Personality
Unit 10
1
Come up with one word to
describe your personality
• Have you always been that way?
• Is our personality one-dimensional?
2
How are our personalities formed?
3
4 Personality Theories
• 1. Psychodynamic
• 2. Humanistic
• 3. Trait Perspective
• 4. Social-Cognitive
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Perspective #1:
Psychodynamic
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What comes to mind when you
see Freud?
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Psychodynamic Perspective
• Developed the first comprehensive
theory of personality based on:
– unconscious mind
– psychosexual stages
– defense mechanisms.
• Psychoanalysis – attributes
thoughts and actions to unconscious
motives and conflicts
Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939)
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Exploring the Unconscious
• Free association
• Asked patients to say whatever came to their minds in
order to tap the unconscious.
• Dream analysis
– Manifest and Latent Content
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Model of Mind
• How is your mind like an iceberg?
• It is mostly hidden, and below the surface lies the
unconscious mind.
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Personality Structure
• Our personality is a result of a conflict
– Between aggressive and pleasure seeking drives and?
– Social restraints
• Have you heard of the id, ego, and superego?
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Id, Ego and Superego
• The Id unconsciously strives to satisfy basic sexual
and aggressive drives
– Pleasure principle
• The ego functions as the “executive” and
mediates the demands of the id and superego.
• The superego provides standards for judgment (the
conscience) and for future aspirations.
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Oedipus Complex
• A boy’s sexual desires toward his mother
• Feelings of jealousy and hatred towards father
• Electra complex
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If things don’t go our way for our id
or superego….are we frustrated?
• How do we deal with this
frustration?
• Defense mechanisms
– Tactics that reduce or redirect
anxiety by unconsciously distorting
reality
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Defense Mechanisms
1. Repression banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts,
feelings, and memories from consciousness.
2. Regression leads an individual faced with anxiety
to retreat to a more infantile psychosexual stage.
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3. Reaction Formation causes the ego to unconsciously
switch unacceptable impulses into their opposites.
-”I love him” becomes “I hate him”
4. Projection leads people to disguise their own
threatening impulses by attributing them to others.
-Blaming failure b/c of someone else
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5. Rationalization offers self-justifying explanations in
place of the real, more threatening, unconscious
reasons for one’s actions.
6. Displacement shifts sexual or aggressive impulses
toward a more acceptable or less threatening object
or person, redirecting anger toward a safer outlet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7kS68T6ptA
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7. Sublimation - transferring of unacceptable
impulses into socially valued motives
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Defense Mechanisms
Worksheet
18
Answer the following
questions:
1. What has led up to
the event shown?
2. What is happening at
the moment?
3. What are the
characters feeling and
thinking?
4. What the outcome of
the story?
19
Answer the following
questions:
1. What has led up to
the event shown?
2. What is happening at
the moment?
3. What are the
characters feeling and
thinking?
4. What the outcome of
the story?
20
Answer the following
questions:
1. What has led up to
the event shown?
2. What is happening at
the moment?
3. What are the
characters feeling and
thinking?
4. What the outcome of
the story?
21
What was the purpose of that?
• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
– A projective test in which people express their inner feelings and
interests through the stories they make up
• Complete version of the test contains 31 picture cards.
– Some show males, females, both, adults, children, and no human
figures at all.
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Criticisms
• Psychologists might interpret responses differently
• Is it still used today?
– Despite criticisms, the TAT remains widely used
– Tool for research on dreams, fantasies, mate selection and
what motivates people to choose their occupation.
– Sometimes it is used in a psychiatric context to assess:
• Personality disorders
• Thought disorders
• Evaluate crime suspects
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• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd2B6Sj
Mh_w&ob=av2e
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Rorschach Inkblot Test
• The most widely used projective test uses a set of 10
inkblots and was designed by Hermann Rorschach.
• It seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by
analyzing their interpretations of the blots.
Lew Merrim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.
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Projective Tests
• Reliable?
• Valid?
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So is Freud right?
• Are we controlled by our unconscious?
– Some ways we are
• False consensus effect
– We overestimate the extent to which others
share our beliefs and our behaviors.
– “Everybody thinks that way”
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“Neo-Freudians”
• Psychologists that came afterwards
• Believed some of Freud’s ideas but rejected others
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
Karen Horney
(1885-1952)
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Carl Jung
• Agreed with unconscious
• Added a collective unconscious
– A reservoir from our species’ past
– Inherited experiences impact us
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
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Best Tweet about Jung’s
Thoughts
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Alfred Adler
National Library of Medicine
• Agreed with the childhood
importance
• Emphasized importance of
social not sexual tensions
• Conquer the inferiority of
childhood
– Our life is about striving for
power
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
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Best Tweet about Adler’s
thoughts
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Karen Horney
The Bettmann Archive/ Corbis
• Agreed that childhood is
important
• Childhood anxiety causes
our desire for love and
security
• Countered Freud’s idea
that women have weak
superegos and suffer from
“penis envy.”
Karen Horney (1885-1952)
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Best Tweet about
Horney’s thoughts
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Project Planning Time
39
Big Bang Theory Clip
• Start at 2:38
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• By the 1960s, psychologists became discontent with:
– Freud’s negativity
– Skinner’s Behaviorism
• Humanistic – emphasizes human potential
Abraham Maslow
(1908-1970)
Carl Rogers
(1902-1987)
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What have we learned about the
humanistic perspective?
• Abraham Maslow
– Hierarchy of needs
– Self-actualization
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•
•
•
•
•
Self-aware and self-accepting
Open and spontaneous
Loving and caring
Not paralyzed by others’ opinions
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Interests were problem-centered not self-centered
Growth and Fulfillment
• Carl Rogers – believes that humans can grow
– Genuine, accepting and empathetic
• Unconditional Positive Regard - an attitude of acceptance of
others despite their failings.
"Just remember, son, it
doesn't matter whether you
win or lose - unless you
want Daddy's love."
Active Listening
45
Quick activity
• On a piece of paper…
• How do you see yourself?
– Write for about 2 minutes
• On average I am proud of my accomplishments. I
work hard as a student and do homework every
night…..
• In my relationships I…
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Now…
• Who would you like to be?
• In regards to:
–
–
–
–
Academics
Social world
Family life
Extracurricular
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Assessing the Self
• Self-concept – all our thoughts and feelings about
ourselves, in answer to the question “Who am I?”
• Real self vs. ideal self
• If they are close, you have a positive self-concept
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Evaluating the Humanistic
Perspective
Good
• Had a huge impact on
counseling, education,
child-rearing, and
management.
Bad
• Concepts in humanistic
psychology are vague
and subjective and lack
scientific basis.
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Work on Project
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• This is what we normally think of as personality
• What are traits?
– A characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to
feel and act
• Allport identified 18,000 traits
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Personality Types
• Your personality is made up of multiple traits
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
–
–
–
–
–
2.5 million Americans take it
Extraverted or Introverted?
Sensing or Intuition?
Thinking or Feeling?
Judging or Perceiving?
53
Exploring Traits
• 18,000 traits – is that too much?
• How do we break it down to a manageable #?
• Factor analysis
– a statistical procedure that identifies clusters of related
items
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Personality Dimensions
• Hans and Sybil Eysenck suggested that personality
could be reduced down to two polar dimensions:
• Extraversion-introversion and
• Emotional stability-instability.
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Assessing Traits
• Personality inventories - questionnaires designed to
gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors
– Assess several traits at once
• Some are not always accurate…
• http://www.buddytv.com/personalityquizzes/jerseyshore-personalityquizzes.aspx
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MMPI
• The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI) is the most widely researched and clinically
used of all personality tests.
• Originally developed to identify emotional disorders.
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MMPI Test Profile
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Let’s test your personality
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•
•
•
•
1. Are you organized and disciplined?
2. Are you helpful and unselfish with others?
3. Do you tend to worry a lot?
4. Are you imaginative and enjoy variety?
5. Are you outgoing in most situations?
60
The Big Five Factors
• 18,000 is too big
• 2 is too small
• Five = just right?
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Openness
Extraversion
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For your famous person…
• Decide where they would be on the five traits
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Do our traits persist over time?
• Personality trait scores are positively correlated
with scores obtained seven years later
• Interests , careers, and relationships may change
• Most traits tend to be stable
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Project Time
65
Social-Cognitive Perspective
• Proposed by Albert Bandura
– What was he known for?
• Our personality is a result of a
person’s thinking and their
social context
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Reciprocal Influences
• The three factors, behavior, cognition, and
Bandura called the process of interacting with
environment, are interlocking determinants of each
our environment reciprocal determinism.
other.
Stephen Wade/ Allsport/ Getty Images
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Behavior
Behavior emerges from an interplay of external
and internal influences.
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Positive Psychology
• Martin Seligman
• Wanted to focus on
Positive psychology –
focus on strengths and
virtues
Martin Seligman
69
Exploring the Self
• All of these perspectives are trying to describe the
“self”
• Your current and ideal self
• Spotlight effect – overestimating others’ noticing and
evaluating our appearance, performance, and blunders
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Self-Efficacy
• One’s belief in their ability to complete tasks
and reach goals
• Have you ever gone on a diet?
• Had a goal of certain grades in a class?
• People with higher self-efficacy are more likely
to complete a task when it gets hard
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Self Esteem
• One’s feelings of high or low self-worth
• High self-esteem
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–
–
–
–
Fewer sleepless nights
Succumb less often to pressure
More persistent
Less Shy
Happier
• How do we get people to accept themself?
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Self-Serving Bias
• A readiness to perceive oneself favorably
• Why are we more willing to accept praise than
blame?
• Why do we see ourselves better than average?
• 87% of people believed they were destined for
eternal bliss/heaven
– More than OJ Simpson, Bill Clinton, Michael Jordan,
and Mother Teresa
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Narcissism
• What is it?
• Excessive self-love and self-absorption
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