Personality
Personality: The organization of
enduring behavior patterns that
often serves to distinguish us
from one another.
Major Theories and Approaches:
Psychoanalytic:
Psychoanalytic Approach to Personality:
The development in personality which is
composed of three elements id, ego, and
superego.
1.) The founder of psychoanalytic theory is
Sigmund Freud.
2.) Freud divided the mind into two parts:
-The conscious mind: includes
everything that we are aware of. This is the
aspect of our mental processing that we can
think and talk about rationally. A part of this
includes our memory, which is not always
part of consciousness but can be retrieved
easily at any time and brought into our
awareness. Freud called this ordinary
memory the preconscious.
-The unconscious mind: is a
reservoir of feelings, thoughts, urges, and
memories that outside of our conscious
awareness. Most of the contents of the
unconscious are unacceptable or
unpleasant, such as feelings of pain,
anxiety, or conflict. According to Freud, the
unconscious continues to influence our
behavior and experience, even though we
are unaware of these underlying influences.
3.) Freud’s three elements to developing
personality include:
-The Id: The id is the only
component of personality that is present
from birth. This aspect of personality is
entirely unconscious and includes of the
instinctive and primitive behaviors.
According to Freud, the id is the source of
all psychic energy, making it the primary
component of personality.
The id is driven by the pleasure principle,
which strives for immediate gratification of
all desires, wants, and needs. If these
needs are not satisfied immediately, the
result is a state anxiety or tension. For
example, an increase in hunger or thirst
should produce an immediate attempt to eat
or drink. The id is very important early in life,
because it ensures that an infant's needs
are met. If the infant is hungry or
uncomfortable, he or she will cry until the
demands of the id are met.
However, immediately satisfying these
needs is not always realistic or even
possible. If we were ruled entirely by the
pleasure principle, we might find ourselves
grabbing things we want out of other
people's hands to satisfy our own cravings.
This sort of behavior would be both
disruptive and socially unacceptable.
According to Freud, the id tries to resolve
the tension created by the pleasure principle
through the primary process, which involves
forming a mental image of the desired
object as a way of satisfying the need.
-The Ego: The ego is the
component of personality that is responsible
for dealing with reality. According to Freud,
the ego develops from the id and ensures
that the impulses of the id can be expressed
in a manner acceptable in the real world.
The ego functions in both the conscious,
preconscious, and unconscious mind.
The ego operates based on the reality
principle, which strives to satisfy the id's
desires in realistic and socially appropriate
ways. The reality principle weighs the costs
and benefits of an action before deciding to
act upon or abandon impulses. In many
cases, the id's impulses can be satisfied
through a process of delayed gratification-the ego will eventually allow the behavior,
but only in the appropriate time and place.
The ego also discharges tension created by
unmet impulses through the secondary
process, in which the ego tries to find an
object in the real world that matches the
mental image created by the id's primary
process.
-The Superego: The last component
of personality to develop is the superego.
The superego is the aspect of personality
that holds all of our internalized moral
standards and ideals that we acquire from
both parents and society--our sense of right
and wrong. The superego provides
guidelines for making judgments. According
to Freud, the superego begins to emerge at
around age five.
-Major Neo-Freudians would include:
-Carl Jung
-Alfred Adler
-Erik Erikson
-Karen Horney
-Erich Fromm
Neo-Freudian Disagreements with Freud
There are a few different reasons why these
neo-Freudian thinkers disagreed with Freud.
For example, Erik Erikson believed that
Freud was incorrect to believe that
personality is shaped almost entirely by
childhood events. Other issues that
motivated neo-Freudian thinkers included:
1. Freud's emphasis on sexual urges
as a primary motivator
2. Freud's negative view of human
nature
3. Freud's belief that personality is
entirely shaped by early childhood
experiences
4. Freud's lack of emphasis on social
and cultural influences on behavior
and personality
While the neo-Freudian's may have been
influenced by Freud, they developed their
own unique theories and perspectives on
human development, personality and
behavior.
4.) Neo-Freudians: Neo-Freudian
psychologists were thinkers who agreed
with the basis of Freud's psychoanalytic
theory, but changed and adapted the theory
to incorporate their own beliefs, ideas and
theories. Psychologist Sigmund Freud
proposed a number of ideas that were
highly controversial, but also attracted a
number of followers. Many of these thinkers
agreed with Freud's concept of the
unconscious mind and the importance of
early childhood. There were, however, a
number of points that other thinkers
disagree with or directly rejected. Because
of this, these individuals went on to propose
their own unique theories of personality.
5.) Psychoanalytic Theory on Defense
Mechanisms:
Freud's contributions to the psychodynamic
theory of psychology cannot be
understated. Although many of his initial
conclusions and theories are no longer
completely believed or utilized, many have
been altered and still form the basis of the
psychodynamic theory, as well as play an
unspoken role in other psychological
theories.
One of these lasting theories is his theory
on "ego defense," or what we commonly
know as "defense mechanisms."
Mechanisms which are said to operate
"actively and involuntarily, without the
person's awareness". Ego defenses are
significant in that they deal with the internal
threats of an individual. Just as the ego
deals with threats of the external world
through learning, memory, and judgments,
the ego defenses deal with threatening
unconscious thoughts.
-The first of these five defenses is known as
"repression." This basic form of ego
defense is actually quite self-defining.
Repression is the process of repressing or
preventing threatening impulses from
reaching the conscious, thus preventing it
from over occurring.
-"Fixation", is the stunted movement from
one psychosexual stage to the next. It
occurs when an individual experiences
excessive frustration or anxiety concerning
the next stage in psychosexual progression.
Thus, instead of moving on, they remain
fixed on one particular stage.
-”Regression”, ego defense number three,
deals with an individual experiencing
frustration or anxiety with a current
psychosexual stage, and regressing to a
previous stage. Regression will generally
involve an individual returning to a stage
which caused them no anxiety, and in
contrast brought them great satisfaction and
gratification.
-"Reaction formation" is the ego defense
in which an individual expresses
behaviorally the exact opposite of what they
are unconsciously feeling. This is done
through an unconscious impulse, although it
is consciously expressed through one's
behavior.
-"Projection," the last of the ego defenses,
is the instance in which one's feelings are
attributed to another individual. Meaning, an
individual experiencing projection will
reverse their unconscious feelings as being
the feelings of someone else toward
themselves
Humanist:
Humanistic Approach to Personality:
Believed that personality develops through
actualizing tendency that unfolds
perceptions of the world
1.) Believes that people are naturally
inclined to do good things, love, and to be
creative.
2.) People Involved:
Carl Rogers: He made up the
“Actualizing Tendency”- The theory that we
all want to be the best that we can be. He
also believed that there are 2 key elements;
“self” and desire for “positive regard”. We all
experience unconditional; or conditional
positive regard (getting a sense or not of
being valued by someone else).
Abraham Maslow: Maslow stated
that actualizing is not just a capacity, but a
need as well. He also believes that most
people do not reach goals because they’re
distracted by lower needs. “Deficiency
Orientation”: he stated that this means the
preoccupation with perceived needs- we
focus on our flaws and we are barely
satisfied with our lives. He also made the
“Growth Orientation”: which means the
tendency to draw satisfaction from what is
available in life. A person still has a desire
to grow, but satisfied.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: We
must obtain from the bottom,
up.
Criticism: Humanism is vague and
individual bias is present.
Cognitive:
Cognitive Theories: emphasizes cognitive
process such as thinking and judging.
Essentially, the cognitive perspective of
personality is the idea that people are who
they are because of the way they think,
including how information is attended to,
perceived, analyzed, interpreted, encoded
and retrieved. People tend to have habitual
thinking patterns which are characterized as
personality. Your personality, then, would
be your characteristic cognitive patterns.
The cognitive perspective is that personality
is a person’s mental organization. In order
to cope with all the information you receive
from the world, including sensory
information, you need to cope with,
integrate and organize all the information
the world throws at you. From this point of
view you are:
1. what you think.
2. The way you process information
(including attending to, perceiving,
interpreting, encoding and retrieving of
information.
3. The way you self-regulate via cognitive
monitoring and adjusting thoughts and
behaviors.
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The cognitive approach is the
outgrowth of Bandura’s sociallearning perspectives. Recall that
Bandura’s approach has come to be
called social cognitive theory.
Bandura’s beliefs about the
environment and expectations about
the self are essentially cognitive
concepts.
The cognitive approach also draws
on Freud’s notions concerning levels
of consciousness. The preconscious
and the unconscious are receiving
increasing attention from many
proponents of the cognitive
approach to personality.
Traits:
Traits: People’s characteristic behaviors
and conscious motives to act/ feel around
others.
1.) We do not just have one trait. We are
made of many traits.
2.) A person may have the trait of being
extraverted, where as they seek stimulation
because their normal brain arousal is
relatively low.
3.) We can assess traits by personality
inventories such as the MMPI.
Personality inventories: a questionnaire
(T/F) - people respond to items designed to
gauge a wide range of feelings and
behaviors- used to assess selected
personality traits.
4.) MN Multiphase Personality Inventory
(MMPI) - most widely used- originally
developed to identify emotional disorders,
but now used for many other screening
purposes.
5.) there are 5 big personality factors with
traits:
-Conscientiousness
(organized/disorganized)
-Agreeableness (trusting/ suspicious)
-Neuroticism (calm/ anxious)
-Openness (imaginary/ practical)
-Extraversion (sociable/ retiring)
6.) As we get older, our personality traits
become more persistent.
Social Learning:
The social cognitive perspective
proposes that our personalities are shaped
by the interaction of our personal traits,
environment, and behaviors. Theorists
believe that much of our behaviors are
learned through conditioning or by
observing others and modeling their
behavior. The mental process and what we
think about is highly emphasized in this
model. They also focus not on just our
environment by how our thoughts and our
environment interact.
Reciprocal determinism is the interacting
influences of behavior, internal cognition,
and environment. For example the TV you
watched in the past will influence what you
will
watch
Albert Bandura viewed the personenvironment as reciprocal determinism, and
proposed the social-cognitive perspective.
-With the social cognitive theory comes the
Biopsychosocial perspective which believes
a combination of biological, psychological,
and environmental factors that influence
personality.
Behavioral:
Behavioral Theories: personality results
from interaction between and individual and
the environment around them.
Behavioral Theorists:
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Study observable and measurable
behaviors
They reject theories that take
internal thought and feelings into
account
B.F. Skinner: most known for Operant
Conditioning
Operant Conditioning: method of learning
that occurs through rewards and
punishments for behavior.
Components for Operant Conditioning:
1. Reinforcements: strengthens or increases
behavior
a. Positive Reinforcements:
favorable events or outcomes that are
presented after the behavior.
b. Negative Reinforcements: the
removal of an unfavorable events or
outcomes a certain behavior.
2. Punishments: presents a decrease in the
behavior.
a. Positive Punishments: an
unfavorable event or outcome in order to
weaken the behavior.
b. Negative Punishments: favorable
event or outcome is removed after a
behavior decreases.
Example: Students finish their homework to
earn a reward from either a parent or
teacher.
J.B. Watson: behaviorist who studied
Classical and Operant Conditioning.
1. Classical Conditioning: naturally
occurring stimulus is paired with a
response.
2. Operant Conditioning: occurs through
rewards and punishments.
Famous Studies:
1. Little Albert Experiment
Credits:
Psychoanalytic- Ryan X.
Humanistic- Jackie O.
Cognitive- Ashley M.
Traits- Jackie O.
Social Learning- Mike M.
Behavioral- Ashley M.