Trait and Humanism Theory

10:57 AM

Typology System

• Goal is to determine how many types of people there are and identify each person's type.

• Galen's humor theory- relative concentrations for four humors or bodily fluids are responsible for personality traits

  • "sanguine"- blood

  • "phlegmatic"- phlegm- cold, allude, socially withdrawn

  • "choleric"- yellow bile- anger, quick temperate

  • " melancholic"- black bile- depressed

• Another approach based on physique:

  • Endomorph - obese (jolly)

  • Mesomorph- muscular (adventurous)

  • Ectomorph- fragile (self-conscious, private, introvert)

    • NO RESEARCH TO SUPPORT ANY OF THESE

Trait approach

• Identifies personality characteristics that can be represented along a continuum

• Trait: categorizes people according to degree to which they manifest a particular characteristics

  • Assumptions: personality characteristics are relatively stable over time and across situations.

    • Trait researchers are not concerned about you as individual, but what side the score ( like more an extraverted side… what the average score is for the person in that situation.) (Ex: introverted vs. extroverted giving a speech)

    • Shown on a bell curve

Gordon Allport

• Identified 2 approaches trait researchers might use:

  • Nomothetic approach- a method of understanding personality that compares many people along the same personality dimensions

    • This approach seeks to uncover universal patterns in behavior, personality, or other psychological aspects by examining groups of people rather than individual cases.

    • Common traits- those that apply to everyone

  • Idiographic approach- a method of studying personality through in-depth analysis of one individual and the dimensions relevant to that person's personality

• Central trials- the 5 to 10 traits that best describe a person's personality

  • ex: kind, compassionate

• Cardinal trait- single trait that dominates

  • Most of us do not have the "cardinal trait"

  • Cardinal traits are rare because few people have one defining characteristic so strong that it dominates their entire personality and actions

  • Ex: Mother Teresa's compassion/ Albert Einstein's Curiosity

• Secondary traits- traits other than the central traits that describe a person's personality

  • Doesn't come out all the time

  • Ex: DR. V.S calm until she's mad and throws a hissy fit (house)

• How do children develop their sense of self?

  • Proprium- In Allport's theory, the aspect of personality containing all the features of the self.

  • Functional autonomy- motive may be independent of its organisms

    • Ex: eating for a variety of reasoning: socially)

Henry Murray

• Personology:

  • Blended psychoanalytic and trait concepts

  • Focused on psychogenic needs

    • These needs are not based on biological drives (like hunger or thirst) but are psychological motives that influence personality.

    • Readiness to respond in a certain way under certain given condition.

  • People can be described in terms of a personal hierarchy of needs

  • Common needs:

    • Succorance- to seek aid, protection, sympathy

      • (Dr. V.S story when getting married didn't like the traditional vows "I will sucker you" sucker you means to comfort and protect for you)

Raymond Cattel

• Focused on discovering how many basic traits there are

• Used factor analysis- a statistical procedure used to determine the number of procedure used to determine the number of dimensions in a data set.

  • Exploratory factor analysis- is atheoretical, just start with a large pool of items

  • Confirmatory factor analysis- are more theory driven and seek to confirm a hypothesized factor structure

    • The problem that factor analysis is only good as the person that is running it.

• Cattell used factor analysis to determine how many basic elements exist in personality

  • Source traits- are the basic traits that make up personality

• Cattell used a number of sources for his data

  • L-data: life record data (things like report cards, job evaluations)

  • T or OT-Data: how people behave in life-like situations (he would have people run their finger through a maze and how quickly you could do it depended on your assertiveness)

  • Q-data: from questionnaires

    • Identified 16 source traits- 3 categories

      • Ability traits- allow to perform effectively in the world

      • Temperament traits- involved in emotional life

      • Dynamic traits- involved in our motivational life

    • Developed the 16 PF- personality questionnaire (still used today)

• The big 5 Personality Factors:

  • Neuroticism

    • Places people according to their emotional stability and personal adjustment

    • People with high scores are more vulnerable to anxiety and depression

    • Individual with low scores tend to be calm and well adjusted

    • They don't cope well with stressors

    • "oh poor me" all the time

  • Extraversion

    • Places extreme extraverts at one end and extreme introverts at the other

    • Extraverts are vert sociable

    • Introverts are reserved and independent people

      • Introverts tend do better in academics

      • Extroverts more sexually active and more suggestible in that sense to fixate on that.

  • Openness

    • Involves active imagination, divergent thinking, and intellectually disability

    • People high on the high end are unconventional and independent thinkers

    • Individuals on the low end prefer the familiar rather than the imaginative

  • Agreeableness

    • People with high scores are helpful, trusting, and sympathetic

    • Individuals with low scores tend to be antagonistic and skeptical

  • Conscientiousness

    • People on the high end are organized, plan, oriented, and determined

    • Individuals on the low are careless, easily distracted from tasks, and undependendable

    • Referred as will to achieve or simply work

      • Ongoing questions related to the Big Five Model

        • Debate about what the five factors mean

        • Disagreement about the structure of the five factor model

        • Researchers have looked into the stability of the five factors overtime

        • When to use scores from Big Five measures vs scores from specific trait scales

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• Situation VS. Trait Controversy

  • Walter Mischel 

  • Trait measures do not predict behavior well because both the personal and the situation are related to behavior

    • Ex: Intend to diet those measures don't measure within take of calories.

  • There' no behavior sampling we don't know how well this correlates with actual behavior; there also a problem with overinterpretation people these measure do not adequately predict people's behavior changes with the situation--- basically there not going to do a good job of predicting what you're going to do.

  • In general they have looked at sort with behavior prediction how stable is that based on your personality chacteristics ( do traits really predict stable behaviors overtime or how much does the environment influence it)

  • Person by situation approach: Individual traits as well as situations determines behavior.

  • There is very little evidence for cross-situational consistency

    • Well you tell a lie to your parents does not determine if you're going to steal

      • According to behaviorist; your future behavior is your past behavior.

        • Not an either or situation

        • Keep in mind: not all situations are the same; how well they interact

      • Personality traits on correlate with behavior by 0.3%.

      • We tend to consistent behaviors that aren’t really there.

        • We see people in one situation or one role; assume people act consistent

    • We rely too much on the scores of these measures

• In Support of the Trait Approach

  • Measuring behavior: strong links between personality traits and behavior is not established because researchers don't measure behavior correctly

    • Aggregate data

  • Single trait can predict a person's behavior if that trait is important, or centra;, for the person inclusion of secondary trait, dilutes the correlation between the trait score and the behavior

    • You have to more robust assessment; you can't just look at one thing

  • Importance of 10% of the Variance:

    • Considering the complexity of factors that influence behavior, ability to explain 10% of variance should be considered good enough

      • Minium is 24 hour recall

    • Studying behavior

      • Look at behavior week to week

    • An one item measure sucks!!!

    • In general personality theories argue that a more Central Trait is going to be better a predicting your behavior more than a secondary trait

• Application: The Big 5 in the Workplace

  • Employers use scores from personality tests to make hiring and promotion decisions

    • Critics complain that employers misinterpret test scores when making these decisions

  • Research provides stronger evidence for the relationship between personality and job performance

  • Research indicates that conscientiousness may be the best predictor of job performance

    

    • Highly conscientious people are organized, hardworking, persistent and achievement oriented.

  • People high in agreeableness are trusting, cooperative, and helptful

    • Work well in team jobs

  • Extraverts have an edge in the business world over introverts

  • Test scores of applicants on the BIG 5 personality dimensions are use when making hiring decision.

• Assessment: Self Report Inventories

  • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

    • Prototypic self-report inventory used by clinical psychologists

    • Revised version, MMPI-2, was published in 1989

    • Widely used in clinical assessment tools

    • Psychologists debate the validity of scales

  • Scoring and interpretation:

    • Profile analysis- look at pattern of scores to interpret

    • Content interpretation- examining the supplementary or content scales

    • Look at the top 2 scores

The Roots of Humanism

• Humanism- Existential philosophy focuses on issues such as free will, meaning of life, and uniqueness of humans

  • Called the third wave

• Sartre- humans are free to choose; we can escape our possibilities to free choice

  • You can't say you have no choice

• Gave rise to existential psychologists

  • Frequently focus on existential anxiety- feelings of dread and panic that follow the realization that our lives have no meaning

  • Free will- extremely important in humanism

  • The lasting impact of Rogers this idea of the reality of situation… its being able to understand how the patient sees the world

  • In general existential philosophy focuses on the human experiences  

Humanistic psychotherapies share the following characteristics:

• Personal responsibility

  • People are responsible for what happens to them

• The here and now

  • People can't become fully functioning individuals when they live their lives as it happens

• The phenomenology of the individual

  • Phenomenal field- everything experienced by a person at any given point in time

    • Ex: " if you need to be accepted by your mom" you might be hypersensitive, more likely to perceive her as being angry

  • Phenomenal self- the part of the phenomenal field experienced as "I"

• Personal Growth

  • People are motivated to progress toward some ultimately satisfy state of being

  • Self-actualization (Maslow)- a state of personal growth in which people fulfill their true potential

  • Fully functioning person (Rogers)- a psychologically healthy person who able to enjoy life as completely as possible

Personality Theory:

• Need for positive regard- universal basic need for love, acceptance, and approval from others

  • Unconditional positive regard: the granting of love and approval regardless of the individual's behavior

  • Conditional positive regard: the granting of love and acceptance only when behaving in accordance with the parents' wishes, or when parents withdraw love if the child misbehaves.

    • We fundamentally want that love from our caregivers; ongoing way your caregiver interacted with you

  • Self becomes disorganized when there is incongruence between self and experience

    • Congruence- the person's self-concept is in agreement with reality.

      • "the good one"

    • Incongruence- degree of discrepancy between self-concept and actual experience

      • When they rejected it causes a lot of anxiety and aren't able to enhance who they really are

      • (Dr.V.S being a 'proper' girl for Christmas she is incongruence with herself because its not who she really is)

  • Conditions of worth- evaluating one's own experience based on beliefs or values of others, may limit development.

    • Evaluate your world in what other people want from me

    • "I have to do this to keep mommy happy"

    • Everyone has conditions of worth it when your many conditions of worth is when you're not a fully functioning person

      • Roger's theory- looking at parenting styles

        • Children who have authoritarian parenting are more likely unstable, progressive, more prone to having psychological disorders

        • Their view of reality is what determines the outcome

        • How the patient see's there world. What determines their functioning contains their reality; they perceived it as horrible then that's how they perceived that way.

          • Mothers who are more loving have children who have better self-esteem; unconditional positive regard- showing interest in their child see's that they are worthy. Parents who have self-esteem children have stricter rules. Parents who change up their rules were harsh on their child then not and using punishment and not reinforcement.

          • Democratic parenting is when they let you off the edge a little

          • Reinforcement is better than punishment

Application Therapy

• Relies on growth potential- capacity for competence

  • Roger's thought on therapy: its about that environment that allow for patients needs the "right environment" involves necessary and sufficient conditions for bringing about change:(we are only look at 3 of the 8)

    • Unconditional positive regard:

      • therapist must except the client without judgement. Accept them as a person; you don't have to agree with what choices they make but you have to accept it.

        • Self-determination respect the way they live their life. Giving them that thing they didn't get from their parents.

    • Empathy/ Accurate Empathic Understanding:

      • Accurate empathy refers to the therapist's ability to see the world as the client does to convey that the world as the client does and to convey that understanding to the client

        • Interested and trying to understand; truly trying to understand their world their view their perspective. How we can show interest:

          • Nodding

          • Eye contact

          • Reflection of feeling

    • Genuineness (Congruence)

      • Authentic in therapy

        • Ex: therapist DR. VS worked with would let them call her whenever and then she would fire them)

• Maslow:

  • "happy side of personality"

  • Turned self-actualization

    • Deficiency motive- a need that is reduced when the object of need is attained

      • EX: we try to receive these things and the need is met

      • They why your going to do something

    • Growth needs: a need that leads to personal growth and that persists after the need object.

      • You don't need to it to survive

  • Motivation and the Hierarchy needs:

    • Hierarchy of needs- order in which human needs demand attention.

      • Physiological

        • The most demanding thing

        • Needs to we do it (ex: food, water, air, sleep)

      • Safety needs-

        • protection, structure, order; having somewhere to stay. We don't have it we need it; structure in your world that gives you stability

      • Belongingness and love needs

        • D-love- based on deficiency- need to satisfy the emptiness we experience without out

        • B-love- unselfish, no possessive based on growth needs rather than deficiency needs (growth need)

      • Esteem needs

        • Not someone around demanding; earning the respect from other people

      • Need for self-actualization

        • Most of us don't achieve self-actualization- but we are all trying to get their; we have need to want to try to be better

        • Oversimplification- not only one motivation

          • Behavior is result of multiple motivations

        • Elenor Rosevelt, albert Enstine- he thought the people filled self-actualization. They accept themselves for who they are; accept their weakness and try to fix them. They don’t bind to social others; they define who they are, not what others expect from them

          • (have few friends, sense of humor, strong needs for solitude, express continued appreciation for life's experiences, attract followers)

    • The study of psychologically healthy people:

      • Peak experience

      • Job satisfaction

        • Eupsychian management- rearranging an organization to help employees

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• A state of happiness and satisfaction characterized by absorption in a challenging and personally rewarding task.

  • Flow- people described a feeling or being caught in a natural almost effortless movement from one step to the next.

    • They would move effortless- that flow become a synonym for an optical experience

    • 8 components of optimal experience:

      • Activity is challenging and requires skill

        • (Ex: Dr. V.S husband being a wood worker and making bowls and he gets lost anyway)