Theories of Personality. Modern
Perspectives of Psychology
Personality development
• Developmental psychology studies the physical,
social, and psychological changes that occur at different
ages and stages over the lifespan, from conception to
old age. The development of the beliefs, moods, and
behaviors that differentiate among people. The concept
of personality refers to the profile of stable beliefs,
moods, and behaviors that differentiate among children
(and adults) who live in a particular society.
• The profiles that differentiate children across cultures of
different historical times will not be the same because
the most adaptive profiles vary with the values of the
society and the historical era. An essay on personality
development written 300 years ago by a New England
Puritan would have listed piety as a major psychological
trait but that would not be regarded as an important
personality trait in contemporary America.
Understanding of personality
development
• Contemporary theorists emphasize personality traits
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having to do with individualism, internalized
conscience, sociability with strangers, the ability to
control strong emotion and impulse, and personal
achievement.
An important reason for the immaturity of our
understanding of personality development is the heavy
reliance on questionnaires that are filled out by parents
of children or the responses of older children to
questionnaires. Because there is less use of behavioral
observations of children, our theories of personality
development are not strong.
Hypotheses regarding the early origins of
personality: a temperamental bias
• There are five different hypotheses regarding the early
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origins of personality. One assumes that the child’s
inherited biology, usually called a temperamental bias, is
an important basis for the child’s later personality.
Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess suggested there
were nine temperamental dimensions along with three
synthetic types they called the difficult child, the easy
child, and the child who is slow to warm up to
unfamiliarity.
Longitudinal studies of children suggest that a shy and
fearful style of reacting to challenge and novelty
predicts, to a modest degree, an adult personality that is
passive to challenge and introverted in mood.
Importance of family experience
Importance of family experience
• A second hypothesis regarding personality
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development comes from Sigmund Freud’s
suggestion that variation in the sexual and
aggressive aims of the id, which is biological in
nature, combined with family experience, leads
to the development of the ego and superego.
Freud suggested that differences in parental
socialization produced variation in anxiety
which, in turn, leads to different personalities.
Role of the social experiences
• A third set of hypotheses emphasizes direct social
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experiences with parents. After World War II, Americans
and Europeans held the more benevolent idealistic
conception of the child that described growth as
motivated by affectionate ties to others rather than by
the narcissism and hostility implied by Freud’s writings.
John Bowlby contributed to this new emphasis on the
infant’s relationships with parents in his books on
attachment. Bowlby argued that the nature of the
infant’s relationship to the caretakers and especially the
mother created a profile of emotional reactions toward
adults that might last indefinitely.
Concept of self critical to the child’s
personality
• Objective experiences develop different
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personality profiles because they construct
different conceptions about themselves and
others from the same experiences. The notion
that each child imposes a personal
interpretation to their experiences makes the
concept of self critical to the child’s personality.
An advantage of awarding importance to a
concept of self and personality development is
that the process of identification with parents
and others gains in significance. All children
wish to possess the qualities that their culture
regards as good. Some of these qualities are
the product of identification with each parent.
Observations of a child’s behavior
• A final source of hypotheses regarding the origins of
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personality comes from inferences based on direct
observations of a child’s behavior. This strategy, which
relies on induction, focuses on different characteristics at
different ages. Infants differ in irritability, three-year-olds
differ in shyness, and six-year-olds differ in seriousness
of mood.
A major problem with this approach is that each class of
behavior can have different historical antecedents.
Children who prefer to play alone rather than with others
do so for a variety of reasons. Some might be
temperamentally shy and are uneasy with other children
while others might prefer solitary activity.
The current categories of child
psychopathology
• The current categories of child psychopathology influenced the
behaviors that are chosen by scientists for study. Fearfulness and
conduct disorder predominate in clinical referrals to psychiatrists
and psychologists.
• A cluster of behaviors that includes avoidance of unfamiliar events
and places, fear of dangerous animals, shyness with strangers,
sensitivity to punishment, and extreme guilt is called the
internalizing profile.
• The cluster that includes disobedience toward parent and teachers,
aggression to peers, excessive dominance of other children, and
impulsive decisions is called the externalizing profile. These children
are most likely to be at risk for later juvenile delinquency. The
association between inability of a three-year-old to inhibit socially
inappropriate behavior and later antisocial behavior is the most
reliable predictive relation between a characteristic scene in the
young child and later personality trait.
Influences on personality
development
• The influence comes from a variety of temperament
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but especially ease of arousal, irritability, fearfulness,
sociability, and activity level.
The experiential contributions to personality include early
attachment relations, parental socialization, identification
with parents, class, and ethnic groups, experiences with
other children, ordinal position in the family, physical
attractiveness, and school success or failure, along with
a number of unpredictable experiences like divorce,
early parental death, mental illness in the family, and
supporting relationships with relatives or teachers.
The most important personality
profiles
•
•
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The most important personality profiles in a particular
culture stem from the challenges to which the children of
that culture must accommodate. Most children must deal
with three classes of external challenges:
unfamiliarity, especially unfamiliar people, tasks, and
situations;
request by legitimate authority or conformity to and
acceptance of their standards, and
domination by or attack by other children.
In addition, all children must learn to control two
important families of emotions: anxiety, fear, and guilt,
on the one hand, and on the other, anger, jealousy,
and resentment.
Four important influences on
personality
• Of the four important influences on personality—
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identification, ordinal position, social class, and parental
socialization—identification is the most important. By six
years of age, children assume that some of the
characteristics of their parents belong to them and they
experience vicariously the emotion that is appropriate to
the parent’s experience.
A six-year-old girl identified with her mother will
experience pride should mother win a prize or be praised
by a friend. However, she will experience shame or
anxiety if her mother is criticized or is rejected by
friends. The process of identification has great relevance
to personalty development.
Personality inventory
• Personality inventory is a method of personality
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assessment based on a questionnaire asking a person to
report feelings or reactions in certain situations.
Personality inventories, also called objective tests, are
standardized and can be administered to a number of
people at the same time.
A psychologist need not be present when the test is
given, and the answers can usually be scored by a
computer. Scores are obtained by comparison with
norms for each category on the test. A personality
inventory may measure one factor, such as anxiety level,
or it may measure a number of different personality
traits at the same time, such as the Sixteen Personality
Factor Questionnaire (16 PF).
Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory
• The personality inventory used most often for diagnosing
psychological disorders is the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory, generally referred to as the MMPI. It
consists of 550 statements that the test taker has to mark as “true,”
“false,” or “cannot say.”
• Answers are scored according to how they correspond with those
given by persons with various psychological disorders, including
depression, hysteria, paranoia, psychopathic deviancy, and
schizophrenia. The MMPI was originally developed (and is still
used) for the diagnosis of these and other serious psychological
problems. However enough responses have been collected from
people with less severe problems to allow for reliable scoring of
responses from these persons as well.
• Many people with no severe disorder are now given the MMPI as an
assessment tool when they begin psychotherapy, with scoring
geared toward personality attributes rather than clinical disorders.
The California Psychological
Inventory
• The California Psychological Inventory (CPI), based on less extreme
measures of personality than the MMPI, assesses traits, including
dominance, responsibility, selfacceptance, and socialization. In
addition, some parts of the test specifically measure traits relevant
to academic achievement. Another inventory designed to measure a
spectrum of personality variables in normal populations is the
Personality Research Form (PRF), whose measurement scales
include affiliation, autonomy, change, endurance, and exhibition.
• The Neuroticism Extroversion Openness Personality Inventory and
Revised (NEO-PIR) also measures common dimensions of
personality such as sensitivity and extroversion, but it differs from
other tests in its inclusion of both “private” and “public” versions.
The questions in the private version are answered like those in other
personality inventories, but the public version consists of having
another person acquainted with the test taker answer questions
about him or her. Significant discrepancies between the two versions
can be an important source of information for those interpreting the
test.
Rorschach technique
• A projective personality assessment based on the subject’s reactions
to a series of ten inkblot pictures. Popularly known as the “Inkblot”
test, the Rorschach technique, or Rorschach Psychodiagnostic Test
is the most widely used projective psychological test. The Rorschach
is used to help assess personality structure and identify emotional
problems. Like other projective techniques, it is based on the
principle that subjects viewing neutral, ambiguous stimuli will
project their own personalities onto them, thereby revealing a
variety of unconscious conflicts and motivations.
• Administered to both adolescents and adults, the Rorschach can
also be used with children as young as three years old. The test
provides information about a person’s thought processes,
perceptions, motivations, and attitude toward his or her
environment, and it can detect internal and external pressures
and conflicts as well as illogical or psychotic thought patterns.
Thematic Apperception Test
• The Thematic Apperception Test is an untimed,
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individually administered psychological test used for
personality assessment. Suitable for ages 14-40, it is
used to identify dominant drives, emotions, and conflicts,
as well as levels of emotional maturity, observational
skills, imagination, and creativity. The subject is
shown a series of pictures, one at a time, and asked to
make up a story about each one, and his or her
responses are evaluated by a trained psychologist.
The test is usually given in two sessions, with 10
pictures shown in each one. Sessions are untimed but
generally last about an hour. For children ages 3-10, see
Children’s Apperception Test.
Major Perspectives in
Psychology
• Any given topic in contemporary psychology can
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be approached from a variety of perspectives.
Each perspective discussed here represents a
different emphasis or point of view that can be
taken in studying a particular behavior, topic, or
issue.
The influence of the early schools of psychology
is apparent in the first four perspectives that
characterize contemporary psychology.
The Biological Perspective
• The biological perspective emphasizes studying the physical bases
of human and animal behavior, including the nervous system,
endocrine system, immune system, and genetics. Interest in the
biological perspective has grown in the last few decades, partly
because of advances in technology and medicine. For example, in
the late 1950s and early 1960s, medications were developed that
helped control the symptoms of serious psychological disorders,
such as schizophrenia and depression.
• The relative success of these new drugs sparked new questions
about the interaction among biological factors and human behavior,
emotions, and thought processes. Equally important were
technological advances that have allowed psychologists and other
researchers to explore the human brain as never before. The
development of the PET scan, MRI scan, and functional MRI (fMRI)
scan has allowed scientists to study the structure and activity of the
intact brain. These and other advances have produced new insights
into the biological bases of memory, learning, mental disorders, and
other behaviors.
Looking at Brain-Scan
Images
Demonstration of Cortical Activities During Speech
The figures show the pathway for reading and naming
something that is seen, such as reading aloud. PET scans
show the areas of the brain that are most active
during various phases of speech. Red indicates the most
active areas; blue indicates the least active areas.
The Psychodynamic
Perspective
• The key ideas and themes of Freud’s landmark
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theory of psychoanalysis continue to be
important among many psychologists, especially
those working in the mental health field.
Today, psychologists who take the
psychodynamic perspective emphasize the
importance of unconscious influences, early life
experiences, and interpersonal relationships in
explaining the underlying dynamics of behavior
or in treating people with psychological
problems.
The Behavioral Perspective
• Watson and Skinner’s contention that
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psychology should focus on observable
behaviors and the fundamental laws of learning
is evident today in the behavioral perspective.
Contemporary psychologists who take the
behavioral perspective continue to study how
behavior is acquired or modified by
environmental causes.
Many psychologists who work in the area of
mental health also emphasize the behavioral
perspective in explaining and treating
psychological disorders.
The Humanistic Perspective
• The influence of the work of Carl Rogers and Abraham
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Maslow continues to be seen among contemporary
psychologists who take the humanistic perspective. The
humanistic perspective focuses on the motivation of
people to grow psychologically, the influence of
interpersonal relationships on a person’s self-concept,
and the importance of choice and self-direction in
striving to reach one’s potential.
Like the psychodynamic perspective, the humanistic
perspective is often emphasized among psychologists
working in the mental health field.
The humanistic perspective focuses on the motivation of
people to grow psychologically, the influence of
interpersonal relationships on a person’s self-concept, and
the importance of choice and self-direction in striving to
reach one’s potential.
The Cognitive Perspective
• During the 1960s, psychology experienced a return to
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the study of how mental processes influence behavior.
This movement was called “the cognitive revolution”
because it represented a break from traditional
behaviorism. Cognitive psychology focused once again
on the important role of mental processes in how people
process and remember information, develop language,
solve problems, and think.
The development of the first computers in the 1950s
contributed to the cognitive revolution. Computers gave
psychologists a new model for conceptualizing human
mental processes—human thinking, memory, and
perception could be understood in terms of an
information-processing model.
The Cross-Cultural Perspective
• More recently, psychologists have taken a closer
look at how cultural factors influence patterns of
behavior—the essence of the cross-cultural
perspective.
• By the late 1980s, cross-cultural psychology had
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emerged in full force as large numbers of
psychologists began studying the diversity of
human behavior in different cultural settings and
countries.
In the process, psychologists discovered that
some well-established psychological findings
were not as universal as they had thought.
Social loafing
• For example, one well-established psychological finding
was that people exert more effort on a task when
working alone than when working as part of a group, a
phenomenon called social loafing. First demonstrated in
the 1970s, social loafing has been a common finding in
many psychological studies conducted with American
and European subjects.
• But when similar studies were conducted with Chinese
participants during the 1980s, the opposite was found to
be true. Chinese participants worked harder on a task
when they were part of a group than when they were
working alone. These findings were just the tip of the
iceberg. Today, psychologists are keenly attuned to the
influence of cultural and ethnic factors on behavior.
The Evolutionary
Perspective
• The newest psychological perspective to gain
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prominence is that of evolutionary psychology.
Evolutionary psychology refers to the
application of the principles of evolution to
explain psychological processes and phenomena.
The evolutionary perspective has grown out of a
renewed interest in the work of English
naturalist Charles Darwin. Darwin’s first book
on evolution, On the Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection, was published in 1859.
The important point here is that a few thousand years is not
long enough for sweeping evolutionary changes to take place.
Psychological
processes that were
adaptations to a
prehistoric way of life
may continue to exist
in the behavioral
repertoire of people
today. However,
some of those
processes may not
necessarily be
adaptive in our
modern world.
The theory of evolution
• The theory of evolution proposes that the individual
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members of a species compete for survival. Because of
inherited differences, some members of a species are
better adapted to their environment than are others.
Organisms that inherit characteristics that increase their
chances of survival in their particular habitat are more
likely to survive, reproduce, and pass on their
characteristics to their offspring.
Conversely, individuals that inherit less-useful
characteristics are less likely to survive, reproduce, and
pass on their characteristics. This process reflects the
principle of natural selection: The most adaptive
characteristics are “selected” and perpetuated to the
next generation.
The theory of evolution
How is evolutionary theory applied to psychology?
• Basically, psychologists who take the evolutionary perspective
assume that psychological processes are also subject to the
principle of natural selection. A given psychological process exists
in the form it does because it “solved a specific problem of
individual survival or reproduction recurring over human
evolutionary history.” That is, those psychological processes that
helped individuals adapt to their environments also helped them
survive, reproduce, and pass those abilities on to their offspring.
• The role of evolution in shaping modern psychological processes,
keep a couple of things in mind. We tend to take the trappings of
civilization— governments, transportation systems, factories and
manufacturing, education and organized medicine—for granted. But
these aspects of everyday life developed only recently in the
evolutionary history of Homo sapiens. What we think of as human
history has existed for less than 10,000 years, since the earliest
appearance of agriculture. In contrast, our evolutionary ancestors
spent more than 2 million years as hunter-gatherers. Our lives as
humans living in agricultural, industrial, and postindustrial societies
make up less than 1 percent of the time that humans spent as
hunter-gatherers.