11 Personality - Psychology 2e
PERSONALITY
What is Personality?
Personality: The long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in specific ways.
Derived from the Latin word persona, meaning a mask worn by an actor, historically used to represent specific personality traits.
Descriptive characteristics include emotions such as happy, sad, impatient, shy, fearful, curious, and helpful.
Historical Perspectives
Hippocrates (370 BCE)
Theorized that personality traits and human behaviors emerge from four separate temperaments associated with bodily fluids.
Choleric: Associated with yellow bile; traits include being passionate, ambitious, and bold.
Melancholic: Associated with black bile; traits include being reserved, anxious, and unhappy.
Sanguine: Associated with red blood; traits are joyful, eager, and optimistic.
Phlegmatic: Associated with white phlegm; traits include being calm, reliable, and thoughtful.
Galen expanded on this theory to explain diseases and personality using these humors.
Phrenology
Franz Gall (1780): Proposed that bumps on the skull could reveal personality traits, character, and mental abilities; discredited due to lack of empirical support.
Developed a chart correlating specific skull areas with personality traits.
Immanuel Kant (18th Century)
Asserted categorization into four temperaments using traits to describe each temperament.
Wilhelm Wundt (19th Century)
Suggested that personality could be described using two major axes:
Emotional/Non-emotional: Differentiates strong emotions (melancholic, choleric) from weak (phlegmatic, sanguine).
Changeable/Unchangeable: Distinguishes changeable temperaments (choleric, sanguine) from unchangeable (melancholic, phlegmatic).
Psychodynamic Perspectives (20th Century)
Sigmund Freud
Developed the first comprehensive theory of personality, focusing on unconscious drives influenced by sex, aggression, and childhood sexuality.
Levels of Consciousness:
Unconscious: Mental activity that is hidden from awareness, affecting behavior.
Freudian Slip: Accidental verbal mistakes revealing unconscious urges.
The Id, Ego, and Superego
Id: Primitive urges focused on basic needs (hunger, thirst, sex), operates on the pleasure principle.
Superego: Internal moral compass, develops through social interactions, strives for perfection, creates feelings of pride or guilt.
Ego: Balances id and superego, operates on the reality principle, rational aspect of personality seen by others.
Effects on Personality:
Balanced interaction between id and superego leads to a healthy personality; imbalance leads to neurosis or unhealthy behaviors.
Defense Mechanisms
Unconscious behaviors aimed at reducing anxiety, used by the ego.
Overuse can be problematic.
Stages of Psychosexual Development
Freud outlined five stages wherein pleasure-seeking urges focus on different body parts:
Oral Stage (Birth - 1 year): Erogenous zone - mouth; adult fixation may lead to smoking, overeating.
Anal Stage (1-3 years): Erogenous zone - anus; issues can result in an anal-retentive or anal-expulsive personality.
Phallic Stage (3-6 years): Desire for opposite-sex parent, includes Oedipus and Electra complexes; adult fixation leads to over-ambition or vanity.
Latency Stage (6-12 years): Sexual feelings are dormant.
Genital Stage (12+): Redirects sexual urges towards socially acceptable partners.
Contemporary Theories of Personality
Alfred Adler
Focused on individual psychology and the drive to compensate for feelings of inferiority, introducing the inferiority complex.
Emphasized social connections and posited that birth order influences personality.
Identified three social tasks:
Occupational tasks (careers).
Societal tasks (friendships).
Love tasks (intimate relationships).
Erik Erikson
Developed a psychosocial theory presenting eight stages of development, emphasizing social relationships and their role in personality development over the lifespan.
Carl Jung
Contributed to analytical psychology, focusing on the balance of conscious and unconscious thought.
Introduced concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes, asserting that these universal themes derive from shared human experiences.
Developed contrasting concepts of extroversion (energized by social interactions) and introversion (energized by solitude).
Karen Horney
Advocated for self-realization and corrected Freud's theory about envy.
Proposed coping styles in response to anxiety:
Moving toward people: Dependency.
Moving against people: Aggression.
Moving away from people: Isolation.
Behavioral Perspective
B.F. Skinner
Focused on observable behaviors shaped by environmental reinforcements, asserting that personality develops continuously through experiences.
Social-Cognitive Perspective
Albert Bandura
Proposed that cognitive processes interact with behavior and the environment (reciprocal determinism) to shape personality, emphasizing observational learning and self-efficacy in a social context.
Julian Rotter
Locus of Control
Defined the locus of control as a belief system about control over life outcomes on a continuum from internal to external.
Internal locus of control: Belief outcomes result primarily from personal effort.
External locus of control: Belief outcomes are determined by external forces like luck.
Walter Mischel
The Person-Situation Debate
Found that behavior varies significantly across different situations, igniting debate on personality consistency over time and context.
Marshmallow Study: Examined self-regulation and willpower, revealing correlations with later life success and behavioral issues based on self-control levels.
Humanistic Approaches
Abraham Maslow
Studied self-actualized individuals, identifying shared qualities of creativity, compassion, and acceptance.
Carl Rogers
Linked personality with self-concept, differentiating between ideal self and real self.
Congruence: High degrees lead to self-worth and a productive life; low degrees lead to maladjustment.
Biological Approaches
Heritable Traits
Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart
Concluded that identical twins share strong similarities in personality regardless of upbringing, indicating significant genetic influence.
Traits with heritability over 0.50 include leadership and resilience.
Temperament
Observed early life temperaments categorized as easy, difficult, or slow to warm.
Important dimensions:
Reactivity: Response to stimuli.
Self-Regulation: Control over responses.
Somatotypes
William H. Sheldon
Proposed three body types linked to personality traits:
Endomorphs: Relaxed and sociable.
Mesomorphs: Adventurous and competitive.
Ectomorphs: Anxious and thoughtful.
Trait Theorists
Gordon Allport
Classified personality traits into three categories:
Cardinal Traits: Dominant traits (rare).
Central Traits: Core characteristics.
Secondary Traits: Context-dependent traits.
Raymond Cattell
Narrowed Allport's traits to 16 dimensions, measured on a continuum.
Hans & Sybil Eysenck
Proposed two primary personality dimensions:
Extroversion/Introversion
Neuroticism/Stability
Five Factor Model
Big Five Personality Traits
Each person has traits on a continuum forming the acronym OCEAN:
Openness: Creativity and curiosity.
Conscientiousness: Dependability and organization.
Extroversion: Sociability and assertiveness.
Agreeableness: Compassion and cooperativeness.
Neuroticism: Emotional instability.
HEXACO Model
Consists of six personality traits described as follows:
(H) Honesty-humility: Sincerity, modesty.
(E) Emotionality: Sensitivity, sentimentality.
(X) Extraversion: Sociability and boldness.
(A) Agreeableness: Patience, gentleness.
(C) Conscientiousness: Organization, thoroughness.
(O) Openness: Creativity and inquisitiveness.
Cultural Understandings of Personality
Influence of Culture
Culture significantly impacts personality formation, with variations across different societies.
Examples:
Asian cultures exhibit collectivism, often leading to less extroversion.
Central and South American cultures score higher on openness.
Europeans tend to score higher on neuroticism.
Regional Differences in the U.S.
Identified personality clusters:
Upper Midwest and Deep South: Friendly and conventional.
West: Creative and emotionally stable.
Northeast: Stressed and irritable.
Individualist vs. Collectivist Cultures
Individualist Cultures: Emphasize independence and achievement; present in Western nations.
Collectivist Cultures: Prioritize social harmony and group needs; common in Asia, Africa, South America.
Assessment Methods
Self-Report Inventories
Commonly used tests in various fields including psychology, employment, and legal settings. They often utilize structured formats with multiple-choice or Likert scales.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
A widely utilized inventory with various scales for assessing psychological disorders, consisting of 338 items in its current version.
Likert Scales
Feature in many personality assessments, allowing respondents to express the degree of their agreement with statements.
Projective Tests
Projects unconscious feelings through interaction with ambiguous stimuli.
Major projective tests include:
Rorschach Inkblot Test: Interpretation of inkblot cards.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Storytelling based on ambiguous images.
Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank (RISB): Completing sentences to express unconscious desires and fears.
Examples of Test Questions
The questions utilized in tests such as the MMPI or RISB vary widely but often include statements prompting true/false responses or requiring complete sentences based on personal experiences or beliefs.