Chapter 12: Personality:
Theory, Research, and
Assessment
Defining Personality:
Consistency and Distinctiveness
• Personality Traits
– used to explain the stability in a person’s
behavior over time and across situations
(consistency) and the behavioral
differences among people reacting to the
same situation (distinctiveness).
– Personality refers to an individual’s unique
constellation of consistent behavioral traits
Defining Personality:
Consistency and Distinctiveness
• Dispositions and dimensions
– adjectives like honest, moody, impulsive,
and excitable describe dispositions that
represent personality traits
• Raymond Cattell used the procedure of factor
analysis correlating many variables to identify
closely related clusters of variables – to
reduce Gordon Allport’s (1937) list of 171
personality traits to just 16 basic dimensions
Defining Personality:
Consistency and Distinctiveness
• The Five-Factor Model (McCrae and Costa )
– Openness to experience: curiosity,
flexibility, vivid fantasy, imaginativeness,
artistic sensitivity, and unconventional
attitudes
– Conscientiousness: diligent, disciplined,
well organized, punctual, and dependable
(related to high productivity in a variety of
occupational areas)
– Extraversion: outgoing, sociable, upbeat,
friendly, assertive, and gregarious (positive
emotionality)
Defining Personality:
Consistency and Distinctiveness
• The Five-Factor Model (McCrae and Costa)
cont.
– Agreeableness: sympathetic, trusting,
cooperative, modest, and straightforward
– Neuroticism: anxious, hostile, selfconscious, insecure, and vulnerable
(negative emotionality)
Table 12.1 Defense Mechanisms, with Examples
Psychodynamic Perspectives
• Freud’s psychoanalytic theory (unconscious
motives and conflicts, and the methods people use to
cope with sexual and aggressive urges)
– Structure of personality
• Id - Pleasure principle, demands immediate
gratification and engages in primary-process
thinking
• Ego - Reality principle, seeking to delay
gratification of the id’s urges until appropriate
outlets can be found, thus mediating between
the id and the external world
• Superego – Morality, incorporates social
standards about what represents right and
Psychodynamic Perspectives
– Levels of awareness (the Iceberg)
• Conscious: what you are aware of right
now
• Unconscious: things well below the
surface that exert influence on your daily
life
• Preconscious: those things barely
beneath consciousness that can be
easily recalled
Table 12.2 Freud’s Stages of Psychosexual Development
Psychodynamic Perspectives
• Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
– Freud saw behavior as the outcome of an
ongoing series of internal conflicts between
the id, ego, and superego
– conflicts centering on sex and aggressive
impulses having far reaching
consequences
– conflicts lead to anxiety
– causes the ego to construct defense
mechanisms, exercises in self-deception,
as protection
Figure 12.3 Freud’s model of personality dynamics
Freud on Development:
Psychosexual Stages
• Freud believed that the foundation of
personality is laid by the age of 5
• Sexual = physical pleasure
• Psychosexual stages (each with a
characteristic erotic focus and developmental
challenge)
• He proposed 5 psychosexual stages
Freud on Development:
Psychosexual Stages
• Fixation is a failure to move forward from one
stage to another as expected.
• Fixation can occur due to excessive
gratification or frustration during a particular
stage
– leads to an overemphasis on the
psychosexual needs prominent during the
fixated stage in adulthood.
Freud on Development:
Psychosexual Stages
– Oral: Mouth, Weaning
– Anal: anus, toilet training (hostility
toward trainer)
– Phallic: genitals, identify with adult role
models
• Oedipal; penis envy
– Latency: none, social contracts
– Genital: sexual intimacy, intimate
relationships
Other Psychodynamic Theorists
• Freud had many followers in the early 1900s.
Many of these followers had theories of their
own, but Freud was not willing to accept
radical departures from psychoanalytic
theory.
• Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, founded their own
brands of psychodynamic psychology
Other Psychodynamic Theorists
• Carl Jung: Analytical Psychology
– proposing that the unconscious mind is composed
of two layers
• Personal unconscious: houses material that is
not within one’s conscious awareness because
it has been repressed or forgotten
• Collective unconscious: houses latent memory
traces inherited from people’s ancestral past
– Archetypes: ancestral memories– emotionally
charged images and thought forms that have
universal meaning…the mandala.
– Introversion/Extroversion: first to describe
Figure 12.4 Jung’s vision of the collective unconscious
Other Psychodynamic Theorists
• Alfred Adler: Individual Psychology (argued that
Freud had gone overboard with his focus on sexual
conflict)
– Striving for superiority: foremost source of human
motivation
– Compensation: everyone feels some inferiority
and works to overcome it
– Inferiority complex/overcompensation: People can
also conceal, even from themselves, their feelings
of inferiority, resulting in overcompensation,
seeking status and power, and flaunting their
success to cover up underlying inferiority
– Birth order: first to stress the possible importance
Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives
• Pros
– The unconscious
– The role of internal conflict
– The importance of early childhood
experiences
• Cons
– Poor testability
– Inadequate empirical base
– Sexist views
Behavioral Perspectives
• Skinner’s views
– Skinner’s views on personality were similar
to his views on all other human behavior; it
is learned through conditioning.
– He had little interest in unobservable
cognitive processes and embraced a
strong determinism
– asserting that behavior is fully determined
by environmental stimuli, and free will is
but an illusion.
– acquired through learning over the course
of the lifespan
Figure 12.5 A behavioral view of personality
Figure 12.6 Personality development and operant conditioning
Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory
• Argue that pure behaviorism does not take into
account cognitive processes
– Behavior is largely shaped through learning, but
humans are not passive (we make our own
decisions)
– Reciprocal Determinism: internal mental events,
external environmental conditions, and overt
behaviors all influence one another
• We use observational learning to learn from
“models”
• Self-efficacy influences personality and how
well you perform
Figure 12.7 Bandura’s reciprocal conditioning
Mischel and the Person-Situation
Controversy
• Focuses on how the situational factors
govern behavior
– People look at the possible outcomes to
choose a behavior
– Does away with the personality
consistency component
– Found that, when looking at small chunks
of behavior are examined, there is a
variety, but when large chunks of life are
examined there is consistency
Behavioral Perspectives
• Mischel’s views
– The person-situation controversy
If you believe your job will pay off, you will
be more industrious.
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 (carving up
personality into stimulus-response relations with
no unifying structural concepts tying these pieces
together)
– Dehumanizing views (free will is an illusion)
Humanistic Perspectives
• Humanistic Perspectives
– Emphasize the unique qualities of humans
(freedom, potential for growth, etc.)
– Very optimistic view
– A person’s subjective view of the world is more
important than objective reality
• How you think you will behave will affect your
behavior
– Phenomenological Approach: you must look at
personal subjective experiences to understand
behavior
• Quote on 487
Humanistic Perspectives
• Carl Rogers: Person Centered Therapy
– Viewed personality structure in terms of
“self-concept” or the beliefs about ones
own behavior, nature, and qualities
– Individuals are aware, it is not unconscious
– Most people distort reality to promote
favorable self-concepts
– Incongruence is the degree of difference
b/w self-concept and actual experience (if it
is accurate, it is congruent)
Figure 12.2 Freud’s model of personality structure
Humanistic Perspectives
• Carl Rogers: Person Centered (cont.)
– Concerned with how childhood
experiences promote cong. or incong.
– Conditional Parental Love (love based on
good behavior or living up to expectations)
• Children block out experiences that
make them feel unworthy of love
– Unconditional Love:
• Less need to block out exp. B/c children
are assured they are worthy of love
Humanistic Perspectives
• Carl Rogers: Person Centered (cont.)
– Experiences that threaten personal views
are principle cause of anxiety
– To avoid anxiety, we behave defensively
• Ignore, deny, twist reality
• How would that work for someone who
is told their outfit is ugly?
Figure 12.9 Rogers’s view of personality structure
Figure 12.10 Rogers’s view of personality development and dynamics
Humanistic Perspectives
• Abraham Maslow: proposed that human
motives are organized into a hierarchy of
needs – a systematic arrangement of needs,
according to priority, in which basic needs
must be met before less basic needs are
aroused
• Like Rogers, Maslow argued that humans
have an innate drive toward personal growth,
culminating in the need for self-actualization,
which is the need to fulfill one’s potential (the
highest need in his hierarchy). “What a man
can be, he must be.”
Humanistic Perspectives
• The healthy personality:
– open and spontaneous and sensitive to
others’ needs,
– marked by continued personal growth,
– not dependent on others for approval,
– comfortable in solitude
– thrive at work (good sense of humor)
• Maslow found that these people are tuned in to
reality and at peace with themselves, making
for rewarding interpersonal relations.
Humanistic Perspectives
– Self-actualization theory: the need to fulfill
one’s potential
Figure 12.11 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
Figure 12.12 Maslow’s view of the healthy personality
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).
Biological Perspectives
• Biological theories stress the genetic origins
of personality
• He believes that genes influence
physiological functioning, thereby influencing
ease of acquiring conditioned responses.
• Eysenk’s theory
– 3 higher order traits
– Extraversion: sociable, outgoing people
– Neuroticism: anxious, tense, moody, low
self-esteem
– Psychoticism: egocentric, cold, antisocial
• Determined by genes
Biological Perspectives
• Eysenk (cont.)
– The big three traits are a combination of a
conglomeration of much smaller traits
– Your maturation process makes it easier to
be conditioned toward certain behaviors
Biological Perspectives
• Based on twin studies, theorist say genetic
factors exert considerable influence over
personality
– Is it nature or nurture?
– Studies suggest it is more nature…
Biological Perspectives
• Twin studies
– Twin studies indicate that identical twins
are more similar than fraternal twins in
personality characteristics, with heritability
estimates in the vicinity of 40%.
– Interestingly, shared family environment
does not lead to similar personality
characteristics among siblings, leading
some theorists to assert that parents
matter very little in how their children
develop.
Biological Perspectives
• Some studies have suggested that there is a
specific gene for novelty seeking, which
involves being impulsive, exploratory,
excitable, and extravagant. Evidence is, at
this point, inconclusive.
• Evolutionary analyses of personality suggest
that certain traits and the ability to recognize
them may contribute to reproductive
fitness…a reproductive advantage
Figure 12.14 Twin studies of personality
The evolutionary approach
• Traits conducive to reproductive fitness
– Natural selection has favored certain traits over
human history and those traits become more
apparent
• Who will be a good member of my coalition,
can I depend on, and share resources
– Bond with others (extraversion
– Cooperate (agreeableness)
– Reliable (conscientious)
– Innovative (open to experience)
– Handle stress (low neuroticism)
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
Contemporary Empirical Approaches:
Terror Management Theory
• Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom
Pyszczynski have proposed that one of the
key functions of self-esteem is to protect us
against terror.
• We feel terror because we have a desire to
preserve ourselves, but also have the
cognitive ability to recognize that death is
inevitable.
• Cultures provide worldviews--traditions,
stories, and institutions--that solve this
existential anxiety, and provide us with a
sense of order in our lives.
Contemporary Empirical Approaches:
Terror Management Theory
• Our self-esteem corresponds to our sense of
self-worth engendered by our confidence in
our culture’s solutions.
• According to terror management theory, our
self esteem provides us with an anxiety
buffer.
– Excessive materialism can be used to
supplant self-esteem
Figure 12.15 Overview of terror management theory
Contemporary Empirical Approaches:
Terror Management Theory
• Increasing subjects’ mortality salience causes
them to:
– Punish moral transgressions more harshly
– Be less tolerant of criticism of their country
– Give greater rewards to those who uphold
cultural standards
– Respect cultural icons more
Contemporary Empirical Approaches:
Terror Management Theory
• How does T.M.T. explain the 2008 election?
Contemporary Empirical Approaches:
Terror Management Theory
• When death anxiety is heightened, there is
increased preferences for:
– Charismatic people with grand visions
– People who make others feel they are
apart of an important movement
Cultural Differences
• Does it affect personality?
– Most agree the big 5 traits are found across
cultures
• Individualistic cultures promote independent
views of the self (extraversion, assetiveness,
competitiveness, and self-confidence) and lead
to self-enhancement
• Collectivist cultures promote cooperation,
mutual interdependence, and consciousnesses
(focus on neg. attributes and how to fix them)