Chapter 10: Personality Psych

Personality: long standing traits that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, behave in specific ways

Hippocrates: personality based on temperaments (inborn/genetic) associated with 4 bodily fluids “humors”

4 categories: melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric,

Galen: imbalances in humors, there was 1 out of the 4 we’d have as our temperant

Wundt: two axes

Freud: First comprehensive theory of personality, focused on unconscious drives and childhood experiences

  • Mind as iceberg:
    • Conscious: 1/10th is conscious (top of iceberg)
    • Unconscious: mental activity we are unaware of and are repressed (unacceptable sex/aggressive urges and desires)
    • Freudian slip: urges/desires slipping out of unconscious
    • Superego: Moral Compass (conscience)
      • Strong superego: guilt (overcontrolled)
      • Weak superego: psychopathy
    • Ego: Self-personality seen by others (rational)
      • Strong ego: finds middle ground
      • Imbalances: neurosis - experience negative emotions (anxiety disorders)
    • Id: Pleasure Principle (birth)
      • Strong id: narcissistic, impulsive
    • personality is a conflict between superego and id (conscious beliefs and unconscious urges)
    • ego restores balance and reduce anxiety via defense mechanisms
      • projection
      • sublimation
      • repression
      • regression
      • reaction formation
      • rationalization
      • displacement
      • denial
    • Stages of Psychosexual Development:
    • Personality develops during early childhood and is fixed in childhood
    • Oral: Mouth, weaning
    • Anal: Anus, toilet training
    • Phallic: Genitals, oedipus (desire mom, replace dad - jealous), electra complex (desire dad, jealous of mom) - if successful, move on
    • Latency Period: none - dormant (focus on other pursuits) - social behavior
    • Genital: gentials, no conflict (have sex interests instead)
    • not a lot of modern support
    • mental life is influenced by experiences in childhood

Neo-Freudians: Agreed that childhood experiences matter, but reduced sex emphasis and focused more on social environment and culture

  • Alder, Erikson, Jung
  • Alfred Adler:
    • Individual Psychology: Focuses on our drive to compensate for feelings of inferiority
    • inferiority complex: a person’s feelings that they lack worth and don’t measure up to others’ or to society’s standard
    • If we overcome it, we gain superiority and this is the driving force behind thoughts, feelings, and behaviors
  • Erikson:
    • Personality develops through the lifepsan (Freud said that it only develops early in life)
    • Social relationships are important
    • Successful completion of each conflict results in successful personality
  • Carl Jung:
    • 2 attitudes/approaches to life: extroversion and introversion
    • Extroversion: Energized by being outgoing and socially oriented (derive energy from being around others)
    • Introversion: May be quiet and reserved, but energy derived from inner activity
    • Balance is best

Learning Approaches: Focuses on observable behavior only (scientifically tested because observable)

  • Skinner (behaviorist)
    • Personality is shaped by reinforcements and consequences
    • Develops over our entire life through learning
    • there can be some variability in development
  • Bandura (social-cognitive)
    • Personality is developed through learning, which may be observational
    • Both learning and cognition are sources of individual differences in personality
    • Personality development:
    • Reciprocal determinism - 3 factors influence how a person acts and influence each other
      • Person (Cognitive factors)
      • Environment (Situational factors)
      • Behavior itself
    • Self-efficacy: Someone’s level of confidence in their own abilities, developed through social experiences
    • High self-efficacy: Believe that their goals are within reach, have positive view of challenges, etc
  • Rotter
    • Locus of control: Our beliefs about the power we have over our lives
    • The cognitive factor that affects learning and personality development
    • Occurs on continuum from internal to external
      • Internal: I am in control
      • External: Outcomes are beyond my control
    • Internal LOC: Perform better academically, achieve more in careers, etc

Humanistic Approaches: Recognize the innate capacity for self-directed change

  • Maslow: Studied healthy models and found traits they all had
    • Created Hierarchy of Needs
    • Humans have certain needs in common and these needs must be met in a certain order
    • Highest need is need for self-actualization
  • Rogers:
    • Self-concept: Our thoughts/feelings about self
    • Self has two categories:
    • Real self - who you are
    • Ideal self - who you want to be
    • Congruence when real and ideal are similar
    • High congruence → greater sense of self worth and healthy lift

Biological

  • Heritability: Proportion of difference among people that is attributed to genetics

Minnesota Study of Twins: Identical twins (reared together or apart) have very similar personality

  • Regardless of the environment, identical twins have similar personality

Traits:

  • Characteristics of ways of behaving
  • Allport and Cattell
    • All our personalities are made up of the same traits, we differ in the degree to which trait is expressed
    • Allport and Cattell found 4500 words, 171 traits, 16 factors
    • Cattell’s 16 personality factors are on a continuum
  • Eysenck’s 3 factors
    • Viewed people as having specific personality dimensions
    • Extroversion/Introversion
    • Neuroticism/Stability
      • Anxious vs calm
    • Psychoticism/superego control
      • Cold impulsive vs high impulse control/cooperation
  • Five Factor Model
    • OCEAN, most popular and accurate
    • Openness
    • Conscientiousness
    • Extroversion
    • Agreeableness
    • Neuroticism
    • Relatively stable across the lifespan

Cronbach’s alpha: statistic for calculating internal consistency reliability