BP

Personality – Chapter 11 (Discovering Psychology, 10th ed.)

What Is Personality?

  • Definition: Personality = an individual’s unique, relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, behaving.
  • Key theme: Explains similarities/differences, why each person is unique.

Major Perspectives on Personality

  • Psychoanalytic
    • Focus: unconscious forces, sexual/aggressive instincts, early childhood.
  • Humanistic
    • Focus: free will, self-awareness, psychological growth, inherent goodness.
  • Social-Cognitive
    • Focus: conscious thought, self-regulation, situational influences.
  • Trait
    • Focus: describing & measuring stable dispositions.

The Psychoanalytic Perspective (Sigmund Freud)

  • Dynamic theory: Behavior = constant interplay of conflicting forces at 3 awareness levels.
    • Conscious: immediate awareness.
    • Preconscious: easily retrievable info.
    • Unconscious: difficult-to-retrieve thoughts, urges.
  • Structure of personality
    • Id (pleasure principle) – impulsive, irrational, unconscious; present at birth.
    • Ego (reality principle) – rational mediator; partly conscious; negotiates external demands.
    • Superego – moralistic, self-evaluative; internalized parental/societal rules; partly conscious by ages 5–6.
  • Anxiety & Ego Defense Mechanisms
    • When id or superego overwhelm ego → anxiety.
    • Ego distorts reality to reduce anxiety.
    • Repression (basic), displacement, sublimation, rationalization, projection, reaction formation, denial, regression.
  • Psychosexual Stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital)
    • Each stage = focus of id energies on body zone; conflicts may lead to fixation.
    • Oedipus complex (phallic): unconscious sexual desire for opposite-sex parent; resolved via identification.
  • Fixation
    • Unresolved conflict → frustration or overindulgence → persistent traits linked to stage.

Neo-Freudians

  • Shared emphasis on unconscious & early childhood but diverged on:
    1. Less sexual motivation focus.
    2. Greater role of lifespan & social relationships.
    3. More optimistic view of human nature.
  • Carl Jung: collective unconscious & archetypes; broader psychic energy.
  • Karen Horney: basic anxiety from disturbed relationships; cultural factors; “womb envy.”
  • Alfred Adler: universal feelings of inferiority → striving for superiority; compensation; social context.
  • Evaluation of Psychoanalysis
    • Limits: scant empirical evidence, unfalsifiable, sexism.
    • Contributions: unconscious processes, early experience impact, impulse regulation research.

The Humanistic Perspective

  • Emerged as “third force” opposed to psychoanalysis & behaviorism.
  • Core assumptions: innate goodness, personal growth, subjective experience, self-concept.
  • Carl Rogers
    • Actualizing tendency: innate drive to maintain/enhance organism.
    • Self-concept: perceptions/beliefs about self; early forming.
    • Need for positive regard:
    • Conditional → incongruence.
    • Unconditional → congruence, fully functioning person.
  • Evaluation
    • Strengths: influenced therapy, education, parenting; self-concept research.
    • Limits: difficult to test, overly optimistic, based on philosophy/observation.

The Social-Cognitive Perspective

  • Emphasizes conscious, self-regulated, situationally specific behavior; uses experimental methods.
  • Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory
    • Reciprocal determinism: \text{Person} \leftrightarrow \text{Behavior} \leftrightarrow \text{Environment} mutually influence.
    • Observational learning, cognitive processes, self-efficacy beliefs drive personality.
    • Self-efficacy: belief in capability to meet situational demands; boosts persistence & success.
  • Contrasts
    • Versus Freud: behavior driven by conscious goals, not innate destructive instincts.
  • Evaluation
    • Strengths: empirically based, highlights self-regulation & personal responsibility.
    • Limits: lab simplicity, underplays unconscious emotion & conflict.

The Trait Perspective

  • Trait: stable predisposition along continuum.
  • Surface traits: observable clusters (≈4,000 words).
  • Source traits: fundamental, universal, fewer.
  • Raymond Cattell: factor analysis → 16 personality factors (e.g., reserved↔outgoing, timid↔venturesome).
  • Hans Eysenck: 3 source dimensions – introversion–extraversion, neuroticism–stability, psychoticism; linked traits to biology.
  • Five-Factor Model (FFM/OCEAN)
    1. Openness (down-to-earth ↔ imaginative)
    2. Conscientiousness (lazy ↔ hardworking)
    3. Extraversion (reserved ↔ affectionate)
    4. Agreeableness (antagonistic ↔ acquiescent)
    5. Neuroticism (calm ↔ worrying)
    • Cross-cultural, biologically influenced, relatively stable yet life-experienced moderation.
  • HEXACO Model (Ashton & Lee): adds Honesty–Humility; reallocates anger.
  • Neuroscience Findings
    • Distinct brain activation patterns: extraversion → positive stimuli; neuroticism → negative stimuli.
    • MRI links traits to specific structures/functions.
  • Behavioral Genetics
    • Twin/adoption studies show heritability for extraversion, neuroticism, etc.
  • Animal Personality
    • Documented in >200 species; behaviors cluster, stable, individual variation.
  • Evaluation of Trait Perspective
    • Strength: descriptive consensus.
    • Limits: doesn’t explain development, ignores other issues (motivation, change processes).

Assessing Personality

  • Two broad categories: projective tests & self-report inventories.

Projective Tests

  • Present ambiguous stimuli; aim to reveal unconscious motives/conflicts.
  • Rorschach Inkblot Test: 10 inkblots; interpretation subjective; questionable reliability/validity.
  • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): create stories for scenes; projects personal motives; scoring subjective.
  • Strengths: rich qualitative info, therapy facilitation.
  • Limits: examiner influence, subjective scoring, low reliability/predictive validity.

Self-Report Inventories (Objective Tests)

  • Paper-and-pencil or digital questionnaires; responses compared to norms.
  • MMPI-2 / MMPI-3: measures personality & psychopathology; includes validity scales.
  • CPI: assesses traits in normal populations; predicts achievement, delinquency, job performance.
  • MBTI: categorizes 16 types based on information processing, decision making; criticized for reliability & validity; questionable vocational utility.
  • Strengths: standardization, normed scoring, generally higher reliability/validity vs projectives.
  • Limits: potential for deception, response sets, inaccurate self-perception.

Possible Selves & Motivation

  • Possible selves: vivid, futuristic images of what one might become (hoped-for, dreaded).
  • Influence behavior & persistence, even if unrealistic;
  • Closely tied to self-efficacy beliefs; sustaining motivation.

Comparative Summary of Perspectives & Key Theorists

  • Psychoanalytic: Freud, Jung, Horney, Adler.
  • Humanistic: Rogers, Maslow (hierarchy of needs, self-actualization).
  • Social-Cognitive: Bandura.
  • Trait: Cattell (16PF), Eysenck (3D), McCrae & Costa (FFM), Ashton & Lee (HEXACO).

Ethical, Philosophical, Practical Implications

  • Ethics: accusations of sexism (Freud), eugenics (Eysenck, Cattell), test misuse (MBTI vocational decisions).
  • Philosophical: debates on human nature’s goodness (Rogers) vs destructiveness (Freud); determinism vs free will.
  • Practical: applications in therapy (psychoanalytic & humanistic), education, career counseling, personnel selection, clinical diagnosis.