Personality Psychology: Definitions, Theories, and Assessments Study Notes

Definition and Stability of Personality

• Comprehensive Definition of Personality: Personality is defined as a person’s typical thoughts, emotional responses, and behaviors that remain relatively stable over time and across various circumstances.
      * Consistency Factor: A critical element of personality is its relative stability. While individuals experience mood swings (as noted in motivation and emotion studies), these do not constitute a personality shift. Personality tends to remain consistent across the lifespan.
      * Scope of Influence: Personality characteristics dictate how an individual responds in different situations ($\text{Situation } A$ to $\text{Situation } B$). For example, a person identified as outgoing or shy is expected to maintain that disposition with little "wiggle room."

The Concept of Self and Self-Schema

• The Problem of Definition: While everyone has a notion of "the self," it is notoriously difficult to define precisely. Exercises like "I am" statements often fail to capture the full complexity of an individual's identity.

• Components of Self for College Students: In a university demographic, the sense of self often incorporates:
      * Gender and age.
      * Student status and grade level.
      * Interpersonal style and personal characteristics.
      * Body image statements.

• Self-Schema: This is an integrated set of memories, beliefs, and generalizations individuals hold about themselves. It consists of interrelated knowledge regarding one's identity.

• Neurological Basis: Researchers typically observe increased activation in the middle of the frontal lobes of the brain when individuals process information related to themselves.

• Relational Mapping in Self-Schema:
      * Strongly Related Concepts: Roles like "student," "daughter," or "brother" often overlap directly with the self in mental mapping.
      * Moderately Related Concepts: Interests like movies or soccer might be connected by solid lines in a conceptual schema.
      * Weakly Related Concepts: Attributes like being "stylish" might be connected by dotted lines.
      * Unrelated Concepts: Traits that do not apply (e.g., being "tall" or "shy" for certain individuals) have no connection lines in the schema.

The Working Self-Concept and Social Context

• Definition of Working Self-Concept: This is the immediate experience of the self in the "here and now." It allows for a degree of variation in self-perception based on the current environment.

• Environmental Influence on Self-Identification:
      * Research indicates that respondents are more likely to mention features like ethnicity, gender, or age if those features distinguish them from the surrounding group.
      * Example 1: A man in a group consisting entirely of women is most likely to identify himself primarily as "male."
      * Example 2: An African American man in a mixed-gender group where no others are African American will likely identify based on his ethnicity first.

• Relevance-Based Variation: Individuals highlight different aspects of themselves depending on the context:
      * Sports affiliations when with friends.
      * Favorite bands at a concert.
      * Student identity when on a university campus.

Self-Esteem and Life Outcomes

• Reflected Appraisal: This theory proposes that self-esteem is fundamentally based on how we believe others perceive us.

• Sociometer Theory: Self-esteem functions as an internal monitor (a "sociometer") of social acceptance and rejection.
      * High probability of social rejection leads to low self-esteem.
      * Low probability of social rejection leads to high self-esteem.

• Relationship to Objective Outcomes: A review of several hundred studies (including research by Baumeister, Campbell, and colleagues in the early $\text{2000s}$) suggests that while high self-esteem correlates with happiness, it is weakly related to objective life outcomes.

• Developmental Peaks and Lows:
      * Self-esteem typically hits low points in the late teens and early $\text{20s}$, particularly for women.
      * Self-esteem often peaks when individuals are in their $\text{60s}$.
      * Lowered self-esteem is also common toward the end of life.

Narcissism and Social Comparison

• Narcissism: Narcissists possess an inflated, overly positive sense of self-esteem that falls outside the normal range.

• Trends: Analysis shows an increase in narcissism among American college students between $\text{1979}$ and $\text{2006}$.

• Jean Twenge’s Research: Author of Generation Me and The Narcissism Epidemic, Twenge explores the rise of narcissism and strategies to combat it.

• Types of Social Comparison:
      * Downward Comparison: Comparing oneself to those seen as less competent or in worse situations to protect high self-esteem.
      * Upward Comparison: Comparing oneself to those seen as more competent or in a better position, which often confirms or leads to low self-esteem/feelings of defeat.
      * Temporal Comparison: A process where people view their current selves as superior to their former selves. Dr. Twenge notes that people are often more critical of their past selves than their current state.

• Self-Serving Bias: The universal tendency to take personal credit for successes (internal factors like skill or intellect) while blaming failures on external factors (e.g., a "flawed" test or a "poor" instructor).

Cultural Influences on Personality

• Collectivistic Cultures:
      * Focus: Emphasis on group connections (family, social, ethnic) and conformity to societal norms.
      * Regions: Examples include Japan, Greece, Pakistan, China, and parts of Africa.
      * Self-Structure: The most important elements of self are tied to external entities (mother, father, coworkers). Failure is challenging because it is perceived as failing the group.

• Individualistic Cultures:
      * Focus: Emphasis on individual rights, self-expression, freedoms, and diversity.
      * Regions: United States, Northern/Western Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand.
      * Self-Structure: The primary focus is on the individual self. While beneficial during success, failure can be harder because the individual has only themselves to blame.

The Psychodynamic Approach (Sigmund Freud)

• Unconscious Structures: Freud theorized that personality is shaped by unconscious mental activity and conflicts between three structures:
      1. The Id: Fully submerged in the unconscious; operates on the Pleasure Principle. Its driving force is the Libido. It is characterized as gluttonous and seeks immediate gratification (e.g., eating a whole sandwich despite consequences).
      2. The Superego: Reflects internalized societal and parental standards; operates on the Morality Principle. It acts as a rigid conscience.
      3. The Ego: The rational component that mediates between the Id and Superego. It operates on the Reality Principle, utilizing rational thought and problem-solving.

• Levels of Consciousness (Iceberg Metaphor):
      * Conscious Level: Fully aware of current thoughts.
      * Preconscious Level: Content not currently in awareness but easily retrieved (e.g., remembering your last birthday).
      * Unconscious Level: Material difficult to retrieve that deeply influences identity and behavior.

• Defense Mechanisms: Mental strategies used by the Ego to reduce anxiety:
      * Denial: Refusing to acknowledge the source of anxiety (e.g., Tanya ignoring cancer symptoms).
      * Four Common Types Mentioned: Displacement, Repression, Sublimation, and Regression (also Projection and Reaction Formation).

• Modern Psychodynamic Perspective: Much of Freud’s work (like the sexualized stages) has been disregarded due to a lack of scientific evidence. Contemporary "Neo-Freudians" focus on Object Relations Theory, which suggests personality is shaped by relationships with others in the environment.

Humanistic and Social Cognitive Approaches

• Humanistic Approach (Carl Rogers & Abraham Maslow):
      * Focuses on Self-Actualization, the pinnacle of the hierarchy of needs.
      * Person-Centered Approach: Personality is shaped by self-understanding and evaluations by others.
      * Conditions of Worth: Parental affection is conditional on behaving in "acceptable" ways, potentially restricting personality growth.
      * Unconditional Positive Regard: Affection is given regardless of behavior, allowing the personality to develop more freely.

• Expectancy Theory (Rotter): Behavior and personality result from expectancies for reinforcement and the values assigned to specific reinforcers.

• Locus of Control:
      * Internal Locus of Control: The belief that one’s own actions influence outcomes; the individual "happens to the world."
      * External Locus of Control: The belief that outside forces (fate/luck) determine outcomes; the "world happens to the individual."

• Reciprocal Determinism (Albert Bandura): Personality is the result of interaction between three factors:
      1. Environment: The specific situation.
      2. Person Factors: Characteristics, self-confidence, and expectations.
      3. Behavior: The actual actions taken.

Trait Approaches and The Five-Factor Theory

• Biological Trait Theory (Eysenck): Proposed three dimensions:
      1. Introversion vs. Extraversion: Level of shyness versus outgoingness.
      2. Stability vs. Instability (Neuroticism): Level of emotional consistency.
      3. Psychoticism (Constraint): Aggression, impulse control, and empathy.

• The Big Five (Five-Factor Model - McCrae & Costa):
      * The acronym OCEAN or CANOE is used to remember these:
      1. Openness to Experience: Imaginative vs. down-to-earth.
      2. Conscientiousness: Careful and disciplined vs. disorganized.
      3. Extraversion: Social vs. reserved.
      4. Agreeableness: Trusting and helpful vs. uncooperative.
      5. Neuroticism: Worried and self-pitying vs. calm and secure.

Biological Basis and Stability of Personality

• Innate Foundations: Personality is largely innate and influenced by genetics.

• Twin Studies: Research on $123$ pairs of identical twins vs. $128$ pairs of fraternal twins showed that identical twins are significantly more similar in five-factor traits, regardless of shared environment.

• Temperament: Biologically based tendencies evident from birth, consisting of:
      1. Activity Level: Overall energy.
      2. Emotionality: Intensity of emotional reactions.
      3. Sociability: Tendency to affiliate with others.

• Long-term Predictability (Caspi Study): A study of over $1000$ people found that three-year-olds judged as "under control" were significantly more likely to experience antisocial behavior or alcohol problems at age $21$.

• Stability Over Time: Personality consistency is lowest in childhood and highest after age $50$.

• Basic Tendencies vs. Characteristic Adaptations:
      * Basic Tendencies: Traits determined by biology that stay stable (e.g., extraversion).
      * Characteristic Adaptations: Changes in how those traits are expressed based on life stages (e.g., an extroverted youth playing hockey transitioning into an extroverted adult golfer).

Situationism and Personality Assessment

• Situationism (Walter Mischel): The theory that behavior is determined more by situations than by underlying traits.
      * The Marshmallow Experiment: Used to predict how children delay gratification based on situational rewards.

• Strength of Situations:
      * Strong Situations (e.g., Funerals, Elevators, Interviews): Tend to mask personality differences because social norms dictate behavior.
      * Weak Situations (e.g., Bars, Parks, Home): Reveal personality differences as they allow for free expression.

• Assessment Methods:
      * Projective Measures: Rorschach Inkblot Test and Thematic Apperception Test (TAT); involve projecting unconscious thoughts onto ambiguous stimuli.
      * Self-Report Measures: Questionnaires like the NEO Personality Inventory or the MMPI.
      * Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR): An unobtrusive device that records periodic $30\,\text{second}$ audio clips to track real-world interactions.
      * Findings on EAR: Extraversion correlates with more talking; Agreeableness with less swearing; Conscientiousness with better class attendance; Openness with time spent in coffee shops/bars.

• Accuracy of Observers: Friends are often better than individuals at judging traits high in observability and high in evaluativeness (e.g., creativity or talkativeness) because individuals often have self-perception blind spots.

Content Check/Practice

• Scenario for Practice: Identify situations where personality parts (Id, Ego, Superego) clashed.

• Practice Questions:
      * Karen feels she is more stubborn than most people.
      * Jeremy (Lecture cut off).