Personality is defined as a cluster of related characteristics that are typical of an individual.
Personality dimensions enable the description of how a person behaves, feels, and interacts with others and their environment.
Dimensions of personality include:
- Socially constructed
- Enduring
- Expressed in a variety of situations
- Allow for the prediction of behaviors, feelings, and interactions
Where Does Personality Come From?
Genetics: Human personality is believed to be approximately 30-60% heritable.
Environment and Experience:
- Influences from the non-shared environment (experiences not shared between family members).
- Heritability estimates of personality traits decrease steadily with age.
Theories of Personality
The various theories existing to understand personality include:
- Psychodynamic Theories
- Freud’s Psychosexual Approach
- Behaviourist Approaches
- Social-Cognitive Approaches
- Trait Approaches
- Eysenck’s Gigantic Three
- The Five Factor Model
Psychodynamic: Freud’s Psychosexual Approach
Emphasizes unconscious processes and early life relationships as key influences on personality development.
Three main systems contributing to personality:
1. The Id: Present at birth, it's unconscious and serves as an impulsive drive to meet biological needs.
2. The Ego: Develops through infancy, conscious and rational, used for problem-solving based on environmental information.
3. The Superego: A higher-order system responsible for moral and ethical judgment.
Psychosexual Development Stages
At various life stages, conflicts arise between the three systems:
- Birth to 1 year: Feeding and weaning.
- 1 to 3 years: Elimination and toilet training.
- 3 to 6 years: Gender roles and moral development.
- 6 to 12 years: Physical and intellectual activities.
- 12 years to adulthood: Puberty and sexual relationships.
Fixation at any of these stages halts personality development.
Behaviourist Approach
Focuses on behavior and learning as key influences on personality development.
Personality and characteristics develop through learned associations between stimuli, contributing to behavioral repertoires that dictate interactions with the environment.
Social-Cognitive Approach
Highlights the interplay between behavior, socialization, and cognition.
Argues that learned associations alone cannot account for all aspects of personality; mental states and social context are critical.
Components:
1. Self-observation: Monitoring and adjusting one's own behavior.
2. Judgment: Evaluating personal behavior compared to others.
3. Self-response: Reinforcement or punishment based on response.
Trait Approaches
Focus on the stable and unchanging nature of psychological predispositions and individual differences.
Suggest personality development consists of multiple traits that create unique personality profiles.
Five Factor Model of Personality (McCrae & Costa, 1999)
Developed from existing models, including Eysenck's Gigantic Three (neuroticism, extraversion, psychoticism) and Costa & McCrae's NEO (neuroticism, extraversion, openness).
The Five Factor Model remains the most comprehensive trait-based approach today:
1. Neuroticism: Emotional stability.
2. Extraversion: Emotional expression and comfort in social settings.
3. Openness: Willingness to engage in experiences.
4. Agreeableness: Altruism towards others and the maintenance of smooth relationships.
5. Conscientiousness: Thoughtfulness, goal orientation, and impulse control.
Emotional Development
What is an Emotion?
'Emotion' is defined as a complex pattern of reactions that spans experiential, behavioral, and physiological elements.
Emotions comprise three core components:
1. Subjective Experience: An internal response to a stimulus.
2. Physiological Response: Activation of the autonomic nervous system.
3. Behavioral/Expressive Response.
Distinctions amongst related terms:
- Feelings: Conscious experiences arising from emotions.
- Mood: A short-lived emotional state without clear stimuli.
- Affect: Observable expressions of emotions.
Six Basic Human Emotions
The six basic human emotions identified are:
- Sadness
- Happiness
- Fear
- Anger
- Surprise
- Disgust
What is Emotional Development?
Emotional development involves the changes and growth in a person’s emotions over their lifespan.
Key distinctions between children and adults in emotional experiences include:
1. Limited range of emotional affect in children (restricted facial expressions).
2. Differences in physiological patterns (e.g., heart rate variability).
3. Simpler vocabulary for emotions in children.
4. Differences in behavioral expression, with children generally showing less ability for regulation.
Emotional Expression Begins During Infancy
For the first six months of life, emotional expression is a direct reflection of feelings (emotion and affect congruence).
Key mechanisms for infant communication:
- Crying: Primary mechanism for expressing emotions.
- Smiling: Also critical with two forms:
- Reflexive Smile (4-6 weeks): Involuntary and not intentional.
- Social Smile (2-3 months): Emotionally responsive, lasting longer.
Emotional Expression from Childhood to Adulthood
Childhood:
- Learning to regulate emotions and control expressions (less congruence between emotion and affect).
- Ability to delay or pre-emptively address emotions.
Adolescence and Adulthood:
- Increased control over emotional expressions, especially socially.
- Emotions become more complex and can mix.
- Development of abilities to actively change emotions.
Emotion Recognition
Theory of Mind: The ability to infer and understand others’ emotions, mental states, beliefs, and intentions.
Facilitates understanding of others, predicting behaviors and emotional responses, and responding appropriately.
What Influences Emotion?
Family:
- Role of parental modeling in emotional understanding and regulation.
- Family environments provide safety for experiencing and expressing emotions.
Peers:
- Friends enhance understanding of emotional experiences.
- Interactions offer practice in expression and regulation of emotions.
Sociocultural Environment:
- Cultural context shapes the understanding, expression, and regulation of emotions (individualistic vs. collectivist views).
Theories of Emotion
Various theories explaining emotion include:
- James-Lange Theory
- Cannon-Bard Theory
- Facial-Feedback Theory
- Cognitive Appraisal Theory
James-Lange Theory & Cannon-Bard Theory
James-Lange Theory (19th century): Proposes that physiological changes of the autonomic nervous system generate emotions.
Cannon-Bard Theory (20th century): Developed to refute the James-Lange Theory, suggesting physiological changes and emotions occur simultaneously.
- Neurobiological findings show information from stimuli directs responses at different brain regions simultaneously.
Facial Feedback Theory
Suggests that facial expressions significantly impact emotional experiences.
Proposes a feedback loop exists between facial expressions and the internal experience of emotions.
Cognitive Appraisal Theory
This theory articulates that our appraisals (judgments about stimuli/events) directly shape our emotions.
Asserts that cognitive appraisal, rather than the stimuli, triggers emotional responses.
Moral Development
What is Morality?
Morality is characterized as a system of values and beliefs governing conduct and delineating right from wrong.
Moral Reasoning: The cognitive process underlying decisions about what actions are morally acceptable or not.
Moral Development: Encompasses the growth in a person's ability to make judgments, exhibit behaviors, and experience emotions regarding moral rightness or wrongness.
Moral Development during Infancy and Childhood
Infancy:
- Infants are seen as inherently amoral, lacking a moral sense at birth.
- Begin developing empathic concern between 13-15 months.
- Start showing distress upon violating rules or anticipating disapproval from 18-24 months.
Childhood:
- Distinguishing personal intentions from actions' consequences begins.
- Development of moral vs. social-conventional rule comprehension:
- Moral Rules: Broad, principled notions of right/wrong.
- Social-Convention Rules: Arbitrary rules pertaining to social behavior.
- Influenced by Theory of Mind development.
Moral Development during Adolescence and Adulthood
Adolescence:
- Continued enhancement of moral reasoning capabilities.
- Increased exposure to moral dilemmas leads to evolving moral standards.
Adulthood:
- Moral development can continue into the 20s and 30s.
- Encounters with real moral dilemmas may solidify or alter moral convictions.
Theories of Moral Development
Theories describing moral development include:
- Psychodynamic Theories
- Information-Processing Approaches
- Cognitive-Developmental Theories (including Piaget's and Kohlberg's models).
- Social-Cognitive Theories (e.g., Bandura).
Cognitive-Development Theories: Piaget
Argues that moral judgment capability grows with cognitive maturation, where morality seeks understanding of actions' reasons rather than merely recounting actions.
- Age Classification and Moral Reasoning Stages:
- Pre-moral Period (up to 6 years): Lack of moral being awareness and social rules.
- Heteronomous Morality (6 to 10 years): Moral reasoning based on damage caused and external imposition of rules.
- Autonomous Morality (over 10 years): Relative and personalized moral reasoning; self-imposed rules prevail.
Cognitive-Development Theories: Kohlberg
Proposes that morality develops progressively across the lifespan through universal stages, each succession showcasing further cognitive maturity:
- Preconventional Level: Focus on avoiding punishment and gaining rewards.
1. Punishment and obedience: Good defined as rule-following to avoid punishment.
2. Exchange: Good is whatever is acceptable to the individual.
- Conventional Level: Emphasis on adherence to social rules.
3. Peer opinion: Acts are good if they please/help others or align with social approval.
4. Law and order: Acts deemed good if they comply with existing laws/customs and assist society.
- Postconventional Level: Centered on abstract moral principles.
5. Social contract and individual rights: Good defined through adherence to universal welfare standards.
6. Self-chosen universal principles: Good is aligned with universal justice, potentially contrary to societal laws.
Social-Cognitive Theories: Bandura
Contrasts with stage-like models, viewing moral development as a continuous process informed by learning mechanisms such as reinforcement and modeling, applied to similar contexts.
Bandura’s Triadic Reciprocal Determinism:
- Postulates that moral behavior is shaped by personal experiences (cognitions and actions) and the surrounding social environment.
- Moral Self-Regulation: Emphasizes monitoring and evaluating one's actions to self-assess and provide approval or disapproval for behaviors.