SM

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.