PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter 12
Personality
Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.1
Personality: What It Is and How It
Is Measured
12.1 Personality—What Is It?
-
Personality— the study of relatively
enduring patterns of behavior that may
be said to characterize or differentiate
an individual or a “type” of individual
from others
-
Paradox: Change and continuity
3
4 “Big Questions” addressed by
most personality theories
1.
2.
3.
4.
How much consistency is there in a person’s
behavior across time and situations – how do
we explain this?
How do we explain individual differences
between people in the same situation?
How much does personality change across
time and lifespan – how do we explain change?
What constitutes psychological well-being, and
how does one achieve it? Conversely, what
are causes of psychological problems?
Approaches to Studying Personality
Global Theory Approaches
Taxonomic approaches – the study of individual
differences
-
Psychologically meaningful differences
Why are people different?
• prior events
• anticipated events
• biologically based predispositions
Approaches to Studying Personality
“Global” Theories of Personality: Big Picture Theories
- Psychodynamic or psychoanalytic – Freud, Jung, Erikson
- Behavioral or behaviorist – Watson, Skinner
- Humanistic – Existential – Rogers, Maslow, Csikszentmihalyi, May, Frankl
- Social – Cognitive - Cultural – Mischel, Kelly, Rotter, Markus & Kitayama, social
psych influences – many others
- Biopsychological – neuroscientific – evolutionary - Eysenck
Taxonomic approach to individual differences
- Trait (with or without biological basis assumed)
e.g. The “Big Five” - Costa & McRae
Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.3
The Psychodynamic Approach:
Forces That Lie Beneath
Awareness
Many Psychodynamic Perspectives
All assume behavior is primarily caused by unconscious
processes, e.g. unconscious motives, conflicts
- Wide variety of psychodynamic theories:
-
e.g. Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson
Carl Jung
-
Differ in assumptions about
1. the content and dynamics of the unconscious
2. How personality changes/develops over time
3. Views about psychological well-being and
illness
12.3 Psychodynamic Approach
Freud: “psychopathologies of everyday life”
- Freudian slips
-
-
Psychodynamic approach
• dynamic unconscious
•
•
•
emphasis on process
conflict & tension within & among parts of self
goal of tension reduction
9
Psychodynamic Perspectives
-
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
• Structure of personality
•Id - Pleasure principle
•Ego - Reality principle
•Superego - Morality
• Levels of awareness
•Conscious
•Unconscious
•Preconscious
• Conflict
•Sex and Aggression
•Anxiety
•Defense Mechanisms
12.3 Psychodynamic Approach—
Structure of Personality
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Three independent, interacting, and often
conflicting systems
Id—present at birth
• pleasure principle
-
Ego—acquired through contact with reality
• reality principle
-
Superego— internalized through identification
with parents (usually same-sex parent – Freud)
• morality principle
11
Figure 11.2
Figure 11.3
Figure 11.3 Freud’s model of personality dynamics. According to Freud,
unconscious conflicts between the id, ego, and superego sometimes lead to
anxiety. This discomfort may lead to the use of defense mechanisms, which may
temporarily relieve anxiety.
12.3 Psychodynamic Approach—
Defense Mechanisms
-
-
-
Repression
Rationalization
Reaction formation
Projection
Regression
Displacement
Identification
Sublimation
14
Freud on Development:
Psychosexual Stages
Sexual = physical pleasure
- Erogenous zones (erotogenic) – bodily source of
pleasure
different emphasis with each stage
- Psychosexual stages
-
• Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latent, Genital
• Fixation = personality characterized by one of these stages
results from excessive gratification or frustration
•Overemphasis on psychosexual needs during fixated stage
•Resolution of the Oedipal conflict & identification with same-same
parent during the Phallic Stage assumed to be critical for
a. the development of the superego
b. incorporation/development of gender roles
12.3 Psychodynamic Approach—
Personality Development & Change
-
-
-
Psychosexual
stages of
development
Personality formed
by age 6 through
crucial experiences
Fixation
Oedipus conflict
16
Carl Jung’s Analytical Psychology and
Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology
-
Carl Jung
• Analytical Psychology
•Personal and collective unconscious
•Archetypes
•Introversion/Extroversion
-
Alfred Adler
• Individual Psychology
•Striving for superiority
•Compensation
•Inferiority complex/overcompensation
•Birth order
Evaluating Psychodynamic
Perspectives
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Pros
-
Insights regarding
• The unconscious
• The role of internal conflict
• The importance of early childhood experiences
-
Cons
• Poor testability, inadequate empirical evidence
• Lack of parsimony (unnecessarily complex theory)
• Sexism – esp. in Freudian version
• Overemphasis on early childhood experiences
Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.4
The Humanistic-Existential
Approach: Personality as Choice
12.4 Humanistic-Existential
Approach
-
-
Assumes free will and responsibility
Assumes basic motivation to “grow”
Healthy choices
Self-actualizing tendency
Hierarchy of needs (chapter 10)
Peak experiences
Conditions for growth
• unconditional positive regard (Carl Rogers)
20
Humanistic Perspectives
-
Carl Rogers
• Person-centered Theory
•Self-concept
– Conditional/unconditional positive regard
– Incongruence and anxiety
-
Abraham Maslow
• Self-actualization theory
• Hierarchy of needs
•The healthy personality
Figure 11.7
Figure 11.7 Rogers’s view of personality structure. In Rogers’s model, the selfconcept is the only important structural construct. However, Rogers
acknowledged that one’s self-concept may not be consistent with the realities of
one’s actual experience—a condition called incongruence.
Figure 11.9
Figure 11.9 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow, human needs are
arranged in a hierarchy, and people must satisfy their basic needs before they
can satisfy higher needs. In the diagram, higher levels in the pyramid represent
progressively less basic needs. Individuals progress upward in the hierarchy
when lower needs are satisfied reasonably well, but they may regress back to
lower levels if basic needs are no longer satisfied.
Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives
-
Pros
• Importance of subjective reality
• Developed self-concept construct
• Foundation for Positive Psychology
-
Cons
• Difficult to test
• Overly optimistic
• More experimental research needed
12.4 Personality as Existence
-
Rollo May & Victor Frankl—looked at
specific aspects of human existence
• awareness of our own existence
• ability to make choices
-
Finding meaning in life
• existential dread (if I can think about life, I realize
I will die!)
• mortality salience (worldview defense)
25
Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives
-
Pros
• Importance of subjective reality
• Developed self-concept construct
• Foundation for Positive Psychology
-
Cons
• Some concepts difficult to test
• Overly optimistic
• More experimental research needed
Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.2
The Trait Approach: Identifying
Patterns of Behavior
Trait Theories of Personality
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-
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Emphasizes underlying, possibly innate,
attributes (traits) that predispose one toward
patterns of thinking and behavior
These traits are assumed to explain patterns
of individual consistency in behavior across
time and situations
Tend to examine the correlation between
traits and behavior. Usually emphasize one
trait (e.g. sensation seeking, or self-esteem)
or, at most, a few personality traits (e.g. “The
Big Five”
12.2 Personality—The Trait
Approach
-
-
A person’s special
qualities?
Gordon Allport (1937)
—personality can be
understood as a
combination of traits
Are the personalities of
the two owners of the
closets different?
29
12.1 Personality—How It Is
Measured
-
Personality inventories
Self-report
Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory
Easy to administer
• response style
• validity?
30
12.1 Personality—How It Is
Measured
-
Projective techniques
• Rorschach Inkblot Test
• Thematic Apperception
Test (TAT)
-
Problems?
• always an interpretation
• reliable in predicting
behavior?
• valid in predicting
behavior?
31
12.2 The Search for Core Traits
-
-
How is personality
represented in our
language
(synonyms)
Factor analysis
Hierarchical
structure of traits
32
12.2 The Big Five Dimensions of
Personality
-
-
Many factor analyses
reveal the same
“major” factors that
seem to classify the
personalities of most
people
The Big Five
33
12.2 Traits as Biological Building
Blocks
Do immutable brain and
biological processes
produce the stability of
personality?
- Brain changes do
sometimes bring on
personality changes—
Phineas Gage
- Traits do seem to have a
heritability component
-
34
12.2 Do Animals Have
Personalities?
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Gosling (1998) studied spotted hyenas. He:
• had human observers use personality scales to
rate the different hyenas in the group
• did a factor analysis on these findings
• found five dimensions
three closely resembled the Big Five traits of
neuroticism, openness to experience, and
agreeableness
35
12.2 Traits in the Brain
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Reticular formation of extraverts may not
be as easily stimulated as that of introverts
-
Gray (1970) suggests extraversion/
introversion and neuroticism reflect
differences in two basic brain systems:
• behavioral activation system (BAS)
• behavioral inhibition system (BIS)
36
Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.5
The Social Cognitive Approach:
Personalities in Situations
12.4 Personalities in Situations
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Social cognitive approach
• social psychology
• cognitive psychology
• learning theory
-
Situations cause behavior, too!
38
12.5 Consistency of Personality
across Situations
-
Person-situation controversy
Walter Mischel (1968)
• measured personality traits do a poor job of predicting
behavior
-
George Kelly (1955)—people view the social
world from different perspectives
Personal constructs are key to personality
differences
• can have the same traits but won’t act the same way if
your perspective is different
39
12.5 Personal Goals and
Expectancies
-
-
Person’s unique
perspective is reflected
in personal goals
Outcome expectancies
Rotter (1966)—locus of
control
40