Personality – Exam Review Notes

Definition of Personality

• Long-standing, consistent patterns of thought, emotion & behavior.
• Origin: Latin persona (actor’s mask).

Early Biological Temperaments

• Hippocrates/Galen: 4 humors → choleric, melancholic, sanguine, phlegmatic.
• Traits caused by bodily-fluid imbalance (view lasted 1000+ years).

Phrenology

• Gall: skull bumps reveal traits (no empirical support).

Kant & Wundt

• Kant: trait lists for 4 temperaments.
• Wundt axes: emotional vs non-emotional & changeable vs unchangeable.

Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory

• Levels: conscious (≈ 10\%) | preconscious | unconscious (repressed urges).
• Id (pleasure), Ego (reality), Superego (morality); balance → health.
• Defense mechanisms: unconscious anxiety reducers.
• Psychosexual stages (5): Oral → Anal → Phallic (Oedipus/Electra) → Latency → Genital; fixation shapes adult traits.

Neo-Freudians

• Adler: individual psychology, inferiority complex, birth order, 3 social tasks (work, friendship, love).
• Erikson: 8 psychosocial stages across lifespan.
• Jung: collective unconscious, archetypes, persona; attitudes—introversion vs extraversion.
• Horney: cultural roots of gender differences, womb envy; basic anxiety & 3 coping styles (toward / against / away).

Learning Approaches

• Skinner: personality learned via reinforcement & consequences.
• Bandura: social-cognitive; reciprocal determinism (behavior \leftrightarrow cognition \leftrightarrow environment), observational learning, self-efficacy.
• Rotter: locus of control continuum—internal vs external.
• Mischel: person-situation debate; behavior consistent within similar contexts; marshmallow test → later success.

Humanistic Perspective

• Maslow: healthy self-actualizers share openness, creativity, compassion.
• Rogers: self-concept; congruence between ideal & real self = well-being.

Biological Bases

• Twin studies: heritability > 0.50 for several traits (e.g., leadership, stress resistance).
• Temperament (early, biological): reactivity & self-regulation.

Trait Theories

• Allport: cardinal, central, secondary traits.
• Cattell: 16 personality factors.
• Eysenck: 2 dimensions—Extraversion & Neuroticism.
• Big Five (5): Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (OCEAN).
• HEXACO: adds Honesty-Humility to Big Five structure.

Culture & Personality

• Culture shapes trait expression; individualist (independence) vs collectivist (harmony).
• U.S. clusters: Friendly/Conventional (Midwest/South), Relaxed/Creative (West), Stressed/Irritable (Northeast); selective migration explains.

Personality Assessment

• Self-report inventories: Likert scales; MMPI-2-RF 338 items, 10 clinical scales.
• Projective tests: Rorschach inkblots, TAT stories, RISB 40 sentence completions.