Detachment

• Moving away from others to reduce the conflict 

The Idealized Self

• Move away from real self

• The unique, alive, and personal center of ourselves

• Moving towards someone ideal (ex: less helpless and more perfect)

  • For these people, their real self is not valuable 

Externalization (like projection)

• Projects inner conflicts onto the outside world

  • Ex: if someone feels rage, they get irritated easily by others, believe others are irritated with us, experience somatic complaints

Blind Spots

• Being unaware of overt behavior that is incompatible with idealized self-image

  • Ex: patient who shot at co-workers using finger

Compartmentalization:

• Incompatible behaviors are recognized only in certain areas of our lives but not in other areas

  • Ex: patient who saw “ruthless” behavior at work but not in family

Arbitrary Rightness

•  (moving against)

  • Declaring, arbitrarily and dogmatically that you are right

    • Inner doubts are denies and external challenges are discredited

Elusiveness 

• Exact opposite of arbitrary rightness

• Do not commit to any opinion

  • Decreases the chance of experiencing conflict

• Agree with person, no argument

Karen Horney and Gender Roles

• Gender roles are culturally, not biologically formed

  • Men have stamped success as their domain

  • Unlike psychosexual stages

• Gender roles assign power or dominance for males and submissiveness/nurturance for females

  • Strategies to influence partner is related to strength: income, education, and age

    • More powerful member is more likely to act in an autocratic manner

    • Person without those things will be submissive

  • Can see in same-sex and opposite-sex relationships

• Penis envy is cultural

  • Women envy power that is typically held by men

• Once thought that women who were professionals suffered personality disorders (had penis envy, had masculinity complex)

  • Absence of masculine qualities (assertiveness) that predicts decreased well-being

Horney Major Contributions

• Childhood may be a time of anxious helplessness and hidden anger towards powerful but often indifferent adults

• Strategies to cope with these feelings may alienate the person from their true self

• Neurotic personality disorder cannot simply be, but must

  • Avoid others (move away)

  • Attack others (move against)

  • Comply with others (move towards)

Therapy

• Provides security to delve into unhappy or painful topics

• Therapist encourages patients to explore current relationships, including expectations that affect relationships 

• Therapist/Client Relationship is explored, which allows patient to understand assumptions about themselves and their parents

• Therapist helps patient explore how childhood experiences influence current expectations, perceptions, and emotions

  • Root of neurosis

• Are these images adaptive? If not, must form new images

Allport Basic Facts about Life / Thinking:

• What can be done to improve wellbeing of kids 

• Broke from psychoanalysis and emphasized normal development

  • Little to say about childhood trauma and unconscious

  • Dissertation was first to be done in US on the components of personality

• Wanted to bridge psychology and social sector

• Worked in social services

• Basic tenets

  • Psychology should focus on psychologically healthy people

  • Emphasis should be on consciousness and rationality

  • Emphasis on present (where is person now), not past (how we got to be this way)

Personality According to Allport:

• Dynamic organization of psychophysiological systems within person that determines their unique adjustments to environment

  • Each person is unique

  • Broad theories need not apply

  • Idiographic, about individuals

Allport on Traits

• Stable and individual differences

• Not present at birth, everyone born with a blank state, but develop from learning, maturation and development

  • In actuality, 50% is attributed to DNA

• Different habit (involve just specific behaviors) or attitudes (for or against a specific object)

Common Trait

• All people may be compared on this dimension, common to all people

  • Ex: Introversion to extroversion line

Individual Trait

• Not possessed by all people, could be possessed by just one person

Personal Traits

• Cardinal

• central

• secondary

Cardinal Trait

• single trait determines everything about person’s behavior any time of day

  • Eminent trait, ruling passion, master sentiment

    • Christ-like 

    • Chauvinistic: impact all behaviors no matter who you interact iwth

Central Trait

• Frequently evidenced in behavior (ex: extroverted)

Secondary Trait

• Very circumscribed

  • Ex: athletic 

• Small faced of someone’s life

Method of Inferring Traits:

• Language, use of dictionary

• Behavior 

• Personal documents

• Personality measurement

Method of Inferring Traits: Language

• Believe psych should begin with the wisdom of common experience

• 4.5% (17,593) words may be classified as traits (descriptions of behavior) 

  • Neutral (assertive)

  • Temporary moods (alarmed, ashamed)

  • Convey social or characterological judgment 

    • Ex: adorable

  • Miscellaneous

    • Developmental conditions

    • capacities (genius)

Method of Inferring Traits: Behavior

• Behavior infers traits/interests

• Also confers energy level

  • Ex: slow, graceful, etc.

Method of Inferring Traits: Personal Documents

• The coding of letters, diaries, public statements, etc

• Case studies, autobiographies

Method of Inferring Traits: Personality Measurement

Letters from Jenny

effort to conduct idiographic research

• 301 letters written by woman to her son;s friend (allport)

• Determined to have 8 basic traits

  • quarrelsome/ suspicious

  • Self-centered

  • Independent - autonomous

  • Aggressive

Method of Inferring Traits: Personality measurement

• Questionnaires

  • Ex: allport-vernon-lindzey study of values (60 QS)

• Wanted to study the individual 

• Factor analysis “loses the individual in the average”

  • Across a lot of people, how do we understand individual differences among broad group of people, not interested in just one, differences between everyone

CMHO and MCSD:

• Marlow Crown is a measure that decreases score you expect from someone when asking about negative aspects of personality

• Low score = person wants to hide negative personality

• High on both = suggestive of future cardiovascular disease

Stage Theory:

• Bodily Sense (infancy)

  • What are your body parts, ex: drinking liquid cools stomach

  • The bodily me

• Self-identity (1,2 - 4,5)

  • Understanding self as separate person

  • Recognizing themselves by name, with enduring individuality

• Ego enhancement (2,3 - ??)

  • Self-esteem through achievement (as well as humiliation and selfishness)

• Ego extension (3,4 - ??)

  • Personal possessions

• Self-image (4,6 - ??)

  • Understand abilities, status, roles, as well as aspirations for future

  • Inflated due to ego enhancement

  • Aware of acting in a good or bad manner

• Rational agent (6-12)

  • Learns problem solving and practical skills, rationality and logic

• Propriate Striving (adolescence)

  • Planning for future, setting long-term goals

  • People get rational

• The Knower (Adulthood)

  • Integrates the previous seven aspects together

  • Possessions become valued interests and causes

  • Unity is characteristic of mature, adult personalities

Qualities of a normal, mature adult:

• Extensions of the sense of self:

  • Having many interests: can lose oneself in contemplation, recreation, and loyalty

    • Flow 

  • Being able to talk for half a day without revealing their occupation

• Warm human interaction

  • Sincere and friendly, not proscribed by rigid roles/expectations

• Realistic Perception, Skills, and Assignments

  • Unrealistic optimism or pessimism is avoided 

• Self-Objectification: Insight and Humor

  • See themselves accurately and have insight into themselves (often adding sense of humor

• Unifying philosophy of life

  • Being social useful

  • Ones individual demand also meets demands of society

Unitas Multiplex:

• Unity of multiples

• Integration of diverse elements of personality

  • Interests

  • Traits

  • Biological predispositions (brain)

• Urged psychologists to study the individual as a whole

  • Stressed idiographic research in this regard

Trait Development:

• Whatever the origin of a trait, it will eventually function on its own (functional autonomy)

• Although we may begin to act a specific way because of a childhood experience, it will eventually become autonomous

  • Ex: although we may become handy for external praise, we eventually appreciate/value our skills for what they are and continue to work on them

Personality Consistency:

• People are consistent because:

  • Proprium: all the ways in which people project themselves into the future ( a sense of self)

    • Unites a person’s attitudes, perceptions, and intentions

    • Pursuing future goals leads to consistent behavior

    • Even if goals is tweaked, you always go in that direction consistently

Raymond Cattell: Basic Facts

• First nomothetic person

• Interested in mental testing/cognitive abilities as well as intelligence

Factor Analysis:

• Procedure for analysing a set of correlations among various measures into a simpler underlying pattern, termed a factor structure

  • Gather info via observations 

  • compute correlations between variables

  • Identify significant correlations

  • Name the factors

• Interpretation may be difficult

  • 3 things that relate

• High correlations may not mean they are directly related

  • Milk price, age, world temp 

2 Ideas Regarding the Research Approach:

• Data Types:

• Data Analysis:

Data Types:

• Q-data

  • Questionnaire

• L-data

  • Life data

  • Behavioral observation

• T-data

  • Test data

  • Lab tests like physiological data

Data Analysis:

• R-technique: 

  • Unusually with Q-data

  • Hundreds of people take questionnaires and then factor analysis data

  • Correlation 

• DR-technique:

  • Same as R but people take the test twice to assess change. See how changes relate to one another

  • Differential R, change in R

• P-technique:

  • One person over and over, used to study states not traits (states change, traits are stable)

Surface Trait

• Traits that are at the level of observable behavior, quantifiable

Source Trait

• A primary factor derived from factor analysis

• Shared variance (degree which things change)

  • Ability trait: how a person works to a desired goal (ex: intelligence)

  • Temperament Trait: general style with which someone carries out tasks (ex: positive effect)

  • Dynamic Trait: provides energy and direction to action; motivations and interests

Ability Trait

• how a person works to a desired goal (ex: intelligence)

Temperament Trait:

• general style with which someone carries out tasks (ex: positive effect)

Dynamic Trait:

provides energy and direction to action; motivations and interests (Ergs and Metaergs)