Personality
Personality – unique attitudes, behaviors, emotions that characterize a person
Key question: stability vs. change
Type A vs. Type B (A = competitive, aggressive, volatile)
Freudian theory – psychosexual stages
Oral – 0-1 year, pleasure from mouth
Anal – 1-3 years, pleasure from elimination
Phallic – 3-5 years, pleasure from genitals
Oedipal complex – boy wants mom, resents dad
Castration anxiety
Electra complex – girl wants dad, resents mom (not Freud)
Penis envy
Resolved through identification with same sex parent
Latency – 6-puberty, repression of sexual feelings
Genital – puberty on, sexual pleasure through relationships
Fixations – problem in resolving a stage
Oral – overeat, smoke, chew gum
Anal – anal retentive (compulsive, overly organized)
Anal expulsive (messy, disorganized)
Id (pleasure principle)
Ego (reality principle) – mediates between id and superego
Superego – conscience, mores of society
Defense mechanisms
Repression
Denial
Displacement
Projection
Reaction formation
Regression
Rationalization
Sublimation
Criticisms of Freud
Feminists (Karen Horney – womb envy)
Neo-Freudians
Adler – birth order, inferiority complex – drive for superiority
Carl Jung – collective unconscious
Archetypes – shadow
Trait theories
Eysenck – stable-instable, introversion-extraversion scale
Cattell – 16PF
Big 5 – OCEAN (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism)
Factor analysis – finding clusters of items that differentiate between traits
Other theorists
Allport – cardinal dispositions (traits that clearly identify a person)
Central dispositions/secondary dispositions
Biological theories
Temperaments – characteristic way of dealing with the world
Hippocrates – four humors (body fluids – blood, yellow bile, black bile, phlegm)
Somatotype theory – Sheldon (endomorphs, ectomorphs, mesomorphs)
Social-cognitive theories
Bandura – reciprocal determinism (traits, environment, behavior)
Self-efficacy – making a difference, getting things done
Rotter – locus of control (internal vs. external)
Humanistic theories
People are innately good
Self-concept
Self-esteem
Unconditional positive regard, empathy, genuineness
Assessment of personality
Projective test – Rorschach, Draw-a-Person, TAT
Self-report inventories – MMPI
Barnum effect – see self in vague, stock descriptions of personality
Astrological sign can fit anyone