Personality Psychology Notes

What is Personality?

  • Stable, internal factors causing consistent behavior across time and differing from others in comparable situations.
  • Cultural impact: Individualistic (self-directed, prioritize independence) vs. Collectivistic cultures (interconnected, emphasize interdependence).
  • Individualistic cultures focus on self and personality traits; collectivistic cultures describe selves in social roles.

Personality Assessment

  • Purpose: refine diagnoses, structure interventions, predict behavior.
  • Tools: observations, interviews, past records, standardized questionnaires (self-report scales).
  • Reliability: consistency of results; Validity: test measures intended aspects.
  • Advantages of questionnaires: self-expertise; Disadvantage: social desirability bias.
  • Lie scales can expose social desirability bias.

Freud’s Psychoanalytic Approach

  • Personality develops from ego resolving tension between id (biological drives) and superego (society's rules).
  • The unconscious is a reservoir of unacceptable thoughts and feelings.
  • Importance of childhood experiences and parenting in shaping personality.
  • Personality Structure:
    • Id: Driven by pleasure principle; seeks immediate gratification via libido.
    • Superego: Conscience; internalizes social rules and morality.
    • Ego: Mediates between id and superego, follows reality principle.
  • Defense Mechanisms: Unconscious strategies to protect ego from anxiety.
    • Regression: retreating to an earlier stage.

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages

  • Fixed stages where libido focuses on different body areas; fixation can occur if needs are unmet.
  • Stages:
    • Oral (0-18 months): Gratification through oral activities.
    • Anal (18 months-3.5 years): Ego develops; conflict during potty training impacts relationship with authority. Anal-retentive vs. anal-expulsive personalities.
    • Phallic (3.5-6 years): Awareness of sex differences, Oedipus (boys) and Electra complexes (girls) arise, resolved through identification with same-sex parent.
    • Latency (6/7 years-puberty): Sexual impulses dormant, focus on social skills and education.
    • Genital (puberty onward): Mature sexuality, altruistic love.
  • Psychoanalytic therapy explores childhood experiences to address current problems, using free association, dream analysis, projective techniques, and analysis of defense mechanisms.

Trait Theories

  • Traits: Permanent, identifying characteristics quantifiable to varying degrees.
  • Lexical Hypothesis: Important traits are encoded in language.
  • Assessment: questionnaires, observations.
  • Focus on comparison, not development, and less on predicting behavior.
  • Cattell: 16 personality factors (16PF questionnaire), though research suggests fewer factors.
  • Eysenck:
    • Three universal traits: Introversion/Extraversion, Neuroticism/Emotional Stability, Psychoticism.
    • Traits linked to genetic make-up influencing brain chemistry.
  • Gray: Trait anxiety relates to punishment susceptibility; extraversion relates to reward susceptibility.
  • Big Five Model (McCrae & Costa):
    • Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.
    • Cross-cultural relevance; predicts everyday behavior and reveals links to mental health.

Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura)

  • Personality, behavior, and environment influence each other.
  • Triadic reciprocal model emphasizes interlinked elements.
  • Importance of cognition: perception of experiences matters.
  • Self-efficacy: Belief in one's abilities to handle situations.

Humanism: Theories

  • Emphasis on free will, dignity, self-actualization, conscious experience.
  • Maslow:
    • Hierarchy of needs: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-actualization.
    • Self-actualization leads to peak experiences.
  • Rogers:
    • Focus on personal growth and development, innate goodness.
    • Unconditional positive regard and self-worth are essential needs.
    • Congruence between perceived self and ideal self indicates psychological health.
  • Kelly:
    • Personal constructs: ways of understanding, predicting, and controlling reality.
    • Constructs are often polar (e.g., good/bad).