Personality
Questions Addressed
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How did Freud develop psychoanalysis?
What personality traits are most basic?
Do we learn our personality?
Is everyone basically good?
How do psychologists measure
personality?
What Is Personality?
• Person’s enduring psychological and
behavioral characteristics
Four Main Approaches
to Personality
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Psychodynamic
Trait
Social-cognitive
Phenomenological
Freud’s Psychodynamic Approach
Sigmund Freud
• physician in Vienna, 1890s, treating
“neurotic” disorders.
• dysfunctions tell us about normal
development
• “psychic determinism”
• later behavior determined by earlier
psychological development
• emphasized unconscious aspects of
personality
Method
• Case Studies
• free association (Freudian slip)
• dream analysis
• transference
Some Defense Mechanisms
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Repression
Rationalization
Projection
Reaction Formation
Regression
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Sublimation
Displacement
Denial
Compensation
Structure of Personality
• Id (Pleasure Principle)
• Eros (life instinct), Libido
• Thanatos (death instinct)
• Ego (Reality Principle)
• defense mechanisms
• Superego (Moralistic Principle)
• cultural prescriptions, taboos
Ego’s Tyrannical Masters
• Outside World
• Id
• Superego
Freud’s
Conception
of the
Personality
Structure
Psychosexual Stages
• Oral Stage: Mouth object of pleasure.
• can’t be neglected or overindulged.
• Anal Stage: Anus object of pleasure. Ego
develops to cope with socially appropriate
behavior.
• Toilet training
Psychosexual Stages
• Phallic Stage: Genitals region object of
pleasure.
• Boys experience Oedipus complex
• Little Hans
• Girls experience Penis Envy
• Seduction Theory
• Latency Period: Sexual impulses stay in
background.
Psychosexual Stages
• Genital Stage: Sexual impulses reappear
at conscious level; genitals again focus of
sexual pleasure.
Assessing the Unconscious
 Projective Tests
 Ambiguous stimuli
 Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
 personality revealed through stories created
 Rorschach Inkblot
 see meaning in pictures
 Somewhat reliable, not completely junk
science
TAT
Rorschach Inkblot Test
Neo-Freudians
 Alfred Adler
 importance of childhood social tension
 Karen Horney
 sought to balance Freud’s masculine biases
 Carl Jung
 emphasized the collective unconscious
 shared, inherited reservoir of our species’ history
 introversion/extraversion
Positives
• Freud’s contributions:
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first comprehensive theory
talk therapies
defensive mechanisms
new methods (projective tests)
Freud Negatives
• Based almost entirely on a cases studies
• Victorian cultural values (seduction theory)
• distorted by personal biases
• too sexualized
• Untestable
The Trait Approach
Assumptions of Trait Approach
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relatively stable over time
relatively stable across situations
individual differences
biologically based
Two Personality Profiles
Eysenck’s
Personality
Dimensions
Are There “Basic” Traits?
What trait “dimensions” describe personality?
Eysenck’s (1965)
Expanded
set
of
factors
genetically determined
“The
Big
5”
dimensions
Extraversion/Introversion
Emotional Stability/Instability
1980s
The Big Five
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
• Imaginative/Practical
• Independent/Conforming
• Organized/Disorganized
• Careful/Careless
• Sociable/Retiring
• Fun Loving/Sober
• Soft-Hearted/Ruthless
• Trusting/Suspicious
• Anxious/Calm
•Insecure/Secure
How Big 5 Discovered?
• Adjective Checklist
• Cattell’s 16 PF
• Step 1: Give people long list of adjectives (loner,
bright, dominant , shrewd, open, tense, cool)
• Step 2: See if certain personality characteristics
“cluster together”
• Step 3: Check for agreement (friend’s rating,
behavior)
• Step 4: Crosscultural?
Martin Luther King (16 PF)
High
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Dominant
Aggressive
Assertive
Stubborn competitive
Bossy
Average
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Apprehensive
Self-blaming
Guilt Prone
Insecure
Worrying
Dominant vs. Deferential Apprehensive vs. Self-assured
Big 5 (1980s)
• studies repeated with more powerful
clustering methods and more adjectives
• identified Big 5
• cross-cultural relevance high
Are Personality Traits Inherited?
• personality is partly biologically determined.
• biological factors interact with environmental
factors to produce specific personality
features.
Heritability
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Openness: 57%
Extraversion: 54%
Conscientiousness: 49%
Neuroticism: 48%
Agreeableness: 42%
Evaluating the Trait Approach
• better at describing than explaining
• how trigger behavior?
• how do traits combine to form a complex
and dynamic individual?
• how about other traits?
• authoritarianism
• perfectionism
• etc.