UNVERSITY OF MERYLAND
Introduction to psychology
PSY 101
What are different theories of personality?
Personality
An individual's characteristic way of behaving across different situations and over
time.
Includes affects, behaviors, and cognitions (A,B,Cs) of people that characterize them
in many situations over time.
Personality theories look for ways describe how individual remain same over time and
circumstances and allow for descriptions of differences among people.
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY
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Type Theories
Trait Theories
Psychodynamic Theories
Humanistic Theories
Social-Learning and Cognitive
TYPE THEORIES
Types are distinct patterns of personality characteristics
Four-Humors Theory
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Hippocrates - personality or temperament associated with four basic fluids or
humors of body
o Blood = sanguine temperament: cheerful and active
o Phlegm = phlegmatic temperament: apathetic and sluggish
o Black Bile = melancholy temperament: sad and brooding
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o Yellow Bile= choleric temperament: irritable and excitable
William Sheldon - personality related to somatotypes or body builds
o Endomorphic = fat, soft, round: relaxed, fond of eating, and sociable
o Mesomorphic = muscular, rectangular, strong: physical, filled with
energy, courageous, and assertive
Ectomorphic = thin, long, fragile: brainy, artistic, and introverted
TRAIT THEORIES
Tend to be more concerned with adequate description of personality that explanation
of personality.
Traits are descriptive dimensions.
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Not simple either/or propositions
Traits fall along a continuum.
Traits are stable characteristics of person that determine patterns of thoughts, feelings
and behavior.
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Gordon Allport - one most influential, viewed traits as building blocks of
personality
o Cardinal traits - traits around which person organizes life
o Central traits - represent major characteristics of person
o Secondary traits - enduring qualities, but not assumed explain general
behavior patterns
Hans Eysenck - proposed model that links types, traits and behavior into
hierarcial system
Big Five Factors - five basic dimensions underlying traits used to describe
selves and others
o Extroversion: talkative, energetic, and assertive, versus quiet,
reserved, and shy
o Agreeableness: sympathetic, kind, and affectionate, versus cold,
quarrlesome, and cruel
o Conscientiousness: organized, responsible, and cautious, versus
careless, frivolous, and irresponsible
o Emotional stability: stable, calm, and contented, versus anxious,
unstable, and temperamental
Openness to experience: creative, intellectual and open-minded,
versus simple, shallow, and unintellegent
PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORIES
Based on Freud's - assume powerful inner forces shape personality and motivate
behavior.
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Unconscious Process
o Unconscious is psychic domain which not aware; store house primitive
and repressed impulses
o Freudian slip - accidental speech or behavior reveals unconscious
desires
Drives and Instincts
o Eros - driving inner force related to sexual urges and preservation of
species
o Libido - concept of psychic energy that drives individuals to experience
sensual pleasure
o Thanatos - negative force driving toward aggressive and destructive
behaviors
Psychic Determinism - assumption that all behavior and mental reactions
determined by earlier life experience
Early Childhood Experiences - Psychosexual stages of development ...
successive, instinctive patterns associating pleasure with stimulation specific
bodily areas at different time life
Psychosexual Stages of Development
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Oral stage - birth to 1 year; pleasure from oral activities - feeding, sucking,
making noises
Anal Stage - 1 to 3 years; develop ability control bowel and bladder functions
Phallic Stage - 3 to 5 years; "penis envy"; Oedipus complex; Electra complex
Latency Stage - 4 to 6 years; sexual development on hold
Genital Stage - Puberty on; sexual reawakening and renewal
Fixation - arrested development due to excessive stimulation or frustration in
earlier stage
Personality Structure
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Id - primitive, unconscious part stores fundamental drives
o totally inborn or inherited portion of personality
o resides in unconscious level of mind
o driving force of id is libido
o Operates on pleasure principle
Ego - personal view of physical and social reality
o Develops through experience with reality
o Rational, reasoning part
o Operates on reality principle
o Mediates between Id and Superego
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Superego - values, moral attributes from society
o One's sense of morality or conscience
o Operates on idealistic principle
Has no contact with reality
Ego Defense Mechanisms
Mental strategies employed to reduce experience of conflict or anxiety.
Anxiety result of unresolved conflicts between Id and Superego.
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Repression - forgetting some anxiety-producing desire or event.
Denial - person simply refuses to acknowledge realities of anxiety-producing
situation.
Rationalization - making excuses for behavior rather than facing anxietyproducing, real reasons.
Fantasy - an excape from anxiety through imagination and daydreaming.
Projection - seeing in others motives, or traits, that would make us anxious to
see in ourselves.
Regression - return to earlier, more primitive, childish level of behavior.
Displacement - refers to aggression. Directing motives or behaviors at
substitute person or object rather than expressing directly.
Using defense mechanisms is normal reaction, but can become maladaptive.
Neo-Freudians
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Alfred Adler - we are very much products of social influences on personality.
o Major goal is achievement of success or superiority.
o This is to overcome childhood inferiority complex.
Carl Jung - major goal in life is to bring together in unity all aspects of
personality.
o Accepted unconscious mind - called it "personal unconscious"
o Collective Unconscious contains very basic ideas and notions that go
beyond own experiences.
o Contents of collective unconscious are archetypes - universal forms
and patterns of thought.
Karen Horney - emphasis on early childhood experiences.
o Basic anxiety develops when child feels isolated and alone in hostile
environment.
o If parents inconsistent, indifferent, or overly punishing, child may
develop basic anxiety.
o People interact with each other in three distinct ways:
1. Move away from each other, seeking independence and selfsufficiency.
2. Move toward others, tending to compliant and dependent.
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3. Move against others, where effort is to be in control, to gain
power and dominance.
First to take Freud to task for his "male chauvinist" ideas.
HUMANISTIC THEORIES
Self-actualization constant striving to realize one's potential - to fully develop
capactities and talents
Unconditional Positive Regard - acceptance and approval of person not contingent on
person's behavior
This approach is not deterministic - what matters is how people view themselves and
others.
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Focus on here and now
Emphasizes wholeness or completeness of personality.
Carl Rogers - person-centered or self theory.
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Developed view through clinical settings
Most overwhelming human drive is drive to become fully functioning.
o Involves openness to one's self and feelings and desires.
o Should have unconditional positive self-regard
What is important is not what is but what is felt or perceived.
Abraham Maslow - major goal in life is need to realize positive needs, to selfactualize.
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Saw psychology as too pessimistic and negative.
Hierarchical arrangement of motives.
o Low level needs basic survival or deficiency needs
o Higher level needs called meta-needs or growth needs
SOCIAL-LEARNING AND COGNITIVE THEORIES
Focus on environmental contingencies that control behavior
Dollard and Miller demo could learn by social imitation and emphasized role of habits
in explaining behavior
Social Learning
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Observational learning - process learning new responses by watching other's
behavior
Reciprocal determinism - process which person, situation, and environment
mutually influence each other
Self-effacacy - belief that one can perform adequately in particular situation
Personal Construct Theory - George Kelly. Personal construct is unique system for
interpreting reality
BEHAVIORAL-LEARNING APPROACH
John Watson and followers argued that psychology should turn away from study of
mind and consciousness cause they are unverifiable and ultimately unscientific.
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Should study observable behavior
Personality theory not needed.
Instincts and innate impulses have little to do with development of behavior.
B.F. Skinner claimed to have proposed no particular theory of learning much less
personality.
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Refused refer to any sort internal variables to explain behavior.
Behavior is shaped by consequences.
John Dollard and Neal Miller tried use basic principles of learning theory to explain
personality and how it develops.
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Personality grows out of system of habits one develops in response to various
cues in environment.
Behavior motivated by primary drives and learned drives.
Motivated by drives, habits reinforced become part one's personality.
Miller - conflict explainable terms tendencies (habits) to approach or avoid
goals.
Albert Bandura - many aspects behavior and personality are learned -- often learned
through observation and social influences