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Chapter 13: Personality
Part 1: 553-564 Part 2: 564-576 Part 3: 576-589
How did McAdams and Pals (by the way, she was my Personality professor at W&M!; 2006) define personality:
What are the two classic theories of personality? How are the more modern theories of psychology different?
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE (554-564)
1: What was Freud’s view of personality and its development?
Describe Freud’s childhood, especially his schooling. What types of problems perplexed Freud?
Exploring the Unconscious
What might explain blindness/deafness?
What was Freud’s original method for tapping into the unconscious? Next method?
To what geological structure does Freud compare the mind? WHY? Describe its parts.
Personality Structure
Describe how Freud believed personality was formed.
ID: By what principle does this work? How does a baby exemplify the id?
EGO: By what principle does this work?
SUPEREGO: What age does this develop? Describe an individual with a strong superego. Weak?
Personality Development
We’ve done ALL of this part already. Make sure you understand all the terms and processes. (i.e., stage of
Oedipus complex, identification, fixation)
Defense Mechanisms
2: How did Freud think people defended themselves against anxiety?
What is the purpose of defense mechanisms?

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For each of the defense mechanisms, describe an example (may be from the book)
1) Repression
Match the following examples to their proper defense mechanism: a) Olivia knows she’s a liar, so she calls everyone else a liar
2) Regression b) Pushing anxiety-arousing thoughts out of consciousness;
Underlies all other mechanisms
3) Reaction Formation
4) Projection c) justifying drinking in order to be sociable d) on the first day of college, Natalie starts sucking her thumb in class
5) Rationalization
6) Displacement
7) Denial e) angry at your boyfriend for not remembering your birthday;
you kick your sister in the shin f) a male feeling inadequate in terms of manliness buys a huge truck g) Nitin received a rejection letter from his number one college, the U
of Pennsylvania, yet still wears around a UPenn sweatshirt insisting
he will attend it, nonetheless.
The Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists
3: Which of Freud’s ideas did his followers accept or reject?
What 4 things do neo-Freudians accept?
What 2 important ways do they differ? a) b)
What was the focus of Adler and Horney’s theories of personality development?
Adler:
Horney:
Jung:
What is the modern version of this general theory now called?
Assessing the Unconscious
4: What are projective tests, and how are they used?
Name 2 of Freud’s ways to assess the unconscious.
Projective Tests
1) TAT (Thematic Apperception Test) – Who developed it? Describe it.
2) Rorschach inkblot test
Comment on this test’s reliability and validity.

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Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective
5: How do contemporary psychologists view Freud and the unconscious?
Describe at least 3 ways in which modern researchers disagree with Freud’s theory. a) b) c)
Is Repression a Myth?
What 3 things has repression been used to explain?
Summarize the status of the research on the legitimacy of repression.
What’s the relationship between stress hormones and memory?
The Modern Unconscious Mind
What was Freud definitely right about? Describe three of the bullets.
Projection is much like what other psych term we learned a long time ago now? HOW? What does
Baumeister contend motivated our defense mechanisms?
What is terror-management theory and what does it lead to?
Freud’s Ideas as Scientific Theory
What is the most serious problem with Freud’s theory? What term that we use to describe looking back at something after-the-fact might be applied to Freud’s theories?
Name 2 ways that Freud’s legacy lives on in the popular culture, despite dying out in the scientific world.
THE HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE (564-567)
6: How did humanistic psychologists view personality, and what was their goal in studying personality?
What decade did this movement happen? WHY?
Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person
How does whom Maslow studied differ from Freud?

Describe a few characteristics of self-actualized people.
Carl Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective
A growth-promoting climate required the following 3 conditions. Describe each. a) Genuine b) Accepting (unconditional positive regard) c) Empathic
What is the central feature of Maslow and Rogers’ theory?
Assessing the Self
7: How did humanistic psychologists assess a person’s sense of self?
Answer this question above.
Why don’t humanistic psychologists like to use standardized assessments?
Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective
8: How has the humanistic perspective influenced psychology? What criticism has it faced?
Cite evidence that most people think humans are inherently good.
Describe the 3 criticisms found on pg. 589.
1)
2)
3)
THE TRAIT PERSPECTIVE (567-576)
9: How do psychologists use traits to describe personality?
What experience did Gordon Allport have that helped him develop his theory? How was Allport’s theory different than Freud’s?
Allport was LESS CONCERNED with ___________ individual traits than with __________ them.
What is the MBTI, who created it, how many questions are on it, and how many people take it a year?
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Exploring Traits
What did Odbert (1936) determine?
Factor Analysis
Describe how this process helped Eysneck and Eysenck develop their theory of personality. What is their theory of personality? You may want to draw the diagram.
Biology and Personality
Explain biological brain differences between extraverts and introverts.
What do Gosling et al. (2003, 2005) report?
Assessing Traits
10: What are personality inventories, and what are their strengths and weaknesses as trait-assessment tools?
What is the classic personality inventory, who created it, and what types of tendencies does it actually assess?
How many scales? Give an example of one of the scales. How does it handle lies?
The Big 5 Factors
11: Which traits seem to provide the most useful information about personality variation?
What are the Big 5? Describe what happens to conscientiousness, agreeableness over time (when/why and direction of change).
What is the heritability of the Big 5?
What predictions can be made:
High conscientious =
Evening Types =
When does martial/sexual satisfaction suffer?
Evaluating Trait Perspective
12: Does research support the consistency of personality traits over time and across situations?
The Person-Situation Controversy
Which side of the controversy makes more sense to you? WHY?
Describe the results of the study described in Fig 13.5.
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Summarize the findings in the bullets:
Music preferences:
Dorm Rooms and Offices:
Personal Web Sites:
E-Mail:
Describe the experiment and results of DePaulo et al. (1992).
Describe Levesque and Kenny’s (1993) experiment and results.
THE SOCIAL-COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE (576-584)
13: In the view of social-cognitive psychologists, what mutual influences shape an individual’s personality?
Who proposed the social-cognitive perspective? What two components interact?
Reciprocal Influences
Describe 2 of the 3 examples of how individuals and environments interact:
Draw the reciprocal determinism triangle (or circle if you like circles better).
Personal Control
14: What are the causes and consequences of personal control?
Internal Versus External Locus of Control
Do you mostly have an external or internal locus of control? Compare internals to externals (Lefcourt,
1982; Ng et al., 2006; Miller et al., 1986).
Depleting and Strengthening Self-Control
What might you be able to do to help lower your risk for depression (Nezlek, 2001)?
Learned Helplessness Versus Personal Control
Describe Seligman’s research.  THIS IS A REALLY MAJOR STUDY AND CONCEPT.
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What types of conditions create positive effects in the workplace? Nursing home?
Is there such a thing as too much freedom? Explain (Schwartz, 2000, 2004)? What term is applied to this situation?
Optimism Versus Pessimism
What is the relationship between grades and optimism?
Optimism and Health
Explain Seligman’s “positive psychology” and the objective of it.
Excessive Optimism
Explain what group this may help in terms of academics.
Blindness to One’s Own Incompetence
What condition helps predict when someone is most incompetent?
What does Dunning (2006) suggest we do to guard against this?
Assessing Behavior in Situations
15: What underlying principles guides social-cognitive psychologists in their assessment of people’s behavior and beliefs?
What is the best predictor of future behavior? What implications should this have for you as you live your life, hopefully planning to succeed in the future?
Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective
16: What has the social-cognitive perspective contributed to the study of personality, and what criticisms has it faced?
What is a criticism of this perspective?
EXPLORING THE SELF (584-589)
17: Are we helped or hindered by high self-esteem?
Describe 2 of your potential selves, your choice of types: a) b)

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Describe the spotlight effect research with Barry Manilow T-Shirts.
The Benefits of Self-Esteem
Describe 3 correlations of having high self-esteem. (If you have A&E HD, watch the show “Intervention,” about drug addicts. Often, the treatment centers include therapy for underlying depression.)
Describe the fuel analogy.
Describe the “effect of low self-esteem” experiments.
Self-Serving Bias
Define it.
Provide examples of the following conclusions recently discovered to be true. a) People accept more responsibility for good deeds than for bad, and for successes than for failures. b) Most people see themselves as better than average.
Which of the bullets have you experienced? Describe the experience (make it up if you can’t think of your own personal example).
What condition tends to correlate with most aggressive children? Who else may be dangerous? Describe Bushman and Baumeister’s (1998) experiment, results, and conclusion (2001).
What did Wilson & Ross (2001) find?
Explain the difference between defensive self-esteem and secure self-esteem.