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PSYC1010
Chapter 10: PERSONALITY
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Audience Participation: Who Are You?
Take out a piece of
paper (or open a
document) and using
just a few adjectives or
descriptors, describe
your personality.
Don’t overthink it or
self-censor. Just write
the first few words that
come to mind.
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My Responses
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Intellectual
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Anxious
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Judgemental
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Nurturing
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Controlled
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Introverted
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Non-confrontational
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Self-critical
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Loyal
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“Sadistically realistic”
Do these traits/characteristics tell you everything you
want to know about me -- or any person?
What questions would you ask to get to know
someone’s personality? Give me your top 3!
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What is Personality?
People’s typical ways of thinking, feeling, & behaving.
Personality is viewed as:
> Relatively consistent over time & across situations**
> Involving features that distinguish us from each other.
> The influence or causes of our patterns of behaviour.
+ Biological and Evolutionary Approaches
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Argue personality is determined (at least in part) by particular
combinations of genes.

Grounded in evolutionary theory, which assumes that personality
traits that led to survival and reproductive success are more likely
to be preserved and passed on to subsequent generations.
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Twin studies illustrate the importance of genetics in personality,
but they also note the crucial role of the environment!
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E.g., it’s nature and nurture!
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Use twin & adoption studies to try
to disentangle the effects of:
Biological and
Evolutionary
Approaches
• Genes
• Shared environmental factors
• Non-shared environmental
factors
Numerous personality traits are
influenced by genetics – but all
much below a 1.0 correlation
• Demonstrates power of nonshared environmental influences.
• Shared environment plays little
to no role in personality.
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Genetic Factors In Personality
(Studies Of Twins)
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Tellegen et al. (1988) found
that in major respects,
identical twins (raised apart)
were quite similar in
personality, despite being
separated at an early age.
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Certain traits were more
heavily influenced by
heredity than were others.
The roots of personality.
The percentages indicate the degree to which eleven
personality characteristics reflect the influence of heredity.
Twin Studies of Personality
(example image from different text)
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Biological and Evolutionary Approaches:
Cautionary Notes

Identifying specific genes linked to personality and the existence of
temperaments from the time of birth, DOES NOT mean that we are
destined to have certain personalities!
3 Important notes of caution!

1. It is unlikely that any single gene is linked to a specific trait.
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2. Genes interact with the environment, as it is impossible to
completely separate genetic factors from environmental factors
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2. Estimates of the influence of genetics are just that—
estimates—and apply to groups, not individuals.
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Freud’s Psychodynamic Approach
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Argued that much of our behaviour is motivated by our
unconscious.
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Unconscious: part of the personality that contains the memories,
knowledge, beliefs, feelings, urges, drives, and instincts of which
the individual is not aware.
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To understand personality, expose the contents of unconscious!
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BUT…the content of the unconscious cannot be observed directly
because the meaning of the material it holds is disguised in
symbolic meanings.
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Freud’s model of
Personality
Structure
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Structuring Personality: The Id
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Raw, unorganized, inborn part of personality whose purpose is to
reduce tension created by primitive drives (e.g., hunger, sex,
aggression)
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These drives are fueled by “psychic energy” (libido): a limitless
energy source constantly putting pressure on the various parts of
the personality.
Operates on the pleasure principle, goal is immediate reduction of
tension and the maximization of satisfaction.
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Reality prevents fulfillment of the demands of the id in most cases.
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To account for this, Freud suggested a second component of
personality, which he called the ego.
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Structuring Personality: The Ego
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Develops shortly after birth, strives to balance the desires of
the id and the realities of the objective, outside world.
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Operates on reality principle; instinctual energy is restrained to
maintain the safety of the individual and integrate the person
into society.
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The ego is the “executive” of personality.

It makes decisions, controls actions, and allows thinking and
problem solving of a higher order than the Id.
+ Structuring Personality: The Superego
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Represents the rights and wrongs of society as handed down
by a person’s parents, teachers, and other important figures.
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Has two components, the conscience and the ego-ideal.
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The conscience prevents us from behaving in a morally
improper way by making us feel guilty if we do wrong,
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The ego-ideal, which represents the “perfect person” that we
wish we were, motivates us to do what is morally right.
The superego helps us control impulses coming from the Id,
making our behaviour less selfish and more virtuous.
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Id, Ego, and Superego: Who Wins?
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Both the superego and the Id are unrealistic in that they do not
consider the practical realities imposed by society.
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The superego, if left to operate without restraint, would create
perfectionists unable to make the compromises life requires.
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An unrestrained Id would create a primitive, pleasure-seeking,
thoughtless individual seeking to fulfill every desire.
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Thus, the ego must mediate or balance between the demands of
the superego and the demands of the id.
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The result of these ongoing battles = our personality!
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Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
(a shortened version..)
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Freud believed personality developed through a series of 5
psychosexual stages.
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Developmental periods children pass through during which they
navigate conflicts between the demands of society and their own
sexual urges.
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Failure to resolve the conflicts at a particular stage could result in what
Freud called fixations.
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Fixations: Conflicts/concerns that persist beyond the developmental
period in which they first occur.
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Such conflicts may be due to having needs ignored or (conversely) being
overindulged during the earlier period.
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Stage
Oral
Anal
Phallic
Latency
Genital
Age
Major Characteristics
Birth to 12–18 months
Interest in oral gratification from sucking, eating,
mouthing, biting
12–18 months to 3 years
Gratification from expelling and withholding feces;
coming to terms with society’s controls relating to
toilet training
3 to 5–6 years
Interest in the genitals, coming to terms with
Oedipal conflict leading to identification with
same-sex parent
5–6 years to adolescence
Sexual concerns largely unimportant
Adolescence to adulthood
Re-emergence of sexual interests and
establishment of mature sexual relationships
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Defense Mechanisms
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According to Freud, anxiety is a danger signal to the ego.
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Anxiety can arise from:
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Realistic fears—such as seeing a poisonous snake about to strike.
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Neurotic anxiety, in which irrational impulses emanating from the
id threaten to burst through and become uncontrollable.
Anxiety is aversive, unpleasant state, so Freud believed that
people develop a range of defense mechanisms to deal with it.
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Defense Mechanisms
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Unconscious strategies that people use to reduce anxiety by
concealing the source from themselves and others.
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Everyone employs defence mechanisms at some point.
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Adaptive in the short-term, but can become maladaptive if they
become default, or are chronically relied upon.
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When every day involved using up psychic energy is redirected
or stuffed down, life becomes difficult and full of anxiety.
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Repression
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Primary defense mechanism, in which unacceptable or
unpleasant id impulses are pushed back into the unconscious.
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A thought or desire is pushed out of conscious awareness
because it is traumatic and threatening to our sense of self.
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The feelings remain lodged within the unconscious, because
acknowledging them would provoke anxiety.
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Dr. Gabor Mate example of inflatable beach ball being
pushed under the water. What happens?
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Projection & Displacement
Projection:
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People defend against recognition of their own negative
thoughts, feelings, motivations by projecting them onto others.
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e.g., I’m thinking about cheating on my partner, so I accuse
them of cheating on me.
Displacement:
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When we unleash our emotions on an ‘safer’ or more socially
acceptable target.
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e.g., my boss yelled at me at work, so I come home and yell at
my partner for not doing the dishes.
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Rationalization
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Generating reasonable-sounding explanations (excuses) for
unacceptable behaviours or personal failures.
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Ego constructs a rational motive to explain the unacceptable
action that is actually caused by irrational impulses of the ID.
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Rationalization means one can express the dangerous
impulse, without disapproval by the superego.
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Explains some of the greatest atrocities in history.
The Neo-Freudians
Jung’s Collective Unconscious
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Jung rejected Freud’s emphasis on the sexual urges.
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Argued the primitive urges of the unconscious represented a more
general, positive life force that encompasses an inborn drive
motivating creativity and more positive resolution of conflict.
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Jung suggested that we have a universal collective unconscious.
Collective unconscious: common set of ideas, feelings, images,
and symbols that we inherit from our ancestors, the whole
human race, and even animal ancestors from the distant past.
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Shared by everyone and is displayed in behaviour that is common
across diverse cultures
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E.g., love of mother, belief in a supreme being.
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Jung’s Collective Unconscious
Collective unconscious contains archetypes or universal
symbolic representations of a particular person, object, or
experience.
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A mother archetype, containing reflections of our ancestors’
relationships with mother figures, is suggested by the
prevalence of mothers in art, religion, literature, and mythology.
(Think of the Virgin Mary, Earth Mother, wicked stepmothers in
fairy tales, Mother’s Day).
Archetypes play an important role in determining our day-to-day
reactions, attitudes, and values.
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Jung might explain the popularity of the Harry Potter movies as
being due to their use of broad archetypes of good (Harry) and
evil (Voldemort).
Karen Horney: The First Feminist
Psychologist?
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She rejected Freud’s suggestion that women have penis envy!
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Argued what women envy most in men is not the anatomy but the
independence, success, and freedom attached to the organ.
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Suggested personality develops in terms of social
relationships and depends on the relationship between
parents and child and how well the child’s needs are met.
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Among the first to emphasize cultural influences on
personality.
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E.g., society’s rigid gender roles for women lead them to
experience ambivalence about success, fearing that they will
lose their friends.
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Trait Approaches
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Trait theory is a model of personality that seeks to identify
the basic traits necessary to describe personality.
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Traits are consistent personality characteristics and
behaviours displayed in different situations.
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Trait theorists propose that all people possess certain traits,
but that the degree to which a given trait applies to a
specific person varies and can be quantified.
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E.g., you may be relatively friendly, whereas I may be relatively
unfriendly, yet we both have a “friendliness” trait, although
your degree of “friendliness” is higher than mine.
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Allport’s Trait Theory
Allport suggested that there were 3 basic categories of traits:
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1. Cardinal traits: a single characteristic that directs most of a person’s
activities.
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2. Central traits: the major characteristics of an individual
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E.g., honesty and sociability, kindness
3. Secondary traits: characteristics that affect behaviour in fewer
situations and are less influential than central or cardinal traits.
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E.g., a totally selfless person might direct all their energy toward volunteering.
E.g., a reluctance to eat meat or a love of classical music.
Most people do not develop a single, comprehensive cardinal trait, instead,
they possess several central traits that make up the core of personality.
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Cattell and Eysenck: Factor Analysis
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Factor analysis: statistical method of identifying associations
among many variables to reveal more general patterns.
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A researcher might give a questionnaire to many participants,
asking them to describe themselves by referring to a long list
of traits.
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By statistically combining responses and computing which
traits are associated with one another in the same person, a
researcher can identify the most fundamental patterns or
combinations of traits—called factors—that underlie
participants’ responses.
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Cattell suggested that 16 pairs of source traits represented
the basic dimensions of personality.
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From these, he developed the Sixteen Personality Factor
Questionnaire (16 PF)
Cattell and Eysenck
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Eysenck used FA to identify patterns of traits.
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He found personality could best be described in
terms of just 3 major dimensions:
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Extraversion: relates to the degree of sociability.
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Neuroticism: encompasses emotional stability.
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Psychoticism: refers to the degree to which
reality is distorted.
By evaluating people along these 3 dimensions,
Eysenck has been able to predict behaviour
accurately in a variety of types of situations.
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The Big Five Personality Traits
(McCrae and Costa)
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Most influential trait approach argues that 5 traits or factors—
called the “Big Five”— lie at the core of personality.
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Using modern factor analytic statistical techniques, a host of
researchers have identified a similar set of five factors.
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The five factors are:
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O = Openness to experience
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C = Conscientiousness
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E = Extraversion
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A = Agreeableness
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N = Neuroticism
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The Big Five Personality Factors and Dimensions of Sample Traits
Openness to experience
Independent—Conforming
Disciplined—Impulsive
Preference for Variety-Preference for routine
Agreeableness
Sympathetic—Fault-finding
Kind—Cold
Appreciative—Unfriendly
Conscientiousness
Careful—Careless
Disciplined—Impulsive
Organized—Disorganized
Neuroticism (Emotional
Stability)
Stable—Tense
Calm—Anxious
Secure—Insecure
Extraversion
Talkative—Quiet
Fun-loving—Sober
Sociable—Retiring
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Activity
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How would knowing the Big Five trait profile of an individual
help you find the perfect romantic partner?
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What would you be looking for? Outline what kind of scores
you would be looking for on each of the Big 5 dimensions and
tell me why for each.
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Openness to Experience
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Conscientiousness
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Extraversion
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Agreeableness
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Neuroticism
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Learning Approaches
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Personality is the sum of learned responses to the external
environment.
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Skinner: personality is a collection of learned behaviour
patterns.
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e.g., Thoughts, feelings, motivations are ignored.
Similarities in responses across different situations are caused by
patterns of reinforcement that have been received in the past.
Less interested in the consistencies in behaviour across
situations than in ways of modifying behaviour.
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E.g., what is learned, can be unlearned, thus personal and societal
problems can be improved through learning.
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Social Cognitive Approaches
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Personality is influenced by a person’s thoughts, feelings,
expectations, values & observation of others’ behaviour.
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Bandura’s observational learning theory = people can foresee
the possible outcomes of certain behaviours in a given setting
without actually having to carry them out.
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E.g., Bobo doll studies, media violence research.
Reciprocal determinism: the environment assumed to affect
personality, but people’s behaviour and personalities are also
assumed to “feed back” and modify the environment.
Bandura’s Reciprocal Determinism
(example image from a different textbook)
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Social Cognitive Approaches
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Bandura emphasized self-efficacy: the belief in one’s
personal capabilities or ability to produce a desired outcome.
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People with high self-efficacy:
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Have higher aspirations
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Show greater persistence in working to attain goals
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Achieve greater success than do those with lower self-efficacy.
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We can all cultivate our self-efficacy by reflecting on our prior
successes and failures (see this week’s discussion forum)
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Direct reinforcement and encouragement from others also
play a role in developing self-efficacy.
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Humanistic Approaches
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Emphasizes that people are innately good and driven to achieve
higher levels of functioning.
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Personality is made up of self-motivated abilities to change, desire
to improve, and individual’s unique creative impulses.
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Rogers argued we have a need for self-actualization, a state of
self-fulfillment in which people realize their highest potential.
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People develop a need for positive regard that reflects the desire
to be loved and respected.
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We grow increasingly dependent on others for this regard.
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We see and judge ourselves through the eyes of other people, relying
on their values, becoming preoccupied with what they think of us.
Humanistic Approaches:
Rogers’ Notion of Self-Discrepancies
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Placing value on the opinions of others can lead to a conflict
between people’s experiences and their self-concepts, the set
of beliefs they hold about what they are like as individuals.
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If the discrepancies are great, they will lead to psychological
disturbances in daily functioning, such as persistent anxiety.
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When the “ideal self,” (the person we would like to be) is
significantly different from our “true self,” (who we are in
reality) we experience anxiety and dissatisfaction.
Rogers also referred to these discrepancies as being driven by
conditions of worth.
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Roger’s Conditions of Worth
(image from a different textbook)
Humanistic Approaches:
Rogers’ Notion of Positive Regard
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Unconditional positive regard: an attitude of acceptance and respect on the
part of an observer, no matter what a person says or does.
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You may have experienced this when you confided in someone, because you
knew they would love and respect you, even after hearing the worst about you.
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Unconditional positive regard gives people the opportunity to evolve and
grow cognitively and emotionally and to develop more realistic self-concepts.
Conditional positive regard: acceptance is contingent on others’ expectations.
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Others withdraw their love and acceptance if you do something they don’t
approve of, resulting in discrepancies, frustration, and anxiety.
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Measuring
Personality
A sometimes funny,
sometimes scary foray
into personality
measurement!
This is where we started….
P
H
R
E
N
O
L
O
G
Y
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Physiognomy: It’s All In Your Face
 Notion
that personality traits can be detected from
individual’s facial features.
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E.g., lowbrow = uneducated, uncultured person with protruding
foreheads, and a low brow line.
 Falsified
many years ago but is making a return.
https://www.rt.com/news/368307-facial-recognitioncriminal-china/
 “We find some discriminating structural features for
predicting criminality, such as lip curvature, eye innercorner distance, and the so-called nose-mouth angle.”
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Recent Physiognomy Research
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Projective Tests
Test in which a person is shown an ambiguous
stimulus and asked to describe it or tell a story
about it.
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Rorschach test: involves showing a series of
visual stimuli to people who then are asked
what the figures represent to them.
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Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): test
consisting of a series of pictures about which
a person is asked to write a story.
Rorschach and TAT require particular skill and
care in their interpretation—too much, in
many critics’ estimation.
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Self-Report Measures of Personality
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Sometimes the best (and only way) to find out what a person is
thinking or feeling is to ask them directly.
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) is a
self-report test that identifies people with psychological difficulties
and is employed to predict some everyday behaviours.
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Consists of a series of 567 items to which a person responds “true,”
“false,” or “cannot say.”
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Questions cover a variety of issues, from mood (“I feel useless at
times”) to opinions (“people should try to understand their dreams”)
health (“I am bothered by an upset stomach several times a week” and
“I have strange and peculiar thoughts”).
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No right or wrong answers (interpretation of pattern of responses).
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Behavioural Assessment
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Measures of an individual’s behaviour used to describe
personality characteristics.
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Can carried out naturalistically or in a laboratory setting.
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Behavioural assessment is carried out objectively, quantifying
behaviour as much as possible.
Particularly appropriate for observing (and modifying)
specific behavioural difficulties like aggression.
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Allows assessment of the specific nature and frequency of a
problem and allows researchers to determine scientifically
whether interventions have been successful.