PSC 162, Summer 2010
STUDY GUIDE: CLASS LECTURE
Personality Theory
Alfred Adler’s theory
INFERIORITY AND COMPENSATION
 Thought Freud focused too much on sex as the ultimate motivator and organizer of thought and behavior
 Social interest: the desire to relate positively and productively with other people
o More important than sex
 Organ inferiority: the idea that individuals are motivated to attain equality with or superiority over other
people and try to accomplish this to compensate for what they felt in childhood was their weakest aspect
o Perceptions of weakness are more important than reality
 Masculine protest: the desire of an adult to act and become powerful, because of feeling inadequate or
inferior
o Can also be experienced by women; everyone feels inferior as a child
o Particularly acute for boys because the most powerful person in their lives is their mother
 Inferiority complex
 Style of life: a particular mode of behavior that is based on compensations for
perceived childhood inferiorities
Carl Jung’s theory
 Interested in mystical and spirituality matters
 Collective unconscious: memories and ideas that all humans share, most of which reside in the unconscious
 Archetypes: core ideas of how people think about the world, both consciously and unconsciously
o Earth mother, hero, devil, supreme being
o Appear in dreams, thoughts, and mythology
 Persona: the social mask one wears in public
o Everyone’s persona is false to some degree
o Possible danger: identifying more with the persona than
the real self
o Identification with true self vs. social self
 Anima: the idea, or prototype, of the female, as held in the mind of a male
 Animus: the idea, or prototype, of the male as held in the mind of a female
o Cause a masculine side and feminine side in everyone
o Shape responses to the other sex
 Introverts vs. extraverts: psychologically turned inward vs. outward
 Ways of thinking: rational thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting
 People vary in which way predominates, but having a balance is best
o The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Karen Horney’s theory
 Disagreed with the notion of “penis envy” and women’s desire to be male, however she did not feud with
Freud
o Instead, women envy freedom to pursue interests and ambitions
 Basic anxiety: fear of being alone and helpless in a hostile world
o Attempts to avoid this anxiety can result in neurotic needs
Erik Erikson’s theory and stages
 Many conflicts are conscious and arise at various stages of life
o Psychosocial theory of development
 STAGES OF ERIKSON’S THEORY
1. Basic trust vs. mistrust (0–2 years)
– Corresponds to the oral stage
– Learn whether needs will be met, ignored, or overindulged
– Development of hope and confidence
2. Autonomy vs. shame and doubt (3–4 years)
– Corresponds to the anal stage
Controls Bowels and other bodily functions, learns language, receives orders
– Figuring out who is in charge, adult pressures child to obey and child wants control, a balance.
3. Initiative vs. guilt (4–7 years)
– Corresponds to the phallic stage
– Anticipating and fantasizing about life as an adult, including sexual ones00
– Develop a sense of right and wrong
4. Industry vs. inferiority (8–12 years)
– Corresponds to the latency period
– Develop skills and abilities to succeed in the world of work and contribute to society
5. Identity vs. identity confusion (adolescence)
– Corresponds to the genital stage
– Figure out who I am and what is important
6. Intimacy vs. isolation (young adulthood)
– Find an intimate life partner
7. Generativity vs. stagnation (middle age)
– Turn concern to the next generation or become passive
8. Integrity vs. despair (old age)
– Brought on by the prospect of death
– Based on feelings about one’s life
 Major contributions of Erikson’s theory
o Psychological development is based on the structure
of society
o Life-span development
Object Relations Theory
 Melanie Klein and D. W. Winnicott
 Objects: ( relationships) emotionally important people
 Object relations theory: the analysis of interpersonal relationships
 We relate to others via the images of them in our minds
o The images do not always match reality
 _ Four principal themes
o Every relationship has elements of satisfaction and frustration, or pleasure and pain. ( moms breast
provides milk satisfaction yet it is not always full or available)
o The mix of love and hate (love the breast for pleasure hate the breast for satisfaction)
o Distinction between parts of the love object and the whole person
- Breast vs. mother; at first breast is the mother then baby learns breast is part of mom, wealth vs.
whole person
o The psyche is aware of and disturbed by these contradictory feelings
 Theories based on work with children
 Play therapy: communicating with and diagnosing children through play
o Allows the symbolic expression of emotions such as hate, anger, love, and fear
 Split of love objects into good and bad parts
o May use neurotic defenses to ignore the bad
 Transitional objects: used to bridge the gap between private fantasy and reality
o Sentimental objects for adults
o Do you know anybody who brought a transitional object to college? What purpose does it serve?
Would the person be upset if the object were lost? Why? A Blankie or teddy bear, family pictures,
heirlooms
o The false self: used to please other, and it is kept safe away from harm
 Purpose of object relations therapy
o Minimize discrepancies between true and false selves
o Help the rational resources of the mind work through irrational defenses
o To help the client see important people in his or her life the way they actually are
 Must love always be mixed with frustration and resentment?
Attachment theory
 Based on idea of transference
 Focuses on patterns of relationships with others that are consistently repeated with different partners
throughout life
Bowlby
 Saw attachment as the basis of love
 Based on evolutionary theory


Desire for protection leads to attachments
Two lessons from experiences with adult caregivers
1. Are the attachment figures reliable
2. Am I worthy of being loved and cared about?
Ainsworth’s three main infant attachment patterns (assessed in the Strange Situation)
 Developed the strange situation task
 Look at reactions to mother leaving and returning to determine type of attachment
 Types of attachment
o Anxious ambivalent: vigilant about mother’s presence and become upset when she leaves
-Caregivers are inconsistent
-Adults: attempts to cling to others drives them away; obsessed with romantic
partners; jealous
o Avoidant: not distressed when mother leaves and ignore her when she returns
_ Caregivers rebuff attempts for contact and reassurance
_ Adults: angry self-reliance and cold, distant attitude toward others; uninterested in
romantic relationships; like to work alone
o Secure: greet mother happily when she returns easily soothed, actively explore environment
- Adults: positive attitude toward relationships; tend to have long and stable
relationships
Trait theory (basic assumptions, key elements of traits, how this theory differs from other theories, etc.)
 ASSUMPTIONS OF TRAIT APPROACH
o Traits are:
Stable across time
Consistent across situations
Universal dimensions (describe difference among all people)
Biologically based (at least in part)
o People can reliably and validly judge their own and others personality traits
o Traits predict important life outcome
 KEY ELEMENTS OF TRAITS
o Comparative
o Traits characterize differences between people
o Traits refer to personal (internal) rather than situational (external) causes of behavior
Mischel’s 1968 book Personality and Assessment
The person-situation debate
 Which is more important for determining what people do, the person or the situation?
 Emphasis on the power of the situation to shape people’s behavior
o Asch’s conformity study
o Milgram’s obedience study
o Zimbardo’s prison study
 ABU GHRAIB PRISON ABUSE
o The situation made them do it
 “You could put virtually anybody in that situation and you’re going to get this kind of evil
behavior. They’re probably loving husbands and fathers when they go on leave.”-Dr. Phil
Zimbardo
o Their personality traits predisposed them to do it
 Aggression and other antisocial traits are stable over time and across situations
o Does the personality of an individual transcend the immediate situation and provide a consistent
guide to his or her actions, or is what a person does utterly dependent on the situation at that time?
o Are common, ordinary intuitions about people fundamentally flawed or basically correct?
o Why do psychologists continue to argue about the consistency of personality when the basic
empirical questions were settled long ago?
o There is an upper limit to how well one can predict what a person will do based on any
measurement of that person’s personality, and this upper limit is a small one.
o Situations are more important than personality traits in determining behavior.
o The professional practice of personality assessment is a waste of time, and everyday intuitions
about people are fundamentally flawed.
1. Predictability:
Personality is not a good predictor of behavior
- Mischel looked at relationships of self, informant, and
behavioral data to behavioral data
_ Ability of trait judgments to predict behavior
_ Using past behavior to predict future behavior
_ Most behaviors were assessed in the lab
Correlations rarely exceeded .30 (Nisbett ~ .40)
Unfair, selective literature review by Mischel
_ Studies with poor methodology
_ But some found evidence of consistency
We can do better
_ .40 limit may be due to poor methodology
_ Get out of the laboratory
_ Study individual consistency as a moderator variable
(a variable that alters the relationship between two
other variables)
_ Focus on behavioral trends; use aggregation
_ This is difficult
_ A correlation of .40 is not small
_ Comparison to an absolute standard: number of
correct and incorrect predictions
_ BESD: r = .40 70% accuracy
_ Comparison to a relative standard: other methods
used to predict behavior
2. Situationism
Situations explain more variance than
personality
_ Determining how situations affect behavior: total
variance minus “variance explained” by
personality
_ Not legitimate
_ Could be due to other personality traits
_ Says nothing about important aspects of the situation
_ How the effects of situations on behavior should
be determined: based on social psychological
experiments
_ Convert statistical significance tests to effect sizes
_ Funder & Ozer, 1983: situational effect sizes = .36 to
.42
_ Conclusion: both personality and situations are
important determinants of behavior
3. Person Perception are erroneous
-The effects of personality on behavior are large enough
to be perceived accurately
_ The importance of traits is reflected in our language we have so many words to describe personality
Predicting a specific behavior vs. predicting aggregate behavior
Aggregation is key
_ Over time, how a person acts will add up
_ “Personality traits are better for describing how people act
in general
Moderator variables
A variable that affects the relationship between two other variables
1. Extraversion
2. Health
3.Good home moderator variable
There are two independent variables, key is it changes relationship between 1 and 2
How personality research can be improved
Comparative “effect sizes” in personality studies and social psychological experiments
Situational constraint
Degree of constraint
High
Less variation in behavior
Low
More variation in behavior
Situation
Church
Job interview
Elevator
Family dinner
Class
Movies
Restroom
Bus
Date
Bar
Football game
Dorm lounge
Park
Own room
Stability of traits vs. how they change over the lifespan
Traits are stable over long periods
of time
_ Degree to which a person is shy,
creative, friendly, etc. is somewhat
consistent from year to year and even
from childhood to adulthood to old age
OVER THE LONG-TERM, NOT SHORT-TERM
_ Personality traits predict behavior over the long-term
_ Your level of Extraversion is
_ a good predictor of the total number of times you will go to parties
this quarter
_ but, a weak predictor of whether you will go to a party this Friday
night
_ Like batting average or weather patterns
KEY ELEMENTS OF TRAITS
_ Personality traits are real
_ High stability across the lifespan
_ High agreement between raters
_ High heritability and links to specific genes, hormones,
and brain activation patterns
_ Reliably observed in other animals
The MMPI
Some tests provide B data
_ Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI
-Basic assumption: certain kinds of people have
distinctive ways of answering certain questions
The Big Five OCEAN
 Big Five Dimension
o
o
o
o
o
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Neuroticism
Openness
Objective vs. Projective tests
Projective:
Definition: a test that presents a person with an
ambiguous stimulus and asks him or her to
describe what is seen
_ Answers are thought to reveal inner
psychological states or motivations of which the
person may be unaware
Disadvantages
_ Expensive and time-consuming
_ A psychologist cannot be sure about what they mean
_ Other less expensive tests work as well or better
_ Advantages
_ Good tool for breaking the ice with a client
_ Some skilled clinicians may be able to use them to get
information not captured in other types of tests
Provide B data
_ Used by many clinical psychologists
_ Validity evidence is scarce
_ Most valid tests seem to the be the TAT and Rorschach
(with one of two scoring methods)
Objective:
Definition: a personality test that consists of a
list of questions to be answered by the subject as
true or false or on a numeric scale
_ Validity and the subjectivity of test items
_ Items are still not absolutely objective; they can be
interpreted in different ways
_ Why so many items?
_ The principle of aggregation
_ Use Spearman-Brown formula to calculate reliability
if items were added
The rational method: write items that seem
directly, obviously, and rationally related to what
is to be measured
_ Based on a theory or sometimes less systematic
_ Provides S data
_ Four conditions for validity
_ Items mean the same thing to the test taker and creator
_ Capability for accurate self-assessment
_ Willingness to make an accurate report
_ Items must be valid indicators of the construct
_ The most common form of test construction
The factor analytic method: identify which items
group together by using the statistical technique
of factor analysis
_ Generate a long list of objective items
_ Administer these items to a large number of people
_ Analyze with a factor analysis
_ Consider what the items that group together have in
common and name the factor
Validity of projective tests
Objective test construction
The factor analytic method (cont.)
_ Limitations
_ The quality of information from the factor analysis is limited by
the quality of items
_ Difficulty and subjectivity of deciding how items are conceptually
related
_ Factors don’t always make sense
_ Uses
_ Reduce list of traits to an essential few
_ Refine personality tests
_ The empirical method: identify items based on
how people in pre-identified groups respond
_ Steps: gather lots of items; administer items to people
already divided into groups; compare the answers of
the different groups; cross-validation
_ Not based on theory; ignores item content
_ Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI) and Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB)
_ Basic assumption: certain kinds of people have
distinctive ways of answering certain questions
_ The empirical method: implications of ignoring item
content/low face validity
_ Can include items that seem contrary or absurd
_ Responses are difficult to fake
_ Tests are only as good as the criteria by which they are
developed and/or cross-validated
_ Can cause problems with public relations or the law
_ A combination of methods
_ Generate items with rational method, analyze
responses with factor analysis, correlate factors with
independent criteria
_ Jackson’s Personality Research Form (PRF
IAT
Unconscious- B data
Conscious- S data
Me not shy
I
others not shy
Differences between S (self-report) data and B data (e.g., performance on the IAT) related to the trait of shyness
Scales included in some inventories to detect lying, faking, erratic responding, etc. (e.g., the commonality scale of
the CPI)
How a person’s own judgments about his/her personality might differ from those of observers (e.g., how observers of
shy people might perceive them differently than the shy people perceive themselves)
Studies of intellectual and social expectancies
Basic criteria of personality assessment
What makes a person a good or a poor judge of others’ personalities
The good judge
_ Early findings: depends on the context or trait being
judged; intelligent and conscientious
_ For males: extraverted, well-adjusted, unconcerned
with what others think of them
_ For females: open, wide range of interests, value
independence
_ High in communion; socially skilled, agreeable,
adjusted; attributionally complex; judge others
favorably
Good targets for personality judgment
The good target: stable and well-organized,
psychologically well adjusted, extraverted,
agreeable
_ Related to psychological health and happiness and to
low social isolation, hostility, and depression
Good traits for personality judgment
The good trait: easy to observe, highly visible
_ Evidence against the idea that peer judgments are
socially constructed and agreement is based on
communication
_ Possible evolutionary basis (sociosexuality)
Good information for personality judgment
Good information: amount or quantity
_ The acquaintanceship effect and a boundary
_ Affects self-other agreement but not consensus
Good information: quality
_ Weak vs. strong situations
_ Stressful or emotionally arousing situations
_ Best situation: one that brings out the trait you want
to judge
_ Thoughts and feelings vs. daily activities
_ Unstructured vs. structured situations
Funder’s Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM)
The value of conscientiousness as a trait (and integrity tests used in employment)
High vs. low self-monitors
High self monitors- adjust behavior/ personality to environment. TOO FACED, FAKE
Low Self Monitors-consistent behavior in all situations.
Q-sort measures of personality
Personality types vs. personality traits
Constructivism vs. critical realism
Constructivism: none, personality is a social
Construction, all views equally valid
_ Critical Realism: all information might be helpful, some views are more correct than others
Different types of validity
Convergent validly: the process of assembling
diverse pieces of information that converge on a
common conclusion
_ The duck test
_ Interjudge agreement
_ Behavioral prediction/predictive validity
How you can assess personality from someone’s face
Consensus vs. accuracy
Single trait approach
Traits are relatively enduring predispositions that
influence our behavior across many situations
_ Stable across time
_ Consistent across situations
_ Universal dimensions (describe differences among all people)
_ Biologically based (at least in part)
_ People can reliably and validly judge their own and others’
personality traits
_ Traits predict important life outcomes
_ Interested in the structure of personality
_ Pinpoint major traits in giving rise to differences in our personalities
_ Traits do exist and they MATTER
Authoritarianism: turn one’s will over to an
external authority to avoid having to make
personal choices; enjoy giving orders, which they
expect to be followed without question
_ Prejudice against minority groups
_ Antidemocratic and pseudoconservative
_ The California F (fascism) scale: measures the 9
facets of authoritarianism
_ Authoritarianism (cont.)
_ Behaviors: extremely deferential and respectful to
people with higher power but rude and disrespectful
to people with lower power; do not respond well to
challenges about their seemingly inconsistent
behavior and values
_ Some recent findings: uncooperative and inflexible,
fewer positive emotions, support “strong” political
candidates
_ Authoritarianism (cont.)
_ More than just an acquiescence response set
(tendency to agree with statements regardless of
their content)
_ An individual-difference construct that can be used to
explain which individuals would be most likely to
follow a leader like Hitler
_ Good example of how a personality trait can be used
to understand a complex social phenomenon
Many trait approach
Who does that important behavior?
_ Examine correlations between one behavior and many
traits
_ California Q-set
_ 100 personality descriptions
_ Sort into a forced choice, symmetrical, and normal
distribution
_ Compare characteristics within an individual
Delay of gratification: denying oneself immediate
pleasure for long-term gain
_ Sex differences
_ Ego control: self-control or inhibition
_ Ego resiliency: psychological adjustment
Other behaviors
_ Drug abuse
_ Depression
_ Political orientation
Essential trait approach
Which traits are the most important? Which
traits really matter?
_ Reducing the many to a few
_ Theoretical approaches
_ Murray: 20 needs
_ Block: ego-control and ego-resiliency
_ Factor analytic approaches
_ Eysenck: extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism
_ Tellegen: positive emotionality, negative emotionality,
constraint
_ Cattell: 16 essential traits
Discovery of the Big Five
_ Lexical hypothesis: important aspects of life will be
labeled with words, and if something is truly
important and universal there will be many words for
it in all languages
_ Look for traits that have the most words and are the
most universal across languages
_ Factor analysis
THE BIG FIVE AND BEYOND
_ Implications of the Big Five
_ Traits are orthogonal, or unrelated
_ Can bring order to many research findings
_ More complex than they seem at first
THE BIG FIVE AND BEYOND
_ Conscientiousness (already discussed)
_ Extraversion: social, outgoing, active, outspoken,
dominant, adventurous
_ Advantages: higher status, rated as more popular
and physically attractive, more positive emotions
_ Disadvantage: mate poaching
_ Life outcomes: happy, grateful, long life, healthy,
successful relationships, etc.
THE BIG FIVE AND BEYOND
_ Neuroticism: emotional instability
_ Ineffective problem solving, strong negative reactions
to stress
_ Negatively correlated with happiness, well-being, and
physical health
_ General tendency toward psychopathology
_ Life outcomes: problems in family relationships,
dissatisfied with jobs, criminal behavior
THE BIG FIVE AND BEYOND
_ Agreeableness: conformity, compliance,
likeability, warmth
_ Tendency to be cooperative and easy to get along with
_ Smoke less
_ Women tend to be higher than men
_ Among children, related to less vulnerability of being
bullied
_ Life outcomes: psychologically well-adjusted, healthy
heart, dating satisfaction
THE BIG FIVE AND BEYOND
_ Openness to experience (Intellect)
_ Most controversial trait
_ Approach to intellectual matters or basic intelligence
_ Value of cultural matters (literature, art)
_ Creativity and perceptiveness
_ Less replicable across samples and cultures
_ Viewed by others as creative, open-minded, and
clever
_ Life outcomes: drug use, artistic interests
THE BIG FIVE AND BEYOND
_ Universality of the Big Five
_ When translated to other languages: four or five of
the factors appear
_ When starting with other languages: some overlap
but no one-to-one correspondence
THE BIG FIVE AND BEYOND
_ Beyond the Big Five (criticisms)
_ Not orthogonal
_ There is more to personality
_ Too broad for conceptual understanding
Typological approach
Based on doubt about whether it is valid to
compare people quantitatively on the same trait
dimensions
_ Instead, sort patterns of traits into types
_ Important differences between people may be
qualitative
TYPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PERSONALITY
_ Challenges
_ Find the divisions that distinguish different types
_ Come up with basic types that characterize the whole
range of personality
TYPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PERSONALITY
_ Three replicable types
_ Well-adjusted, maladjusted overcontrolling,
maladjusted undercontrolling
_ But types do not predict behavior beyond what can be
predicted with quantitative trait scores
TYPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PERSONALITY
_ Is it useful to think about people in terms of
types?
_ Yes (maybe)
_ Summary of standing on several traits
_ Make it easier to think about how traits within a
person interact with each other
Animal personality
Three types of neurons
The difference between afferent and efferent neurons
The organization of the nervous system
Somatic and autonomic nervous system
Sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system
Brain regions and personality (amygdala, frontal lobes, ventromedial cortex, left and right hemispheres, ACC,
ascending reticular activating system or ARAS; and its effect on personality including the results of the Lemon test)
General arousal theory of criminality
Cognition and emotion (Capgras syndrome and the somatic marker hypothesis)
Methods used by psychologically oriented neuroscientists to study personality
How Phineas Gage’s personality changed after a metal rod rocketed through his head
Eysenck’s theories about neuroticism and extraversion
Taxonomy rooted in biology (theoretical perspective)
_ Psychoticism/impulsivity (testosterone level)
_ Extraversion (physiological arousal)
_ Neuroticism (reactivity of ANS)
The ancient Greek physician Galen’s ideas about major personality types and their causes
Galen (Rome, A.D. 130–200) proposed that
personality depended on the balance of humors, or
fluids (blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm)
Kinds of personality differences related to neurotransmitters and hormones such as serotonin, dopamine, testosterone
Relation between biological and social processes (does one cause the other?)
BIOLOGY: CAUSE AND EFFECT
_ “The relationship between the brain and its
environment works in both directions”
_ Understanding the brain can help us understand
behavior, but understanding behavior can also
help us understand the brain