Chapter 1-7: Personality Theories and Cultural Perspectives (Vocabulary Flashcards)
Introduction
Transcript opening contrasts Bill Clinton and his half-brother Roger Clinton, highlighting how two siblings raised in the same environment can take radically different life paths.
Core question: Why do individuals make the choices they do? How do internal forces shape decisions?
Lead-in to personality psychology as a lens to understand stable patterns in thought, feeling, and behavior.
Real-world relevance: connects personality theories to politics, behavior, and ethics.
Learning objectives (overall themes)
Define personality.
Describe early theories about personality development.
Explain why personality is considered long-standing, stable, and not easily changed.
Understand historical and foundational perspectives (Hippocrates, Galen, Kant, Wundt, Freud and Neo-Freudians).
Identify major modern perspectives: psychodynamic, learning, cognitive-social, humanistic, biological/evolutionary.
Describe key constructs: id, ego, superego; defense mechanisms; psychosexual stages; collective unconscious; archetypes; temperament; traits.
Explain research methods and assessment tools (e.g., MMPI, projective tests) and cultural considerations in personality.
Recognize the interplay of biology, environment, and culture in shaping personality (heritability, temperament, culture).
Understand how situational factors and cognitive processes influence behavior (Marshmallow test, self-efficacy, locus of control).
What is personality?
Definition: personality refers to the long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in particular ways.
Core idea: our personality makes us unique; patterns are enduring and relatively stable over time.
Etymology: comes from the Latin word persona; originally a theater mask used to project a character’s traits.
Question framing: how do internal forces shape decisions? (link to later theories)
Historical perspectives on personality
Hippocrates and four temperaments (humors) anchored in bodily fluids:
Choleric: yellow bile from the liver — passionate, ambitious, bold.
Melancholic: black bile from the kidneys — reserved, anxious, unhappy.
Sanguine: red blood from the heart — joyful, eager, optimistic.
Phlegmatic: white phlegm from the lungs — calm, reliable, thoughtful.
Galen expanded Hippocratic ideas; suggested diseases and personality differences could be explained by humoral imbalances.
Franz Joseph Gall and phrenology (1780): distances between skull bumps were believed to reveal traits and brain areas; discredited as pseudoscience due to lack of empirical support.
Kant and Wundt (18th–19th centuries):
Kant proposed trait words for each temperament with no overlap between categories.
Wundt suggested two major axes for describing personality: emotional vs. non-emotional and changeable vs. unchangeable (traits organized on a two-axis map).
Freud’s psychodynamic perspective (early 20th century) introduced the unconscious as a key engine of behavior; later Neo-Freudians revised emphasis but retained the importance of childhood experiences.
Sigmund Freud: psychodynamic theory
Core claim: personality is largely shaped by unconscious drives (sex, aggression) and childhood experiences.
Levels of consciousness: conscious, preconscious, unconscious (iceberg metaphor) — most mental life is unconscious.
Repression: a key mechanism by which unacceptable urges are kept out of consciousness; may show up as Freudian slips.
Structure of personality:
Id: primitive, impulsive, pleasure principle; seeks immediate gratification.
Ego: rational self; operates on reality principle; balances id and superego.
Superego: moral compass; internalized societal rules; can induce pride or guilt.
Dynamic tension: ongoing conflict between id (desires) and superego (m morality), mediated by the ego.
Defense mechanisms (unconscious strategies to reduce anxiety):
Repression, reaction formation, regression, projection, rationalization, displacement, sublimation.
Example: a teen avoiding awareness of sexual feelings by acting macho and making homophobic jokes (defense mechanism interplay).
Anxiety and neurosis: excessive anxiety arises when the ego cannot mediate id–superego conflict; defense mechanisms may become overused and maladaptive.
Psychosexual development (Freud)
Theory: personality develops via stages, each with a distinct erogenous focus; fixation at a stage can shape adult personality.
Stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital) with key themes and potential fixations:
Oral stage (birth–1 year): mouth as main source of pleasure; fixation may lead to smoking, overeating, or nail-biting.
Anal stage (1–3 years): toilet-training conflicts; fixation can lead to anal-retentive (stingy, orderly) or anal-expulsive (messy, disorganized) personalities.
Phallic stage (3–6 years): genitals as erogenous zone; Oedipus complex (boys) and Electra complex (girls).
Oedipus complex: boy’s desire for mother and rivalry with father; castration anxiety; resolves by identifying with father.
Penis envy: girls’ supposed envy of male anatomy; Electra complex proposed by Jung; Freud later rejected but it remains a feature in some texts.
Latency period: sexual feelings dormant; focus on school, friends, hobbies; consolidation of gender identity.
Genital stage (puberty onward): sexual reawakening; redirect urges to socially acceptable partners; healthy adults have completed prior stages without fixation.
Controversies: Freud’s ideas are controversial and not fully supported by modern research; nonetheless, his work highlighted the influence of early childhood and the unconscious on behavior.
Cultural and historical context: Freud’s Vienna era’s sexual repression influenced his emphasis on unconscious sexual drives; his followers expanded to other domains (social/cultural factors) later.
Neo-Freudian and related analysts
Alfred Adler: individual psychology; drive to compensate for inferiority; social context and conscious motivation; birth order effects (older siblings often overachieve; youngest may be spoiled; middle child may be neglected). Three fundamental social tasks: occupational, societal/friendship, love.
Erik Erikson: psychosocial development across the lifespan; 8 stages with corresponding conflicts; emphasizes social relationships and lifelong growth.
Carl Jung: analytical psychology; collective unconscious and archetypes (universal symbols like hero, mother, sage, trickster); introversion vs. extraversion; persona as a social mask—adaptive compromise between true self and societal expectations. Archetypes may reflect universal experiences but debates exist about their biological basis; later research suggests archetypes emerge from experiences, language, and culture rather than strict biology.
Karen Horney: challenged penis envy; argued gender differences are culturally and socially produced; proposed three neurotic coping styles (toward, against, away) that can become maladaptive when rigid:
Toward (moving toward others): seek acceptance and affection.
Against (moving against others): aggression and domination.
Away (moving away from others): detachment and isolation.
Summary of legacy: Freud’s ideas spurred a family of theories; many contemporary approaches integrate child development with social, cultural, and cognitive factors.
Behavioral and cognitive perspectives
Learning/behavioral view: personality is shaped by observable behaviors and the consequences that follow them; emphasis on reinforcement and environment.
B. F. Skinner: environment governs behavior; personality reflects learned response tendencies; behavior can change with new reinforcements; personality is not fixed in childhood and can evolve across the lifespan.
Example: Greta’s speed-dacing risk attitudes shift after life changes (marriage, children) altering reinforcement patterns; self-concept shifts accordingly.
Albert Bandura: social cognitive theory; adds cognition to learning; key concepts:
Reciprocal determinism: behavior, cognitive processes, and environmental context interactively influence one another.
Observational learning (modeling): learning by watching others and the consequences they receive.
Self-efficacy: belief in one’s own abilities to succeed in specific tasks; affects choice of activities, effort, and persistence.
Implications of reciprocal determinism and observational learning: personal factors, behavior, and environment form an interdependent system; learning is not purely stimulus-response; cognition shapes behavior.
Locus of control (Rotter): internal vs external beliefs about control over life outcomes; internal locus of control linked to better performance, independence, health, and coping; external locus associated with perceiving outcomes as due to luck or fate.
Walter Mischel and the person-situation debate: personality traits show limited cross-situational consistency; stronger consistency within similar situations; marshmallow test highlighted the role of self-regulation in long-term outcomes; later research emphasizes interaction of situation and personal factors (situation processing).
Self-regulation and willpower: ability to delay gratification and regulate impulses; marshmallow study linked early delay of gratification to later success, though later studies show situational factors and cognitive abilities moderate this link.
Humanistic psychology
Third force in psychology; reaction to psychoanalysis and behaviorism; emphasizes growth, choice, and self-directed change.
Abraham Maslow: hierarchy of needs; self-actualization at the top; focuses on healthy, creative, and productive individuals; needs must be met in sequence, with self-actualization representing achieving one’s fullest potential.
Carl Rogers: self-concept and congruence; real self vs. ideal self; congruence predicts well-being; unconditional positive regard from others fosters acceptance and self-worth; incongruence leads to maladjustment.
Core idea: personality develops through self-actualization and self-consistency, not strictly via biology or pathology.
Biological and evolutionary perspectives on personality
Inborn factors and genetics: twin studies (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory context) show significant heritability for several traits.
Minnesota twin study (identical twins raised apart vs together): high similarity in personality traits suggests genetic influence; heritability estimates for traits like leadership, resistance to stress, etc., > 0.5 in some domains.
Epigenetics: genes interact with environment; expression of traits can be modulated by environmental factors; complex inheritance rather than single-gene effects.
Temperament: early-emerging, biologically based tendencies; Thomas and Chess identified three temperaments: easy, difficult, slow-to-warm-up; later models emphasize two key dimensions:
Reactivity: response to new or challenging stimuli.
Self-regulation: ability to modulate responses.
Evolutionary perspective: personality differences may have evolved due to adaptive advantages; life history theory examines resource allocation (growth, reproduction, parenting); costly signaling theory explores honesty and deception in social/investment signals.
Summary: biology provides a foundation, but environment and culture shape the expression and development of personality.
Trait theories of personality
Core assumption: stable descriptive traits underlie behavior; individuals differ in degree of expression on each trait.
Allport’s trait taxonomy (three levels):
Cardinal traits: dominate an individual’s life (rare).
Central traits: core descriptors (e.g., loyal, kind, agreeable).
Secondary traits: less obvious, context-specific preferences.
Raymond Cattell (16 Personality Factors): identified 16 factors (e.g., Warmth, Reasoning, Emotional Stability, Dominance, Liveliness, Rule-Consciousness, Social Boldness, Sensitivity, Vigilance, Abstractedness, Privateness, Apprehension, Openness to Change, Self-Reliance, Tension).
Used a 16-factor instrument; scores are on continua (not binary presence/absence).
Hans Eysenck and Sybil Eysenck: two-factor theory plus later augmentation
Primary dimensions: Extraversion–Introversion and Neuroticism–Stability.
Later added a third dimension: Psychoticism–Superego Control (independence, nonconformity, impulsivity vs. empathy, cooperation, conventionality).
Five-Factor Model (Big Five, OCEAN): currently the dominant trait framework; traits exist on continua:
Openness to experience: imagination, feelings, actions, ideas; curiosity.
Conscientiousness: competence, self-discipline, responsibility.
Extraversion: sociability, assertiveness, excitement seeking, emotional expression.
Agreeableness: trust, cooperativeness, friendliness.
Neuroticism: tendency toward negative emotions; emotional instability.
Big Five cross-cultural validity and heritability: traits exist across cultures and ethnicities with genetic components.
Additional model: HEXACO (Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Openness)
Stability across lifespan: conscientiousness and agreeableness tend to increase with age; neuroticism and extraversion may decline slightly with age.
Regional and cross-cultural differences: cultures with collectivist vs. individualist orientations show variations in trait expression; cross-cultural studies reveal both universal and culture-specific patterns.
Culture and personality
Culture shapes personality significantly; both universal and culture-specific elements exist.
Individualist cultures emphasize independence and personal achievement; collectivist cultures emphasize harmony and group needs.
Cross-cultural findings:
Individualist societies tend to exhibit more personally oriented traits; collectivist societies show more socially oriented traits.
Some tests (e.g., Eisenck inventories) show context-dependent validity in collectivist cultures.
Regional differences in the U.S.: three clusters identified:
Upper Midwest and Deep South: friendly, conventional.
West: relaxed, emotionally stable, creative.
Northeast: stressed, irritable, depressed; higher openness in some samples.
Selective migration may explain geographic personality patterns (people move to places that fit their traits).
Implications for politics, economics, and social behavior: trait distributions relate to voting patterns, urban development, and regional culture.
Approaches to cross-cultural personality study:
Cultural comparative approach: tests Western theories (e.g., Big Five) in other cultures for universality.
Indigenous approach: develop culture-specific measures grounded in local constructs.
Combined approach: integrate Western frameworks with indigenous insights to capture universal and culture-specific aspects.
Personality assessment: methods and cross-cultural considerations
Self-report inventories (objective tests): easy to administer; often use Likert-type scales (1–5 or 1–7).
Issues: social desirability bias, faking good, misreporting, response biases.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): most widely used clinical personality test; origins trace to 1943; revised to MMPI-2 (1989) and MMPI-2-RF (2012).
MMPI-2: 567 true/false items; produces clinical scales (e.g., Hypochondriasis, Depression, Hysteria, Psychopathic Deviate, Social Introversion, etc.) and validity scales (e.g., Lie scale, L).
MMPI-2-RF: shorter form (~338 items); continues to assess validity and clinical patterns.
Uses: clinical diagnosis, occupational screening (e.g., law enforcement), counseling, marital/career assessments.
Validity and reliability concerns:
Validity scales detect response biases (e.g., L scale for minimizing problems).
Reliability indicates consistency over time; cross-time stability varies by scale and context.
Projective tests (projective methods rely on defense mechanisms): ambiguous stimuli interpreted to reveal unconscious processes.
Rorschach Inkblot Test: 1921; standardized using Exner scoring; assesses depression, psychosis, anxiety; reliability debated but useful in some contexts.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): 1930s; show 8–12 images and prompt stories; insights into social desires, fears, goals; standardization inconsistent; validity/reliability debated; widely used in clinical settings.
Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank (RISB): 40 incomplete sentences; quick responses; used for assessing adjustment and career counseling; bias concerns in cross-cultural use.
CT-CB (Contemporized Themes Concerning Black’s Test): 20 color images depicting African American life; aims to improve cultural relevance and engagement; observed longer stories and stronger cultural identification.
THEMIS: Tell Me a Story; culturally tailored to minority groups (e.g., Hispanic youth).
Cross-cultural test biases and development needs:
Traditional projective tests showed cultural bias; tests developed to reflect language, race, and acculturation differences to reduce bias.
Contemporary approaches emphasize culturally valid constructs and context-sensitive interpretation.
Cross-cultural research and practical implications
Cultural comparisons inform the universality of personality dimensions (e.g., Big Five) and the need for indigenous measures in non-Western settings.
Indigenous approaches aim to capture culture-specific personality patterns and social meanings not covered by Western instruments.
Combined approaches seek to balance global frameworks with local relevance to reduce bias and improve predictive validity in diverse populations.
Key takeaways for exam preparation
Personality is a stable, enduring set of patterns in thinking, feeling, and behaving, shaped by biology, environment, and culture.
Historical theories provide a foundation: Hippocrates’ four temperaments, Galen’s humors, Kant and Wundt’s trait axes, Freud’s psychodynamics (id, ego, superego) and psychosexual stages.
Neo-Freudian perspectives (Adler, Erikson, Jung, Horney) broadened the focus to social factors, lifelong development, archetypes, and cultural influences.
Behaviorists and social-cognitive theorists (Skinner, Bandura) show how learning, cognition, and environment interact; concepts include reciprocal determinism, self-efficacy, and locus of control.
Humanistic psychology emphasizes self-actualization, congruence, and unconditional positive regard as pathways to healthy personality.
Biological and evolutionary perspectives emphasize genetic/temperamental foundations and adaptive explanations for variation in personality.
Trait theories (Cattell, Eysenck, Big Five, HEXACO) offer structured dimensional models; Big Five remains the most widely supported framework across cultures with substantial heritability.
Culture and context matter: individualist vs collectivist orientations influence trait expression and interpretation; multiple research approaches help capture universal and culture-specific aspects.
Personality assessment tools (MMPI-2/MMPI-2-RF, self-reports, projective tests) have strengths and limitations; cross-cultural validity requires careful interpretation and culturally aware methodologies.
( ext{Note: Many dates and figures are referenced from the transcript; where relevant, years and numerical comparisons are presented in this document using standard numerals or LaTeX formatting as needed, e.g., } 2008, 1989, 1921, 1930s, 8-12 ext{ images in TAT, etc.})