Chapter 12: Personality & Individual Differences

Personality

Unique long-term pattern of thinking, emotions, and behavior

Temperament

general pattern of attention, arousal, and mood evident from birth

self-concept

subjective appraisal that consists of all ideas, perceptions, stories, and feelings about who you are

Individualistic Cultures

• Typically western countries

• Value Independence

• self-esteem based on personal success, outstanding performance

  • Value assertiveness. “stick out”

Collectivist Cultures

• Typically eastern countries

• Value Interdependence

• self-esteem based on secure sense of belonging to social groups

  • Prefer subtlety. “blend in”

Unit 1 Theories of Personality

Psychoanalysis Perspective on Personality

• Freud’s approach to human personality centers on his psychoanalytic theory, which suggests that personality is shaped by unconscious processes  and early childhood experiences

ID

Instincts

• Predetermined psychological needs, drives, and instincts. Impulsive and based on primal desires.

  • Exists in our Unconscious

Ego

Reality

• Ability to interact with the world, based in rationalism and realism. Balances ID and Super Ego

  • Mostly exists in the conscious part of us

Super Ego

Morality

• Our moral side that forms based on societal norms and rules. What one should do.

  • Mostly pre-conscious, but exists in both

Carl Jung and Jungian Archetypes

-The founder of Analytical Psychology

Personality Types

• Extroverted thinking

• Introverted thinking

• Extroverted feeling

• Introverted feeling

• Extroverted intuition

• Introverted intuition

• Extroverted sensation

• Introverted sensation

Carl Jung’s Model of Typology

Extroversion vs Introversion

Behaviorist Perspective on Personality

• Behavioral personality theories state personality is a collection of stable learned behaviors.

•  remember, John B. Watson, B.F. Skinner, Ivan Pavlov, Albert Bandura, and Edward Thornlike are prominent behaviorist figures

• Think about what traits have been encouraged or discouraged throughout your life.

According to Dollard and Miller, habits make up structure of personality

• Drive: Stimulus that moves a person to action

• Cue: Signals from the environment 

• Response: guided by signals to bring about reward

• Reward: Postive reinforcement (operant conditioning)

Social Learning Theory

Social theories expand on the behaviorist perspective

shifting focus to cultural and societal forces

-Albert Bandura

• emphasizes the role of modeling (observation and imitatio) in leaning behavior and shaping personality

Humanistic Theories

Humanism: Focuses on human experience, problems, potentials, and ideals

Free will: ability to choose that is not determined by genetics, learning, or unconscious forces

Human nature: Optimistic about the traits, qualities, potentials, and behavior patterns most characteristic

Emphasizes growth potential

Subjective experience: Private perceptions of reality that determine our experience in the world

Maslow and Self-Actualization

Self-actualization: Continuous search for personal fulfillment

1. Be willing to change

2. Take responsibility'

3. Examine your motives

4. Experience honestly and directly

5. Use positive experiences

6. Be prepared to be different 

7. Get involved

8. Assess your progress

→ According to Maslow, we develop our identity and personality through this pursuit

Rogers and Self Theory

-Living in harmony with deepest feelings and impulses

Self: Changing perception of personal identity

Self-image: Subjective perception of body and personality'

Ideal Self: Person we want to be

Key Components:

Conditions of Worth: Positive and negative evaluation cause us to develop internal standards

• We work to win love and approval, or risk rejection

unconditional positive regard: complete, unqualified acceptance of another as they are

Positive self-regard: capacity for self-esteem, positive self-evaluation

Personality Traits

difference in thought, feelings, and behavior that are relatively stable:

• Create individual differences

• Allow us to predict how others will react

Trait-Situation Interaction

external circumstances influence expression of a personality trait

Central traits

Basic building blocks and core characteristics of personality

Secondary traits

less visible and may emerge only in certain situations or under specific conditions

-They can include preferences, attitudes, and habits

Hans Eysenck

Focused on the most genetically-linked traits. Likely influenced by Jung’s Model of Typology

-Personality composed of largely two factors:

• Introversion vs extroversion

• Stable vs unstable

-Influenced the Big Five and other models

The Big Five Model 

only a handful of characteristics account for most differences in personality

Extroversion

how outgoing a person is

Agreeableness

how friendly, nurturant, and caring a person is

Conscientiousness

Self-discipline, responsibility, achievement

Neuroticism

negative, upsetting emotions

openness to experience

creative and open to new ideas

The HEXACO Model- Diversity in Personality

Most studies on Big Five used Western samples- HEXACO had an inclusive focus

Sixth dimension of personality: Honesty/humility 

(truthful, frank, honest, unassuming, sincere)

1. Honesty- Humility (H)

2. Emotionality (E)

3. eXtraversion (X)

4. agreeableness (A)

5. Conscientiousness (C)

6. openness to experience (O)

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator:

(personality assessment but also relates to cognitive functioning)

• Introversion/Extroversion

• Sensing/ Intuition

• Thinking/ Feeling

• Judging/Perceiving

Interviews

• Direct questioning to learn about a person’s life, traits, or mental state

• unstructured interview is informal

• structured includes planned series of questions

• Halo effect: tendency to generalize favorable or unfavorable impressions to the subject’s entire personality

Direct Observation

• Watching a person to determine specific traits 

• misperception and observer biases can be a problem

• behavior may change of subject knows they are being watched

Personality Inventories

tests designed to reveal personality characteristics

• More objective than observation or interviews

• Reliability: yields a stable score over time (consistency)

• Validity: measure traits it was designed to assess (“accuracy”)

• Norms: Standards used to compare an individual’s performance with others

Projective Tests

Person is asked to describe ambiguous or unstructured stimuli or make up stories about them. Notably, this test is NOT statistically reliable despite being commonly used

Rorschach Inkblot Test:

• Content less important parts of the inkblot used organize images

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• Person is shown a sketch and asked to make up a story about it

• Content of story is analyzed

• Focus is on how people feel, how they interact, events that led up to the incident in the sketch, and how the story ends

Nature (Genetics)

• Personality traits are polygenic (affected by multiple genes)

• All personality traits are subject to heredity and other biological influences (epigenetics)

• Twin studies (reunited twins are very much alike even when reared apart)

Nurtue (Environment)

• Social and Cultural contexts and influences

• Family dynamics (parenting and attschment styles)

• Life Experience (trauma, stressors, impactful relationship, etc)

Whole Picture

personality is a unique blend of heredity and environment, nature and nurture, biology and culture