Chapter 12
Personality: Theory, Research, and Assessment
Defining Personality: Consistency and
Distinctiveness
 Personality
Traits
– Dispositions and dimensions
 The
–
–
–
–
–
Five-Factor Model
Extraversion
Neuroticism
Openness to experience
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
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Psychodynamic Perspectives
 Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory
– Structure of personality
• Id - Pleasure principle
• Ego - Reality principle
• Superego - Morality
– Levels of awareness
• Conscious
• Unconscious
• Preconscious
– Conflict
• Sex and Aggression
• Anxiety
• Defense Mechanisms
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Fig 12.3 – Freud’s model of personality dynamics. According to Freud,
unconscious conflicts between the id, ego, and superego sometimes lead to
anxiety. This discomfort may lead to the use of defense mechanisms, which
may temporarily relieve anxiety.
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Freud on Development: Psychosexual
Stages
 Sexual
= physical pleasure
 Psychosexual stages
– Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital
• Fixation = Excessive gratification or frustration
• Overemphasis on psychosexual needs during fixated stage
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Other Psychodynamic Theorists
 Carl
Jung
– Analytical Psychology
• Personal and collective unconscious
• Archetypes
• Introversion/Extroversion
 Alfred Adler
– Individual Psychology
•
•
•
•
Striving for superiority
Compensation
Inferiority complex/overcompensation
Birth order
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Fig 12.4 – Jung’s vision of the collective unconscious. Much like Freud, Jung theorized that
each person has conscious and unconscious levels of awareness. However, he also proposed that
the entire human race shares a collective unconscious, which exists in the deepest reaches of
everyone’s awareness. He saw the collective unconscious as a storehouse of hidden ancestral
memories, called archetypes. Jung believed that important cultural symbols emerge from these
universal archetypes. Thus, he argued that remarkable resemblances among
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symbols from disparate cultures (such as the mandalas shown here) are
evidence of the existence of the collective unconscious.
Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives
 Pros
 Insights
regarding
– The unconscious
– The role of internal conflict
– The importance of early childhood experiences
 Cons
– Poor testability
– Inadequate empirical base
– Sexist views
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Behavioral Perspectives
 Skinner’s views
– Conditioning and response tendencies
– Environmental determinism
 Bandura’s views
– Social leaning theory
•
•
•
•
Cognitive processes and reciprocal determinism
Observational learning
Models
Self-efficacy
 Mischel’s views
– The person-situation controversy
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Fig 12.5 – A behavioral view of personality. Staunch behaviorists devote little attention
to the structure of personality because it is unobservable, but they implicitly view
personality as an individual’s collection of response tendencies. A possible hierarchy of
response tendencies for a specific stimulus situation is shown here.
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Fig 12.6 – Personality
development and operant
conditioning. According to
Skinner, people’s
characteristic response
tendencies are shaped by
reinforcers and other
consequences that follow
behavior. Thus, if your joking
at a party leads to attention
and compliments, your
tendency to be witty and
humorous will be
strengthened.
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Fig 12.7 – Bandura’s reciprocal determinism. Bandura rejects Skinner’s highly deterministic
view that freedom is an illusion and argues that internal mental events, external environmental
contingencies, and overt behavior all influence one another.
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Evaluating Behavioral Perspectives
 Pros
– Based on rigorous research
– Insights into effects of learning and environmental factors
 Cons
– Over-dependence on animal research
– Fragmented view of personality
– Dehumanizing views
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Humanistic Perspectives
 Carl
Rogers
– Person Centered Theory
• Self-concept
– Conditional/unconditional positive regard
– Incongruence and anxiety
 Abraham
Maslow
– Self-actualization theory
– Hierarchy of needs
• The healthy personality
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Fig 12.9 – Rogers’s view of personality structure. In Rogers’s model, the self-concept is
the only important structural construct. However, Rogers acknowledged that one’s selfconcept may not be consistent with the realities of one’s actual experience—a condition
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called incongruence.
Fig 12.10 – Rogers’s view of personality development and dynamics.
Rogers’s theory of development posits that conditional love leads to a need to
distort experiences, which fosters an incongruent self-concept. Incongruence
makes one prone to recurrent anxiety, which triggers defensive behavior,
which fuels more incongruence.
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Fig 12.11 – Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow, human needs are
arranged in a hierarchy, and people must satisfy their basic needs before they can satisfy
higher needs. In the diagram, higher levels in the pyramid represent progressively less
basic needs. Individuals progress upward in the hierarchy when lower needs are satisfied
reasonably well, but they may regress back to lower levels if basic needs are no longer
satisfied
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Fig 12.12 –
Maslow’s view of
the healthy
personality.
Humanistic theorists
emphasize
psychological health
instead of
maladjustment.
Maslow’s description
of characteristics of
self-actualizing
people evokes a
picture of the
healthy personality.
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Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives
 Humanistic
theories are credited with highlighting the
importance of a person’s subjective view of reality.
They are also applauded for focusing attention on the
issue of what constitutes a healthy personality.
 They
are criticized for lacking a strong research base,
poor testability, and what may be an overly optimistic
view of human nature (Maslow had a hard time finding
live people who had self-actualized).
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Biological Perspectives
 Eysenk’s
theory
– 3 higher order traits
– Extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism
• Determined by genes
 Twin
studies
– Novelty seeking and genetics
 The
evolutionary approach
– Traits conducive to reproductive fitness
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Fig 12.13 – Eysenck’s model of personality structure. Eysenck described
personality structure as a hierarchy of traits. In this scheme, a few higher-order
traits, such as extraversion, determine a host of lower-order traits, which
determine a person’s habitual responses.
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Fig 12.14 – Twin studies of personality. Loehlin (1992) has summarized, the results of twin
studies that have examined the Big Five personality traits. The N under each trait indicates
the number of twin studies that have examined that trait. The chart plots the average
correlations obtained for identical and fraternal twins in these studies. As you can see,
identical twins have shown greater resemblance in personality than fraternal twins have,
suggesting that personality is partly inherited.
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Fig 12.15 – Heritability and environmental variance for the Big Five traits. Based on the
twin study data of Riemann et al. (1997), Plomin and Caspi (1999) estimated the heritability of
each of the Big Five traits. The data also allowed them to estimate the amount of variance on
each trait attributable to shared environment and nonshared environment. As you can see, the
heritability estimates hovered in the vicinity of 40%, with two exceeding 50%.
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As in other studies, the influence of shared environment was very modest.
(Based on Plomin and Caspi, 1999)
Evaluating Biological Perspectives
 Pros
– Convincing evidence for genetic influence
 Cons
– Conceptual problems with heritability estimates
– Artificial carving apart of nature and nurture
– No comprehensive biological theory
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Contemporary Empirical Approaches to
Personality Traits
 Marvin
Zuckerman
– Sensation Seeking
 Mark
Snyder
– Self-monitoring
 Markus
and Kitayama
– Independence vs. interdependence and culture
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