PSYCHOLOGY:
Perspectives
2nd Edition
GREGORY J. FEIST
ERIKA L. ROSENBERG
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Personality: The
Uniqueness of the
Individual
Chapter Thirteen
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Chapter Preview
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Defining Personality
The Nature and Nurture of Personality
How do Theorists Explain Personality?
How Is Personality Measured?
Bringing It All Together: Making
Connections in Personality
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Defining Personality
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Personality
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Unique and relatively enduring set of
behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and
motives that characterize an individual
– What distinguishes us from one another
and makes us unique
– Relatively enduring consistency
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Personality
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Trait
– Disposition to behavior consistently in a
particular way
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Behavioral thresholds
– Point at which a person moves from not
having a particular response to having
one
– Optimal level of arousal
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The Nature and Nurture
of Personality
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Evolution of Personality
Traits
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Human personality traits evolved as
adaptive behavioral responses to
fundamental problems of survival and
reproduction
Naturally selected traits are favored if
they increase one’s chances of survival
and reproductive success
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Genetics and Personality
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Quantitative trail loci (QTL) approach
– Technique that looks for the location of
specific bits of DNA on genes that might
be associated with particular behaviors
– Genetic markers of behavior
Thrill seeking
 Impulsivity
 Neuroticism/anxiety
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Genetics and Personality
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INSERT FIGURE 13.1 ABOUT
HERE (all five cells, please, from
both pages 516 and 517)
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Temperament and the Fetal
Environment
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Temperament and personality
differences are manifest before birth
Fetal activity and heart rate reveal
something about temperament
differences over the first year of life
Maternal stress during pregnancy can
affect an infant’s stress response style
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Personality and Culture:
Universality and Differences
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NEO- Personality Inventory (PI)
– People from different cultural backgrounds exhibit traits of
all of the following personality dimensions to varying
extents
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Extraversion
Neuroticism
Agreeableness
Openness to experience
Conscientiousness
Psychoticism
– Individualism versus collectivism
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How Do Theorists
Explain Personality?
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Psychoanalytic Theories
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Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939)
– Unconscious
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Id
Ego
Superego
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Psychoanalytic Theories
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Defense mechanisms
– Unconscious strategies the mind uses to
protect itself from anxiety by denying and
distorting reality in some way
Repression
 Reaction formation
 Projection
 Sublimation
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Psychoanalytic Theories
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Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
– Striving for superiority
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Inferiority complex
– Compensation
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Birth order
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Psychoanalytic Theories
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Carl Jung (1875-1961)
– Personal unconscious
– Collective unconscious
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Archetypes
– Shadow
– Anima
– Animus
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Psychoanalytic Theories
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Karen Horney
(1885-1952)
– Basic hostility
– Basic anxiety
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Psychoanalytic Theories
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Neuropsychoanalysis
– A new scientific movement started in
the late 1990s that combined Freudian
ideas with neuroscientific methods
– Has provided some scientific support for
core Freudian ideas that was absent
during Freud’s lifetime
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Humanistic-Positive
Psychology Theories
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Humanistic theories
– Optimistic about human nature
– Humans are interested in realizing their potential
– Contributed to the development of positive psychology
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Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
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Self-actualization stood atop the hierarchy of needs
– Spontaneity, simplicity, naturalness
– Problem-centered
– Creativity
– Deep interpersonal relations
– Resistance to enculturation
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Humanistic-Positive
Psychology Theories
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Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
– Unconditional positive regard
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Acceptance of another person regardless of his or her
behavior
– Real self
– Ideal self
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Positive psychology
– Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000)
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Focus is on positive states and experiences
More likely than humanism to employ research
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Social-Cognitive Learning
Theories
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Walter Mischel
– States that people’s personality traits are
not consistent across all situations
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Trait Theories
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Gordon Allport (1897-1967)
– Determined 4,000 words from an English
dictionary that described personality
– Most people could be described by about 10
central personality traits
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Big Five / Five-factor model
– Basic tendencies
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Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism
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Big Five Dimensions of
Personality
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Biological Theories
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Hans Eysenck (1916-1997)
– Connection between central nervous system
arousal and personality traits
– Three dimensions
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Neuroticism
Extraversion
Psychoticism
– Personality differences are affected by the
combined influence of genes, neurochemistry,
and characteristics of the nervous system.
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Evidence for Personality in
Other Animals
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Studies done by Samuel Gosling and
Oliver John (1999) show that animals
from primates to fish exhibit many
consistent and unique personality
qualities
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Evidence for Personality
in Other Animals
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INSERT FIGURE 13.8 HERE
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How Is Personality
Measured?
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Behavioral Observation
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Direct and relatively objective
Inter-rater reliability
– Measure of how much agreement there is
in ratings when using two or more raters
or coders to rate personalities or other
behaviors
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Costly and time-consuming
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Interviewing
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Natural and
comfortable
Open-ended questions
Scoring the responses
reliably can be difficult
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Projective Tests
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Participant is presented
with a vague stimulus
or situation and asked
to interpret it or tell a
story about what they
see
– Rorschach inkblot test
– Thematic apperception
test (TAT)
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Questionnaires
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Self-report instruments that indicate the extent to
which a person agrees or disagrees with a series of
statements
Rational (face valid) method
– Involves using reason or theory to come up with a
question
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Empirical method
– Focuses on questions that characterize the group the
questionnaire is intended to distinguish
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Bringing It All Together
Making Connections in
Personality: Does
Personality Change
Over Time?
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Does Personality Change
Over Time?
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Typical personality change across the
life span
– According to a meta-analysis
People become steadily more agreeable and
conscientious from adolescence to late
adulthood
 People become more emotionally stable from
adolescence to middle adulthood
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Personality Change from
Adolescence to Late
Adulthood
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Personality Change
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Personality change after changes in
life circumstances
– Parenting
– Brain injury
– Alzheimer’s disease
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