Personality Notes

What is Personality?

• Definition:

  • Long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to think, feel, and behave in specific ways

  • Characteristics are:

  • Long-term

  • Stable

  • Difficult to change

Types of Personality Theories

• Major approaches include:

  • Freudians

  • Neo-Freudians

  • Learning Approaches

  • Humanistic Approaches

  • Biological Approaches

  • Trait Theorists

History of Personality

• Hippocrates (370 B.C.):

  • Proposed four humors impacting personality

• Galen:

  • Expanded on Hippocrates theory linking diseases & personality with imbalances of humors

  • Suggested four temperaments:

  • Sanguine: Optimistic

  • Choleric: Ambitious

  • Melancholic: Anxious

  • Phlegmatic: Thoughtful

Additional Theorists

• Immanuel Kant:

  • Created a list of traits for each temperament

• Wilhelm Wundt:

  • Developed a two-axes model of personality

  • Emotional/Nonemotional

  • Changeable/Unchangeable

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

• Medical doctor, focused on talk therapy

• Noted for:

  • Psychodynamic perspective of personality

  • Emphasized the unconscious mind and the role of childhood experiences

• Freud’s Levels of Consciousness:

  • Id: Primitive urges (pleasure principle)

  • Ego: Balances id and superego (reality principle)

  • Superego: Upholds moral standards

• Freud posited 10% conscious and 90% unconscious activity

Defense Mechanisms

• Unconscious strategies to reduce anxiety when the Ego cannot mediate effectively

  • Examples include:

  • Denial: Refusing to accept reality

  • Projection: Attributing unacceptable desires to others

  • Displacement: Redirecting feelings to safer targets

  • Rationalization: Providing acceptable reasons for behaviors

  • Regression: Returning to earlier coping stages

  • Repression: Suppressing painful memories

  • Sublimation: Channeling unacceptable impulses into socially acceptable actions

Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development

1. Oral Stage (0-1 year): Focus on mouth (fixation can lead to oral fixation behaviors)

2. Anal Stage (1-3 years): Focus on bowel control (toilet training)

   • Fixation can lead to anal-retentive or anal-expulsive personality

3. Phallic Stage (3-6 years): Focus on genitals and Oedipus/Electra complexes

4. Latency Period (6-12 years): No sexual feelings, focus on social skills

5. Genital Stage (12+ years): Reinterest in relationships, reach sexual maturity

Neo-Freudians

• Modify Freud’s views, emphasizing the role of social environment over sexual drives

  • Alfred Adler: Focused on feelings of inferiority and social tasks

  • Erik Erikson: Proposed psychosocial stages, emphasizing social relationships throughout life

  • Carl Jung: Introduced concepts of persona, collective unconscious, and archetypes

  • Karen Horney: Proposed womb envy, focusing on cultural factors in personality

Learning Approaches to Personality

• Emphasize observable behaviors:

  • Behavioral Perspective: Personality shaped by reinforcements and punishments

  • Social-Cognitive Perspective: Albert Bandura's focus on observational learning and social context

• Reciprocal Determinism: Interaction between behavior, cognitive processes, and situational factors

Humanistic Approaches

• Abraham Maslow: Focus on self-actualization and hierarchy of needs

• Carl Rogers: Emphasized self-concept and incongruence vs. congruence in personality development

Biological Approaches

• Heritability and traits from temperament studies (like the Minnesota Twins Study)

  • Temperament types: easy, difficult, slow to warm

Trait Theorists

• Gordon Allport: Identified traits such as cardinal, central, and secondary traits

• Raymond Cattell: Narrowed traits down to 16 personality factors

• Hans and Sybil Eysenck: Introduced dimensions of extroversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism

• Five Factor Model: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (OCEAN)

Cultural Impact on Personality

• Personality shaped by both genetic and environmental (cultural) factors

• Differences observed based on cultural and regional influences

Personality Assessment

• Self-report tests (e.g., MMPI) vs. Projective tests (e.g., Rorschach Inkblot)

• Self-report measures face biases, while projective tests can assess unconscious processes

Important Note: Much of Freud’s early work laid a foundation for modern psychology, even if many of his theories lack empirical support today. His emphasis on the complex interplay of childhood experiences with personality continues to influence current psychological thought.