Personality Psychology Notes

Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality

  • Personality Definition: The pattern of enduring characteristics that produce consistency and individuality in a given person.
    • Encompasses behaviors that make each of us unique.
    • Differentiates us from others.
    • Leads to consistent actions across situations and time.
  • Psychodynamic Approaches: These approaches assume personality is primarily unconscious and motivated by inner forces and conflicts.

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory

  • Psychoanalytic Theory: Developed by Sigmund Freud, this theory posits that unconscious forces act as determinants of personality.
  • Unconscious:
    • A part of the personality containing memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts of which the individual is not aware.
    • Preconscious: Contains non-threatening material easily brought to mind.
    • Instinctual Drives: Hidden wishes, desires, demands, and needs that are hidden from awareness due to potential conflicts and pain.

Structuring Personality: Id, Ego, and Superego

  • Freud proposed that personality consists of three separate but interacting components:
    • Id: The instinctual and unorganized part focused on reducing tension created by primitive drives like hunger, sex, aggression, and irrational impulses.
      • Operates according to the pleasure principle.
    • Ego: The rational, logical part that balances the desires of the id and the realities of the external world.
      • Operates according to the reality principle.
      • The "executive" of personality.
    • Superego: The part of personality that judges the morality of our behavior.
      • Operates according to the morality principle.
      • Includes the conscience, which prevents morally improper behavior.
      • Causes feelings of guilt when we do wrong.
      • The ego mediates between the conflicting demands of the superego and the id.

Developing Personality: Psychosexual Stages

  • Psychosexual Stages: Developmental periods during which children encounter conflicts between societal demands and their own sexual urges.
  • Fixation: If conflicts are not resolved at a particular stage, the individual may become locked in that conflict throughout life.
    • Fixations: Conflicts or concerns that persist beyond the developmental period in which they first occur.
  • Stages:
    • Oral Stage:
      • Birth to 12-18 months.
      • Infant’s center of pleasure is the mouth.
      • Interest in oral gratification from sucking, eating, mouthing, biting.
    • Anal Stage:
      • 12-18 months to age 3.
      • Child’s pleasure is centered on the anus.
      • Gratification from expelling and withholding feces; coming to terms with society’s controls relating to toilet training.
    • Phallic Stage:
      • Around age 3.
      • Child’s pleasure focuses on the genitals.
      • Oedipal Conflict: A child’s intense, sexual interest in his/her opposite-sex parent.
      • Castration anxiety: Leads the male child to repress desires for his mother and identify with his father.
      • Identification: The process of wanting to be like another person, imitating their behavior and adopting similar beliefs and values.
      • Girls experience penis envy and resolve unacceptable feelings by identifying with their mother.
    • Latency Period:
      • Between the phallic stage and puberty.
      • Children’s sexual concerns are temporarily put aside.
      • Sexual concerns largely unimportant.
    • Genital Stage:
      • From puberty until death.
      • Marked by mature sexual behavior, specifically, sexual intercourse.
      • Reemergence of sexual interests and establishment of mature sexual relationships.

Defense Mechanisms

  • Defense Mechanisms: Unconscious strategies used to reduce anxiety by distorting reality and concealing the source of anxiety.
  • Repression: The ego pushes unacceptable or unpleasant thoughts and impulses out of consciousness but maintains them in the unconscious.
  • Common Defense Mechanisms:
    • Repression: Unacceptable impulses are pushed out of awareness.
      • Example: A woman is unable to consciously recall that she was raped.
    • Regression: People behave as if they were at an earlier stage of development.
      • Example: A boss has a temper tantrum when an employee makes a mistake.
    • Displacement: Expression of unwanted feelings is redirected from a threatening to a weaker person.
      • Example: A brother yells at his younger sister after a teacher gives him a bad grade.
    • Rationalization: Providing self-justifying explanations in place of the actual reasons for behavior.
      • Example: A student who goes out drinking the night before a big test rationalizes his behavior by saying the test isn't all that important.
    • Denial: Refusing to accept or acknowledge anxiety-producing information.
      • Example: A student refuses to believe that he has flunked a course.
    • Projection: Attributing unwanted impulses and feelings to someone else.
      • Example: A man who is unfaithful to his wife and feels guilty suspects that his wife is unfaithful.
    • Sublimation: Diverting unwanted impulses into socially approved thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.
      • Example: A person with strong feelings of aggression becomes a soldier.
    • Reaction Formation: Unconscious impulses are expressed as their opposite in consciousness.
      • Example: A mother who unconsciously resents her child acts in an overly loving way toward the child.

Evaluating Freud’s Legacy

  • Accepted Ideas:
    • Unconscious thoughts influence behavior.
    • Use of defense mechanisms.
    • Roots of adult psychological problems in childhood.
  • Criticisms:
    • Lack of compelling scientific data.
  • Contribution:
    • Psychoanalysis: An important method of treating psychological disturbances.

Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts

  • Trained in traditional Freudian theory but rejected some major points.
  • Emphasis:
    • Greater emphasis on the functions of the ego.
    • More control than the id over day-to-day activities.
    • Social environment over sex as a driving force.
    • Greater attention to society and culture.

Jung’s Neo-Freudian Perspective

  • Carl Jung rejected Freud’s emphasis on unconscious sexual urges.
  • Emphasis:
    • Positive view of primitive unconscious urges.
    • These urges represent a general, positive life force motivating creativity and positive conflict resolution.
  • Collective Unconscious: An inherited set of ideas, feelings, images, and symbols shared by all humans due to a common ancestral past.
    • Contains archetypes: Universal symbolic representations of people, objects, ideas, or experiences.
      • Examples: the mother archetype, the shadow, the anima.
  • Carl Jung: Archetypes
    • The Self: Represents the unification of the unconsciousness and consciousness of an individual. Created through individuation, integrating personality aspects. Often represented as a circle, square, or mandala.
    • The Shadow: Consists of sex and life instincts. Exists in the unconscious mind, composed of repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings. Represents the darker side of the psyche, wildness, chaos, and the unknown. Can appear in dreams or visions as a snake, monster, demon, or dragon.
    • The Anima/Animus: The anima is a feminine image in the male psyche, and the animus is a male image in the female psyche. Represents the "true self" and serves as the primary communication source with the collective unconscious.
    • The Persona: How we present ourselves to the world, derived from the Latin word for "mask." Represents social masks worn among different groups and situations. Shields the ego from negative images. Appears in dreams in various forms.
    • The father: Authority figure; stern; powerful.
    • The mother: Nurturing; comforting.
    • The child: Longing for innocence; rebirth; salvation.
    • The wise old man: Guidance; knowledge; wisdom.
    • The hero: Champion; defender; rescuer.
    • The maiden: Innocence; desire; purity.
    • The trickster: Deceiver; liar; trouble-maker.

Horney’s Neo-Freudian Perspective

  • Karen Horney was an early champion of women’s issues.
  • Emphasis:
    • Personality develops in the context of social relationships.
    • Relationship between parents and child and how well child’s needs are met.
    • Three patterns of behavior to defend against basic anxiety: moving toward, against, or away from people.
  • Rejected Freud’s notion of penis envy.
    • Asserted women envy men’s success and freedom.
  • Stressed the importance of cultural factors in determining personality.

Adler and the Other Neo-Freudians

  • Alfred Adler proposed the primary human motivation is striving for superiority.
    • Quest for self-improvement and perfection, not superiority over others.
    • Inferiority complex: Adults who have not overcome feelings of inadequacy developed as children, resulting in a lack of self-worth.
  • Erik Erikson and Anna Freud focused on social and cultural factors behind personality.

Trait, Learning, Biological, Evolutionary, and Humanistic Approaches to Personality

  • Trait Approaches:

Trait Approaches

  • Traits: Consistent, habitual personality characteristics displayed across different situations.
  • Trait Theory: A model that seeks to identify the basic traits necessary to describe personality.

Allport’s Trait Theory

  • Gordon Allport proposed three fundamental categories of traits:
    • Cardinal Trait: A single, overriding characteristic that motivates most of a person’s behavior.
      • Example: Total selflessness driving humanitarian activities.
    • Central Traits: An individual’s major characteristics, such as warmth or honesty.
      • Possess 5-10 central traits that make up the core of personality. People who have a central trait of warmth also are likely to be sociable and friendly.
    • Secondary Traits: Characteristics that affect behavior in fewer situations and are less influential.
      • Examples: Reluctance to eat meat, love of modern art.

Cattell and Eysenck: Factoring Out Personality

  • Factor Analysis: A statistical method of identifying patterns among a large number of variables.
    • Identifies fundamental patterns of traits (factors) that cluster together in the same person.
  • Raymond Cattell suggested 16 pairs of traits represent the basic dimensions of personality.
  • Hans Eysenck concluded personality could be described in terms of three major dimensions:
    • Extraversion.
    • Neuroticism.
    • Psychoticism.

The Big Five Personality Traits

  • The most influential trait approach suggests five traits or factors lie at the core of personality:
    • Openness to experience.
    • Conscientiousness.
    • Extraversion.
    • Agreeableness.
    • Neuroticism (or emotional stability).
  • These traits emerge consistently across domains and in different populations.
  • Personality Factor Dimensions and Sample Traits
    • Openness to experience: Independent—Conforming. Imaginative—Practical. Preference for variety—Preference for routine.
    • Conscientiousness: Careful—Careless. Disciplined—Impulsive. Organized—Disorganized.
    • Extraversion: Talkative—Quiet. Fun-loving—Sober. Sociable—Retiring.
    • Agreeableness: Sympathetic—Fault-finding. Kind—Cold. Appreciative—Unfriendly.
    • Neuroticism (Emotional stability): Stable—Tense. Calm—Anxious. Secure—Insecure.

Evaluating Trait Approaches to Personality

  • Benefits:
    • Clear explanation of behavioral consistencies.
    • Allows comparison of one person to another.
    • Influenced the development of useful personality measures.
  • Drawbacks:
    • Different conclusions about fundamental traits.
    • Do not provide explanations for behavior.

Learning Approaches

  • Learning Approaches: Focus on the external world; how external influences determine and affect personality.

Skinner’s Behaviorist Approach

  • Personality is a collection of learned behavior patterns.
  • Humans are infinitely changeable.
  • Behavior can be changed if patterns of reinforcers are controlled and modified.

Social Cognitive Approaches to Personality

  • Social Cognitive Approaches: Emphasize the influence of cognitions (thoughts, feelings, expectations, values) and observation of others’ behavior in determining personality.
  • Albert Bandura emphasizes self-efficacy: The belief that we can master a situation and produce positive outcomes.
    • People with high self-efficacy have higher aspirations, greater persistence, and greater success.
    • Direct reinforcement and encouragement from others play a role.

How Much Consistency Exists in Personality?

  • Walter Mischel sees personality as variable from one situation to another.
    • Situationism: Personality cannot be considered without the context of the situation.
    • Mischel’s Cognitive Affective Processing System (CAPS) Theory: People’s thoughts and emotions about themselves and the world determine how they view and react in particular situations.
      • Personality reflects how people’s prior experiences in different situations, as well as the specifics of the current situation, interact and determine behavior.

Self-Esteem

  • Self-esteem: Component of personality that encompasses positive and negative self-evaluations.
    • Development strongly affected by cultural factors, such as relationship harmony.
    • People go through periods of low and high self-esteem.
    • Chronically low self-esteem may lead to a cycle of failure.
    • High levels of self-esteem can be troublesome if unwarranted.
    • Narcissism: Self-absorption and inflated views of oneself.

Evaluating Learning Approaches to Personality

  • Learning Theories:
    • Have helped make personality psychology a scientific venture by focusing on observable behavior and the effects of people’s environments.
    • Tend to share a highly deterministic view of human behavior that maintains that behavior is shaped by forces beyond the individual’s control.
    • Have produced important, successful means of treating a variety of psychological disorders.

Biological and Evolutionary Approaches

  • Biological and Evolutionary Approaches: Suggest important components of personality are inherited.
    • Certain traits are more influenced by heredity than others.
      • Social Potency: The degree to which a person assumes mastery and leadership roles in social situations.
      • Traditionalism: The tendency to follow authority.
      • Temperament: An individual’s behavioral style and characteristic way of responding that emerges early in life.
    • Genes are linked to personality characteristics but are not the sole cause.

Humanistic Approaches

  • Humanistic Approaches: Emphasize people’s innate goodness and desire to achieve higher levels of functioning.
    • Carl Rogers:
      • All people have a fundamental need for self-actualization: The state of self-fulfillment in which people realize their highest potential, each in a unique way.
      • People develop a need for positive regard: The desire to be loved and respected.
    • Self-concept: The set of beliefs that people hold about their own abilities, behavior, and personality.
      • Overcoming discrepancy between experience and self-concept is through the receipt of unconditional positive regard from another person.
      • An attitude of acceptance and respect, no matter what a person says or does.
      • Conditional Positive Regard: Depends on one’s behavior.

Evaluating Humanistic Approaches

  • Benefits:
    • Highlight the uniqueness of human beings.
    • Guide the development of therapy to alleviate psychological difficulties.
  • Criticisms:
    • Difficulty of verifying basic assumptions.
    • Assumption that people are basically “good.”

Assessing Personality

Psychological Tests

  • Psychological Tests: Standard measures devised to assess behavior objectively.
    • Used to help people make decisions about their lives and understand themselves.
    • Should have high reliability (measurement consistency) and validity (measures what it is designed to measure).
    • Based on norms: Distribution of test scores for a large sample of individuals who have taken a test making comparisons possible.

Self-Report Measures of Personality

  • Self-Report Method: Gathering data by asking people questions about their own behavior and traits.
  • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2-Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF): A widely-used self-report test that identifies people with psychological difficulties.
    • Employed to predict some everyday behaviors.
    • Test Standardization: Validating questions by analyzing responses from people with the same questions under the same circumstances.
      • Can be used to compare responses and determine individuals’ characteristics.

Projective Methods

  • Projective Personality Test: A test in which a person is shown an ambiguous stimulus and asked to describe it or tell a story about it.
    • Rorschach Test: Showing a series of symmetrical visual stimuli to people who are then asked what the figures represent to them.
    • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Consists of a series of pictures about which a person is asked to write a story.
    • Tests require high degree of training, skill, and care in their interpretation.

Behavioral Assessment

  • Behavioral Assessment: Direct measures of an individual’s behavior used to describe personality characteristics.
    • Useful for observing and eventually remedying specific behavioral difficulties like shyness in children.
    • Also used to make hiring and personnel decisions in the workplace.