TOPIC 5
PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES,
MOTIVATION AND HUMAN
ACHIEVEMENT
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PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES
• Murray’s Need Theory: Human can be
characterized by a set of needs that
provide the energy for behavior and the
direction as well
• Maslow’s Need Hierarchy: Need can be
arranged in hierarchical fashion
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PERSONALITY
• The word comes from the Latin
persona, meaning “mask.”
• What is personality?
– Characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling
and acting
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PERSONALITY
• Personality is a dynamic organization,
inside the person, of psychophysical
systems that create the person’s
characteristic patterns of behaviour,
thoughts and feelings.
(G.W. Allport, 1961)
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PERSONALITY
• Definition: More or less stable, internal
factors . . . make one person’s
behaviour consistent from one time to
another, and different from the
behaviour other people would manifest
in comparable situations.
(Child, 1968)
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Personality Theory
• The importance of personality theory in
Psychology
– Biological influences
– Changes over the lifespan
– Relationship to learning, motivation and
health
– Disorders
– Social influences
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Organizing Structure for
Personality Theory
• Historical Approaches
– Psychoanalytic (Freud)
– Humanistic (Rogers)
• Contemporary Approaches
– Trait theory
– Social-Cognitive theory
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Freud and Psychoanalytic
Perspective
• Trying to understand physical problems
• Childhood experiences are important
• Anxiety or social constraints prevent direct
expression of drives
• Each stage of life presents us with issues
we must successfully resolve
• Social restrictions influence our personality
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Key terms in Psychoanalytic
Theory
• Personality results from conflict between
internal drives and social constraints
• Key components of mind
– id
– ego
– superego
• Stages of Psychosexual development
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The Structure of Personality
Freud’s Theory of Personality
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The Structure of Personality
• Id: Operates according to the pleasure
principle
– Primitive and unconscious, hidden from
view
– Contains basic drives
• Ego: Operates according to the reality
principle
– Mediates the conflict between id and
superego
• Superego: Consists of moral ideals and
conscience
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The Structure of Personality
• Pleasure Principle:
– In psychoanalysis, the id’s boundless
drive for immediate gratification
• Reality Principle
– In psychoanalysis, the ego’s capacity to
delay gratification
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Psychoanalytic: Defense mechanisms
• To minimize the anxiety due to the conflict
between the id and the superego, the ego
uses defense mechanisms.
–
–
–
–
–
–
Repression (forgetting)
Denial (ignoring)
Projection (attributing to others)
Reaction Formation (converting to its opposite)
Rationalization (making excuses)
Sublimation (channeling into acceptable outlets)
• Unconscious methods of minimizing anxiety
by denying and distorting reality
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Psychoanalysis
Projective Personality Tests
• Projective Tests
– Allow people to “project” unconscious needs,
wishes, and conflicts onto ambiguous stimuli
Rorschach
• A test in which people are asked to report
what they see in a set of inkblots
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
• A test in which people are asked to make up
stories from a set of ambiguous pictures
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Critique of Psychoanalytic Theory
• Development is not fixed in childhood
• Gender identity occurs earlier
• Repression appears to be a rare
occurrence
• Offers after the fact explanations of
events and does not predict behavior
• unconscious mind is really just
information processes that occurs
without our awareness
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Psychoanalysis
Current Perspectives on Psychoanalysis
• Two enduring aspects of the theory
remain influential:
– The view of the mind as an iceberg (i.e.,
the importance of the unconscious).
– The analysis of defense mechanisms,
which is supported throughout psychology
in studies of attention, thinking, feeling, etc.
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The Humanistic Approach
• Humanistic Theory
– An approach to personality that focuses on
the self, subjective experience, and the
capacity for fulfillment
•Key theorists
–Roger’s person centered perspective
–Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (self
actualization)
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Personality Theories –Carl Rogers
• positive regard- love, affection, attention,
nurturance
• positive self-regard - self-esteem, self-worth, a
positive self-image
• conditions of worth - As we grow up, our
parents, teachers, peers, the media, and others,
only give us what we need when we show we
are “worthy,” rather than just because we need
it. We get a drink when we finish our class, we
get something sweet when we finish our
vegetables, and most importantly, we get love
and affection if and only if we “behave!”
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• Getting positive regard on “on condition” Rogers
calls conditional positive regard. Because we
do indeed need positive regard, these conditions
are very powerful, and we bend ourselves into a
shape determined, not by our organismic valuing
or our actualizing tendency, but by a society that
may or may not truly have our best interests at
heart. A “good little boy or girl” may not be a
healthy or happy boy or girl!
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• Over time, this “conditioning” leads us to have
conditional positive self-regard as well. We
begin to like ourselves only if we meet up with
the standards others have applied to us, rather
than if we are truly actualizing our
potentials. And since these standards were
created without keeping each individual in mind,
more often than not we find ourselves unable to
meet them, and therefore unable to maintain any
sense of self-esteem.
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The Humanistic Approach - Carl Rogers
SELF-ESTEEM
• Self-esteem : “ a set of attitudes and
beliefs that a person brings with him or
herself when facing the world”
(Coopersmith, 2002, p. 1)
• A positive or negative evaluation of the
self
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SELF-ESTEEM
• High self-esteem
– “Pride in oneself in which one becomes
aware and accepting of one’s imperfections
while cherishing one’s inherent strength and
positive qualities”
• Low self-esteem
– The shame that comes from appraising
ourselves as lacking skills and abilities
important to valued others.
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The Humanistic Approach
Perspectives on the Humanistic Approach
• Praise for the Humanistic Approach
– For the idea that people are inherently good
– For placing importance on conscious mental
experience
– For the idea that the self-concept is the heart of
personality
• Criticisms of the Humanistic Approach
– For taking people’s self-report statements at face value
– For being too optimistic about human nature and
ignoring human capacity for evil
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The Trait Approach
The Building Blocks of Personality
•Trait
–A relatively stable predisposition to behave
in a certain way
•Five-factor Model
– A model of personality that consists of five
basic traits:
•Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness,
Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness
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The Trait Approach
Construction of Multi-Trait Inventories
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI)
– A large scale test designed to measure a
multitude of psychological disorders and
personality traits
– Most widely used personality instrument
– Now the MMPI - 2
– Used in clinical and employment settings
– Easy to administer and relatively objective
– Caution should be used when interpreting the
responses of people from different cultures
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The Trait Approach
Introversion and Extraversion
• This is one of the most powerful dimensions
of personality and is seen in infants, adults,
and all over the world.
• Extravert
– A kind of person who seeks stimulation
and is sociable and impulsive
• Introvert
– A kind of person who avoids stimulation
and is low-key and cautious
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The Trait Approach
Perspectives: Do Traits Exist?
Personality Consistency Across the Lifespan
• Evidence indicates that personality is least stable during
childhood.
• The consistency of personality increases with age.
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