Personality

Definition (#f7aeae)

Important (#edcae9)

Extra (#fffe9d)

Key Concepts:

1. Understanding Personality

2. Personality Theories:

   • Trait Theory

   • Psychodynamic Theory

   • Humanistic Theory

3. Personality Assessments

Understanding Personality:

• Personality: Unique, long-term pattern of thoughts, emotions & behaviour.

• Provides consistency over time; shaped by talents, values, habits.

• Self-concept: Perception of own traits → guides attention & memory.

• Self-esteem: Evaluation of worth (cultural split: individualistic vs collectivistic).

• Traits: Relatively stable differences across situations; allow behaviour prediction.

• Trait–situation interaction: Situations can modify trait expression.

• Personality type: Cluster of common traits (e.g., introvert, extrovert, hardy).

Personality Theories:

• Personality Theory: System of concepts, assumptions, ideas, and principles proposed to explain personality.

• Four main traditions: Trait, Psychodynamic, Humanistic, Behaviourist/Social-Learning.

Trait Theory:

• Goal: Identify traits & link them to behaviour & personality; traits often viewed as biologically based.

• Gordon Allport identified several traits:

  • Common: Characteristics shared by most members of a culture.

  • Individual: Define a person’s unique personal qualities.

  • Cardinal: So basic that all of a person’s activities can be traced back to the trait.

  • Central traits: Core qualities of a personality.

• Raymond B. Cattell studied traits & found:

  • Surface traits: Visible features of personality.

  • Some traits may tend to cluster together to represent a more basic single trait.

  • Source traits: Deeper characteristics, or dimensions of personality.

  • Cattell identified 16 source traits → 16PF Questionnaire that produces a trait profile. To fully describe personality, we need all 16 traits.

• Big 5 factors: Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness.

  1. Extraversion: Introverted or extroverted.

  2. Agreeableness: How friendly a person is.

  3. Conscientiousness: Self-disciplined, responsible and achieving

  4. Neuroticism: Negative emotions, anxious, emotional (in)stability.

  5. Openness: open to new ideas.

Psychodynamic Theory:

• Behaviour driven by unconscious forces.

• Psyche structures:

  • Id: Pleasure principle, instincts, libido (life & death drives).

  • Superego: Moral principle, internalised parent, pride/guilt.

  • Ego: Reality principle, rational mediator.

• Levels of awareness: Conscious, preconscious, unconscious (Freudian slips).

• Psychosexual stages: (Fixations influence adult traits):

  1. Oral (0-1 Years)

  2. Anal (1-3 Years)

  3. Phallic (3-6 Years) – Oedipus/Elektra complexes

  4. Latency (6- puberty)

  5. Genital (puberty +)

• Neo-Freudians:

  • Adler: striving for superiority, compensation, inferiority complex

  • Horney: basic anxiety, challenged "penis envy" & male bias

  • Jung: personal vs collective unconscious, archetypes

Humanistic Theory

• Emphasises free will, personal growth, subjective experience.

• Maslow:

  • Self-Actualisation: Process of fully developing personal potentials, or a continuous search for personal fulfillment.

  • Characteristics: Acceptance of others, spontaneity, efficient perceptions of reality, comfort with solitude.

  • To promote self-actualisation: Encourage change, responsibility, honesty, involvement.

• Rogers:

  • Fully functioning person: Lives in harmony with their impulses, open to experiences.

  • Fully functioning person; self-image vs ideal-self → incongruence blocks growth.

  • Self: Flexible and changing perception of personal identity.

  • Incongruence: State which exists when there is a discrepancy between one’s experiences and self-image or ideal-self.

Comparison Snapshot

Personality Assessment

• Interviews: Face-to-face meeting designed to gain information.

  • Structured: Follows a prearranged plan using a series of planned questions.

  • Unstructured: Conversation is informal, topics are discussed as they arise.

  • Subject to bias & deception.

• Direct Observation: Assessing behavior through direct surveillance.

  • Rating Scale: List of personality traits or aspects of behavior used to evaluate a person.

  • Behavioral Assessment: Recording the frequency of specific behaviors.

  • Situational Test: Realistic situations are simulated so that someone’s spontaneous reactions can be observed and recorded.

• Questionnaires: Paper and pencil measures consisting of questions in which the examinee will rate.

  • MMPI-2: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2. Widely used with 567 test items and many sub-scales.

  • Big-5 Personality Tests.

  • MBTI: Myer-Briggs Type Inventory.

  • DISC: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness.

• Projective Tests: Tests that use unstructured stimuli; person needs to describe the stimuli or make up stories about them.

  • Seeks to uncover deeply hidden wishes, thoughts and needs.

  • Rorschach Technique: 10 standardized inkblots.

  • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): 20 drawings of various situations; people must make up stories about the drawings.