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Personality
OUTLINE OF RESOURCES
I. Introducing Personality
Introductory Exercise: Fact or Falsehood? (p. 3) Lecture/Discussion Topic: Issues in Personality Theory (p. 4)
Classroom Exercises: Introducing Personality (p. 3)
Your Theory of Personality (p. 4) Video: Psychology: The Human Experience, Module 26: Origins of Personality*
Feature Film: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (p. 3)
II. The Psychoanalytic Perspective
Classroom Exercise: Fifteen Freudian Principle Statements (p. 6)
A. Exploring the Unconscious
Lecture/Discussion Topics: Freudian Slips (p. 7) Freud’s View of Humor (p. 8) The Case of Little Hans (p. 9)
Classroom Exercises: Demonstrating Personality Structure (p. 6) Defense Mechanisms (p. 9) Defense Mechanism
Miniskits (p. 10)
Psychology Video Tool Kit: Personality Structure: Id, Ego, and Superego*
B. The Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Freud’s Legacy and the Neo-Analytic Movement (p. 11)
C. Assessing Unconscious Processes
D. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective
Lecture/Discussion Topics: Unconscious Insights (p. 11)
Terror-Management Theory and the Scrooge Effect (p. 12) Classroom Exercise: The False Consensus Effect (p. 13)
Psychology Video Tool Kit: Repression: Reality or Myth?*
III. The Humanistic Perspective
A. Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Obstacles to Self-Actualization (p. 13)
B. Carl Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective
Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Perceived Self Versus Ideal Self (p. 14) Feature Film: Dead Poets Society—
Burying the True Self (p. 14) Psychology Video Tool Kit: Self-Image: Body Dissatisfaction Among Teenage Girls*
C. Assessing the Self
D. Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective
*Video, ActivePsych, and Psychology Video Tool Kit titles followed by an asterisk are not repeated within the core
resource unit. They are listed, with running times, in the Preface of these resources and described in detail in their
Faculty Guides, which are available at www.worthpublishers.com/mediaroom.
IV. The Trait Perspective
A. Exploring Traits
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Personality Traits of U.S. Presidents (p. 15) Classroom Exercises: Extraversion and
Emotional Stability (p. 14) Shyness (p. 15) Video: Psychology: The Human Experience: Module 29: Personality
Traits* ActivePsych: Scientific American Frontiers Teaching Modules, 3rd ed.: Genes and Personality:
Understanding Williams Syndrome* Psychology Video Tool Kit: Genes and Personality* A Happiness Trait?*
Personality and the Brain*
B. Assessing Traits
Lecture/Discussion Topic: The NEO Personality Inventory (p. 18) Classroom Exercises: Empirically Derived Tests
and the Importance of Cross-Validation (p. 16) Assessing Social Desirability (p. 16) The Self-Monitoring Scale (p.
17) Videos: Psychology: The Human Experience: Module 28: Personality Testing for Career Choice*
C. The Big Five Factors
Lecture/Discussion Topics: Evolution and the Big Five Personality Traits (p. 18) Personality Traits in the
Workplace (p. 21) The Hogan Personality Inventory (p. 21) Classroom Exercise: “Big Five” Inventories (p. 19)
D. Evaluating the Trait Perspective
Lecture/Discussion Topic: The HEXACO Model of Personality Structure (p. 21) Classroom Exercises: The Barnum
Effect (p. 22) Astrology and the Barnum Effect (p. 22)
V. The Social-Cognitive Perspective
Lecture/Discussion Topics: Perceived Efficacy and Acquirable Skills (p. 23) George Kelly’s Personal Construct
Theory (p. 23) Classroom Exercise: Self-Efficacy Scale (p. 23) Video: Psychology: The Human Experience, Module
27: The Social/Cognitive Model*
A. Reciprocal Influences
Feature Film: The Shawshank Redemption and Reciprocal Influences (p. 24)
B. Personal Control
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Locus of Control (p. 24) Classroom Exercises: Satisficers Versus Maximizers (p. 25) The
Life Orientation Test and Optimism (p. 26) Defensive Pessimism (p. 27) PsychSim 5: Helplessly Hoping (p. 26)
Feature Film/Classroom Exercise: Schindler’s List and Personal Control (p. 24)
C. Assessing Behavior in Situations
D. Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective
VI. Exploring the Self
Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Possible Selves (p. 28) Exploring Possible Selves as Roadmaps to the Future
(p. 29)
A. The Benefits of Self-Esteem
Lecture/Discussion Topics: The Dark Side of Self-Esteem (p. 31) The Sociometer Theory of Self-Esteem (p. 32)
Classroom Exercises: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (p. 29) A Single-Item Measure of Self-Esteem (SISE) (p. 29)
Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale (p. 30) Self-Concept Clarity (p. 32)
B. Self-Serving Bias
Classroom Exercises: The Name-Letter Effect (p. 32) Biased Self-Ratings (p. 33) Self-Handicapping (p. 34) Taking
Credit for Success, Denying Responsibility for Failure (p. 34)
C. Culture and the Self
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Individualism Versus Collectivism (p. 36) Classroom Exercises: Assessing
Individualism/Collectivism (p. 35) Independent and Interdependent Selves (p. 35) Feature Film: Antz (p. 34)
UNIT OUTLINE
I. Introducing Personality (pp. 479–480)
Introductory Exercise: Fact or Falsehood?
The correct answers to Handout 10–1, as shown below, can be confirmed on the listed text pages.
1
2
3
4
5
T (p. 556) 6. T (p. 570)
F (p. 560) 7. F (pp. 572–573)
F (p. 561) 8. T (p. 575)
F (p. 561) 9. F (p. 580)
T (p. 567) 10. F (p. 586)
Feature Film: Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
The text uses J. R. R. Tolkien’s character Sam Gamgee, loyal companion to Frodo Baggins, to illustrate the distinctiveness and consistency that define personality. Sam never fails Frodo. He is cheerful, conscientious, optimistic,
and, most notably, loyal. To complement the text description, you may want to show a clip that occurs at the end of
The Fellowship of the Ring, the first in the series. Scene 39 on the DVD, titled “The Road Goes Ever On . . .,”
contains the moving moment in which Frodo leaves by boat for the dreaded land of Mordor. Sam, following at some
distance, pursues Frodo, even though he can’t swim. Sam’s near-drowning ends with the friends clasping hands and
Sam’s statement of allegiance never to leave: “I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. . . .” Scene 39 begins at 2:44 hours.
You can run it for four minutes, or if you prefer, to the end of the scene.
Classroom Exercise: Introducing Personality
John Brink provides an excellent small-group exercise for introducing the topic of personality. Tell your class that
in attempting to understand personality, a good place to start is with ourselves. Have students describe their own
personality by simply answering the question “Who am I?” on a piece of paper. Have them write at the top of the
page “I am . . .” and then number from 1 to 20. Beside each number they should list what they consider to be some
of their own positive and negative personality qualities.
After giving them 5 minutes or so to answer, have them form small groups of four to six students each. Write the
following instructions on the chalkboard:
1
Introduce yourself to the other group members and tell them about your personality.
2
As a group identify the four descriptive terms used most frequently on the exercise. Why do you think these
specific terms were used to describe personality?
3
Identify any of the self-descriptive terms that do not really qualify as personality characteristics. What
makes a personal quality part of your personality?
Brink concludes the exercise by introducing a definition of personality that parallels the one in the text: “Personality
is the organization of enduring behavior patterns that often serve to distinguish us from one another.”
In highlighting important components of this definition, he notes first that personality involves distinctiveness
or uniqueness of character. Thus, understand-ably, personality psychologists study individual differences and
construct tests to measure those differences. Second, personality involves enduring behavior pat-terns, and thus
consistency or predictability of character. We expect people to stay somewhat the same over time. Thus, when we
see an old friend after an absence of several years, we often think, “Yes, it’s the same old Harry.” Finally,
personality involves the organization of individuality. Personality involves an internal coherence or unified
organization of character that embraces the whole person. Personality theorists have argued that an adequate
understanding of behavior demands an integrative understanding of various processes operating within the
individual. In attempting a grand synthesis, personality psychologists easily run the risk of generalizing and
providing speculative analyses. But this is also what makes personality theory exciting. It seeks to address big
questions such as the following: How are mind and body related? Is personality inherited or learned? Do humans
have free will? Is there a self? Is the self-knowable?
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Issues in Personality Theory
B. R. Hergenhahn observes that while other psychologists are concerned with human perception, intelligence,
motivation, or development, personality theorists are in the unique position of studying the entire person. They have
the monumental task of synthesizing the best information from the diverse fields of the discipline into a coherent,
holistic configuration. In the course of their work, personality theorists address fundamental issues of human nature
and individual differences. Duane Schultz has suggested that a theorist’s answers to the following basic questions
define his or her image of human nature.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Free will or determinism? Do we have a conscious awareness and control of ourselves? Are we free to
choose, to be masters of our fate, or are we victims of biological factors, unconscious forces, or external
stimuli?
Nature or nurture? Is our personality determined primarily by the abilities, temperaments, or
predispositions we inherit, or are we shaped more strongly by the environments in which we live?
Past, present, or future? Is personality development basically complete in early childhood? Or is
personality independent of the past, capable of being influenced by events and experiences in the present
and even by future aspirations and goals?
Uniqueness or universality? Is the personality of each individual unique or are there broad personality
patterns that fit large numbers of persons?
Equilibrium or growth? Are we primarily tension-reducing, pleasure-seeking animals or are we motivated
primarily by the need to grow, to reach our full potential to reach for ever-higher levels of self-expression
and development?
Optimism or pessimism? Are human beings basically good or evil? Are we kind and compassionate, or
cruel and merciless?
Hergenhahn, B. R., & Olson, M. H. (2007). An introduc-tion to theories of personality (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Schultz, D., & Schultz, S. (2009). Theories of personality (9th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Classroom Exercise: Your Theory of Personality
In a once-popular text on personality, Charles Potkay and Bem Allen provided a brief questionnaire, Handout 10–2,
that enables students to explore their own personality theory. It serves as a good introduction to Unit 10,
demonstrating that we all have a personal theory of human behavior. It can also be used after Unit 10 has been
discussed. Have students compare their responses with the ideas of the major theorists, as provided by Potkay and
Allen and reprinted on the next page. Not all theorists are covered on every dimension; the authors have included
only theorists whose positions are clearest or most representative of a particular school of thought. The scale uses a
range of 1 to 7, with the theorists listed below 1 closest to the left-hand perspective and those listed under 5 closest
to the right-hand perspective.
II. The Psychoanalytic Perspective (pp. 480–490)
Classroom Exercise: Fifteen Freudian Principle Statements
Marianne Miserandino has designed an exercise to introduce the psychoanalytic perspective, and more specifically
to help students appreciate the impact of Sigmund Freud on modern American culture. In Handout 10–3 students
indicate their degree of agreement or disagreement with 15 statements designed to represent the breadth of Freudian
concepts. The statements are worded so that a Freudian psychologist would strongly agree with 9 and disagree with
6 of them. In scoring their own responses, students should first reverse the numbers they placed in front of
statements 1, 2, 7, 9, 13, and 15. Then, to obtain a total score, they should add the numbers in front of all 15
statements. Scores can range from 15 to 75, with higher scores reflecting greater agreement with a Freudian
perspective.
Miserandino suggests that discussion focus on why students believe as they do. How did they come to accept or
reject these statements? What kinds of evidence should be used to evaluate the truth or falsehood of the statements?
Were some of the statements true in the past but not today? Would people from other cul-tures respond to these
statements differently? Do responses indicate a double standard of acceptable behavior for men and women on
questions about fathers and daughters (statement 8) versus mothers and sons (statement 4) or of dating an older
person (statements 11 and 14)? Finally, can students identify the Freudian concepts and reasoning behind the
statements?
Miserandino provides a brief summary of the basic tenets of Freud’s theory as they relate to Handout 10–3:
—Freud argued that humans are driven by life instincts (e.g., sex) and by death instincts (e.g., aggression).
—If either anxiety or social constraints prevent direct expression of these drives, they will be expressed indirectly or
unconsciously. Freud maintained that the aggressive drive is often sublimated into competition and achievement.
—Dreams and Freudian slips provide two ways of studying unconscious wishes or impulses.
—Individuals pass through a series of psychosexual stages during which id impulses of a sexual nature find a
socially acceptable outlet.
—Unresolved conflicts between id impulses and social restrictions during childhood continue to influence one’s
personality in adulthood.
—People who smoke, overeat, or chew gum presumably have had trouble with feeding and weaning early in the oral
stage.
—Problems with toilet training during the anal stage may lead to the development of anal-expulsive or analretentive personalities in adulthood.
—Problems during the phallic stage may be expressed later in an Oedipus complex in men and in an Electra
complex in women.
Miserandino, M. (1994). Freudian principles in everyday life. Teaching of Psychology, 21, 93–95.
A. Exploring the Unconscious (pp. 480–484)
Classroom Exercise: Demonstrating Personality Structure
Dan J. Segrist provides a very helpful exercise for demonstrating Freud’s view of personality structure. After you
have introduced the id, ego, and superego in class, recruit nine volunteers for the demonstration.
Take them outside the classroom and randomly assign them to one of three groups. Briefly tell each group that it
will play a part of your psyche and give them instructions for id, ego, or superego. Although the scenario involves
being hungry, it can readily be changed to feeling angry at a parent, finding a lost wallet with money in it, or being
in a crowd of customers during a store special sales event and attempting to get a high-demand consumer product
that has been advertised but is in short supply, for example.
ID instructions:
Welcome to my psyche! Your group is going to be my ID! Imagine that I am at a shopping mall and I haven’t eaten for
hours. I am attracted to the savory smells coming from a food booth, but I don’t have any money left. Remember that the ID
is driven by the pleasure principle and seeks to have physical needs met immediately—with no regard for consequences.
Your group’s task is to come up with ideas of what the ID might “say” in this situation.
EGO instructions:
Welcome to my psyche! Your group is going to be my EGO! Imagine that I am at a shopping mall and I haven’t eaten for
hours. I am attracted to the savory smells coming from a food booth, but I don’t have any money left. Remember that the
EGO is governed by the reality prin-ciple and seeks to gratify the id’s impulses in realistic ways that will bring long-term
pleasure rather than pain or destruction. Your group’s task is to come up with ideas of what the EGO might “say” in this
situation.
SUPEREGO instructions:
Welcome to my psyche! Your group is going to be my SUPEREGO! Imagine that I am at a shopping mall and I haven’t
eaten for hours. I am attracted to the savory smells coming from a food booth, but I don’t have any money left. Remember
that the SUPEREGO is the voice of conscience, strives for perfection, and focuses solely on how we ought to behave. Your
group’s task is to come up with ideas of what the SUPEREGO might “say” in this situation.
Tell the groups that they should be prepared to respond to statements from other parts of the psyche. Also tell
the groups (the id group in particular) that their comments have the potential to be offensive to some students. They
should avoid hostile comments.
When you return to the classroom, place each group behind you, corresponding to how “conscious” Freud
considered each structure to be. So, place the id farthest back, behind you on your right. Place the ego immediately
behind you on the left side, and the super-ego behind the ego even farther to the left.
Sit facing the class and announce theatrically, “Here I am at the mall, starving but out of money, and oh . . .
Those hot pretzels smell so good!” The groups then shout out statements according to their psyche role (e.g., id:
“Gotta have one of those pretzels!; superego: “You shouldn’t even be thinking about food! You are broke, and
besides you could stand to lose a few pounds.”; ego: “Go ahead and look. Just don’t touch. You can wait until you
get home to eat.”).
In class discussion, include consideration of the placement of the three structures relative to their levels of
consciousness. You can also include discussion of the defense mechanisms the ego might employ (e.g., denial:
“She’s really not that attractive.”). Ask your class which group was “loudest” or “strongest” and what might that
imply about your personality. For example, if the super-ego is dominant, one might feel anxious or ashamed and
experience little pleasure.
Segrist suggests possible alternatives to this exer-cise, including dividing the entire class into triads in which
each student plays the role of id, ego, or super-ego. Another option is to have each student alternate between the
three structures, discussing which role seems most difficult and why. Students can even create their own scenarios in
which the id, ego, and superego would be in conflict. These various strategies all enable your class to see the id, ego,
and superego in action and provide a better understanding of Freud’s view of personality structure.
Segrist, D. J. (2009). What’s going on in your professor’s head? Demonstrating the id, ego, and superego. Teaching of
Psychology, 36, 51–54. Copyright 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Freudian Slips
The president of the Austrian parliament opens a ses-sion by thundering, “I declare this meeting closed!” In
answering his phone, a preoccupied business executive picks up the receiver and bellows, “Come in.” At a copying
machine, a secretary counts copies: “eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king.” A jogger, just finishing her run, tosses her
shirt into the toilet instead of the laundry hamper.
Freud believed that such slips were motivated by unconscious conflicts. A hidden motive could presum-ably be
found for even the most innocuous mistake if it were investigated with psychoanalytic methods. “The Austrian
president,” wrote Freud, “secretly wished he was already in a position to close the meeting from which little good
was to be expected.”
Today’s cognitive psychologists favor a more parsi-monious explanation for the slips that are part of every-day life.
They argue that they are a natural by-product of how our minds process information and direct action. For example,
the single most common type of slip seems to involve the intrusion of a strong habit. An activity that is more
familiar, is more frequent, or has been recently performed interferes with the intended behavior. The secretary at the
copy machine had recent-ly been playing cards.
Psychologist Donald Norman calls this kind of mistake a “capture error.” Norman states: “Pass too near a wellformed habit and it will capture your behavior.” If the habit is strong enough, even cues that only par-tially match
the situation in which it usually occurs are likely to activate it. Norman cites William James’ report of the
absentminded person who went to the bedroom to dress for dinner but instead put on his pajamas and got into bed.
Most actions, argues Norman, are carried out auto-matically, by subconscious mechanisms. At a conscious level we
make a general selection, but the actual execu-tion of the intended act occurs without further reflec-tion. Such
“mental laziness” is typically beneficial, for it permits us to save our mental resources for more important things.
Occasionally, however, we may forget whether we have performed the action, as is evident in this psychologist’s
report: “As I was leaving the bath-room this morning, it suddenly struck me that I couldn’t remember whether or not
I had shaved. I had to feel my chin to establish that I had.”
Attention is the critical factor in preventing slips. When attention lags, a competing response is more like-ly to
replace the intended one. Sometimes the compo-nents of an action may become “misblended,” as when indecision
about whether to say “momentary” or “instantaneous” produces “momentaneous.” Or Norman gives an example
many of us can identify with: We decide not to take another bite of a delicious but calorie-laden cake but, after a
brief lapse, the cake somehow is eaten anyway!
Jerry Burger notes the inherent difficulty of studying Freudian slips experimentally. They occur when we least
expect them and research participants could talk a long time without ever making one. However, researchers have
developed ingenious ways of circum-venting the problem. For example, male college students in one study were
asked to complete some innocent-looking sentences either in the presence of an attractive and scantily clad female
experimenter or with a male experimenter. According to Freud, which group would make more slips of the tongue?
When complet-ing sentences such as “With the telescope, the details of the distant landscape were easy to . . . .”
those in the female-experimenter group were more likely to say “make out” than were other participants. For the
sen-tence, “The lid won’t stay on regardless of how much I . . .” the same men were more likely to respond with
“screw it.” In a second study, males were asked to read quickly presented word pairs. Those in the presence of the
female were more likely to read “bine-foddy” as “fine body” and “lood-gegs” as “good legs.”
As Burger indicates, these findings may be used to support Freudian theory. However, other interpretations are
clearly possible. For example, linguists would be likely to explain these slips in terms of cognitive con-nections and
the activation of linguistic pathways. That is, the salience of sexuality in these situations activates our memory of
sexually related information. They pre-pare a kind of cognitive pathway between the beginning of the sentence and
the double-entendre word, making selection of the sexually related word more likely.
Burger, J. (2007). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Norman, D. A. (1980, April). Post-Freudian slips. Psychology Today, 42–50.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Freud’s View of Humor
The text notes that Freud viewed jokes as expressions of repressed sexual and aggressive tendencies. Was he right?
It’s a fascinating classroom topic.
For example, researchers have found that aggres-sive humor never disappears. It seems particularly pop-ular
among adolescents but no age group is exempt. In Freud’s day, “marriage broker” jokes were popular. They always
began with a young man visiting a broker to arrange a marriage with a young woman. For exam-ple, Freud relates
the following:
The bridegroom was most disagreeably surprised when the bride was introduced to him, and drew the broker to the side
and whispered his remonstrances: “She’s ugly and old, she squints and has bad teeth and bleary eyes….” “You needn’t
lower your voice,” interrupted the broker, “she’s deaf as well.”
Most people groan, half-smile, and follow it with a complaint about the joke being in bad taste. Nonethe-less, the
jokes are passed on and remain popular.
Freud analyzed such humor in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Although he fully recog-nized that
jokes could take different forms, he was most interested in tendentious humor, which presumably brought insight
into the unconscious of the joke teller as well as the listener who laughs. Tendentious jokes, maintained Freud, deal
with hostility and sex.
For Freud, “marriage broker” jokes allow the expression of impulses normally kept in check. Our egos and
superegos typically prevent attacks on others. Aggressive jokes allow us to express our hostile impuls-es in a
socially appropriate manner. Who could object to an innocent and harmless joke? Freud wrote, “By making our
enemy small, inferior, despicable, or comic, we achieve in a roundabout way the enjoyment of over-coming him.”
Similarly, jokes on sexual topics provide a socially appropriate outlet for our sexual impulses. Jerry Burger shares
his experience of normally conservative and proper people who would never bring up the topic of sex in public yet
feel comfortable dealing with the taboo topic by repeating a joke “someone told me.” Researchers have found that
sexual jokes provide adolescent girls with a way to introduce embarrassing top-ics into their lunchtime
conversations.
Freud observed that laughter following a tenden-tious joke is rarely justified by the content of the joke itself. We
laugh not because the joke is funny but as a form of tension reduction, or catharsis. The description of aggressive or
sexual behavior creates tension at the beginning of the joke. The punch line releases that ten-sion. We experience
pleasure from the jokes not because they are clever or witty but because they reduce anxiety. “Strictly speaking,”
concluded Freud, “we do not know what we are laughing at. The technique of such jokes is often quite wretched, but
they have immense success in provoking laughter.”
Contemporary research indicates that people often find jokes and cartoons funnier when they contain sexu-al or
aggressive themes. We also enjoy hostile humor more when it is aimed at someone we dislike. Several studies also
indicate that laughter can be an effective means to combat daily tension and stressful events. One alternative
explanation is that humor is often a response to incongruity. That is, it results from an inconsistency between what
we expect in a situation and what hap-pens in the joke. According to this analysis, people may find sexual and
aggressive humor funny simply because sex and aggression are out of place in the joke setting.
Burger, J. (2007). Personality (7th ed). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Freud, S. (1886–1936/1964). The complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vols. 1–24). London:
Hogarth.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Case of Little Hans
Charles Potkay and Bem Allen describe Freud’s case study of Little Hans as the cornerstone of Freud’s ideas about
the Oedipus complex. Five-year-old Hans was afraid to leave his house because of an irrational fear that a horse
would bite him. Hans developed the fear after having seen a horse fall down in the street. Freud believed that the
real target of Hans’ fear was something else; through displacement Hans’s unconscious anxiety had merely been
redirected from its original source onto horses. Freud suggested that Hans was actually afraid of his erotic feelings
toward his mother and aggressive wishes toward his father. He supported his hypothesis with the following
observations.
1. Hans has said he wanted to sleep with his mother, “coax with” or caress her, be married to her, and have children
“just like daddy.”
2. Hans experienced castration anxiety. His parents warned that if he continued to play with his “widdler” (penis), it
would be cut off. He noticed that his sister had no “widdler.”
3. Hans wanted his mother all to himself, was jealous of his father, and feared his mother would prefer his father’s
bigger widdler, which was “like a horse.”
4. Hans was most afraid of horses with black muzzles, similar to his father’s black moustache. Hans had
“accidentally” knocked a statue of a horse from its stand. When he saw a real horse fall down, he recognized his
own aggressive impulse that his father fall down and die, an idea that frightened him and that he could not
consciously acknowledge. Horses, then, were symbolic substitutes for Hans’s father, whom he both feared and
hated.
5. Through psychoanalysis, the unconscious was made conscious. Hans’s fears were brought into the open and he
achieved insight. Freud observed, “Hans was really a little Oedipus who wanted to have his father ‘out of the way,’
to get rid of him, so that he might be alone with his handsome mother and sleep with her.”
Potkay, C. R., & Allen, B. P. (1986). Personality: Theory, research and application. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Classroom Exercise: Defense Mechanisms
Handout 10–4 allows students to apply their understanding of most of the major defense mechanisms described in
the text: repression, regression, reaction formation, rationalization, displacement, sublimation, and projection. The
exercise will help them move from the abstract to the concrete and to recognize the operation of these defenses in
everyday behavior. After students have read the text material and you have briefly reviewed the general form each
defense mechanism takes, distribute the handout, asking students to work individually or in small groups. Correct
answers (students may suggest other possibilities) are given below, using the following key.
Key:
A. Repression
B. Regression
C. Reaction Formation
F. Sublimation
E. Displacement
F. Sublimation
G. Projection
1. E
2. A
3. C
4. G
5. F
6. D
7. E
8. F
9. B
10. A
11. C
12. E
13. G
14. D
15. B
16. F
17. A
18. C
19. D
20. B
21. E
22. A
23. F
24. G
25. D
26. C
27. G
28. F
29. C
30. B
31. D
32. G
33. B
34. E
35. A
Classroom Exercise: Defense Mechanism Miniskits
Mary Inman of Hope College uses miniskits to provide students with the opportunity to apply their
understand-ing of the major defense mechanisms. Your class is certain to find her exercise both helpful and
enjoyable.
Prepare copies of the dialogues below and solicit pairs of volunteers to enact the skits for the rest of the
class. Give the actors a minute or two to review the scenarios before presenting (reading) them to their
class-mates. After each dialogue, ask your students what defense mechanism was illustrated. Also ask
your class why they gave that answer. Correct answers are the following:
1. Regression; 2. Displacement; 3. Sublimation; 4. Reaction Formation; 5. Rationalization; 6. Repression;
7. Projection; 8. Rationalization; 9. Sublimation
Skit 1 (Two friends)
(coll) college student
(hs) senior in high school
(hs: knock on the door of college friend)
coll: (Answers. Surprised to see #2 very happy)
coll: Come in! Welcome to college
hs: What’s college like?
coll: I love it. I’m so independent. I have my own checkbook, car, I do what I want. I can skip class if I want.
I’m my own boss. I call the shots. I feel so mature.
hs: That’s cool. I’d like to stay the weekend if that’s OK.
coll: Sure!
hs: By the way, do you have that $50 you owe me? I won’t be able to go to the prom without it. I need it
now.
coll: (Hostile) I can’t believe you demand this out of the blue! I don’t have it.
hs: Well, I want it now. You are so irresponsible. I’m leaving! (Storms out)
coll: (Whines, pouts, picks up the phone and calls mom for help and advice, looking for comfort, sucks
thumb if necessary.) Hi, Mommy, it is so nice to hear your voice. You won’t believe what Jane/John
Smith just did. (Whining) He/she just showed up out of the blue and demanded money from me. I
miss you so much. Could you give me advice like you always used to? (pause) I miss the days when
you would take care of me.
Skit 2 (One person)
Act like you are a top baseball player. You are up to bat. Twice you swing and miss (two strikes). The third is
an easy pitch. Again you swing and strike out. When this happens you throw the bat, kick the dirt, and yell at
the umpire with all your might.
Skit 3 (Two friends, one returning from the Iraqi War)
Person
1:
Person
2:
(friend): Welcome back, buddy! I hear you
have been back from the Gulf War for
about a month. I heard there was a lot of
violence over there. What are you doing
with yourself now?
(War vet): (Enthusiastically) I had a good
time in Iraq. Now, I’m working as a police
officer in the dangerous upper side of
town.
Skit 4 (One person: male)
(You have a strong attraction toward women but you will become a woman hater.)
(call up a friend on the phone)
male: Hi, Bill. This is Kevin. What are you doing? Oh, you have Shelly there. Yeah, aren’t women great? It
would be nice to have a relationship. (pause) Oh, you ask how my date went with Kathy? Well, (pause) you
know, I was looking forward to going out with her. She did not take to me too well.
Now, I figure . . . What’s the use. You know the phrase: Women, you can’t live with them and you can’t shoot
them. I have decided, who needs women?—they are the cause for many of our society's problems.
Skit 5 (Two friends at a bar: John, who is a habitual drinker, and Tim, his friend)
John is sitting at the bar drinking. Tim approaches. Tim: Hey, John. How long have you been sitting here?
John: All day. (guzzling beer) Tim: Hey, don’t you think you had enough? You
have been drinking a lot every day for several months.
John: Don’t worry. I really don’t like the taste of alcohol. I’m just drinking to hang out and be sociable.
Skit 6 (Two people: an interviewer (I) and a concen-tration camp survivor (Eisel))
I:
I’m talking with Eisel who lived in Auschwitz concentration camp for two months when she was 15
years old. Tell me, Eisel, what was it like in the camp?
Eisel: I really don’t remember. I recall the police taking us to the trains and the next thing I knew, we were
being released.
Skit 7 (Two people: an employee and boss)
Employee: (Works at a store and shows temptation to steal some of the merchandise.)
Another day at Best Buy. (Look around making sure no one is watching. Start dusting an iPod.) Boy, this
iPod looks mighty fine. It would go great in my room, with that big TV over there. (You spot the boss and go
back to work. Then you go over to the boss, a little nervous, and start a conversation).
Employee: Hello, Mr. Biggs. I must say you are running a great store here. (pause, show nervousness) I
must tell you something though. I think that other employees are stealing from you. I’ve seen
a few of them looking hungrily at the iPods and television sets.
Boss:
Why, thank you, Peters, I’ll keep a close look out.
Skit 8 (Two students after a test)
Student 1 (noncheater):
Student 2 (cheater):
Student 1: (rolls eyes).
Boy, that was a hard test.
Don’t you agree? In fact, I saw
you peeking at Kim’s answers.
Yeah, I cheated, but I think
cheating is legitimate with an
unfair test like this one.
Yeah, whatever.
Skit 9 (Two females: a concerned mother and her friend)
Kim:
Hi, Becky. I am really worried about my son, Johnny. He pulls wings off flies and jabs pins in the
dog.
Becky: Don’t worry. His pulling wings off flies is a good sign that he might become a dentist (pause) and his
pleasure in sticking animals could be useful if he becomes a nurse.
B. The Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists (pp. 484–485)
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Freud’s Legacy and the Neo-Analytic Movement
In reflecting on Sigmund Freud’s legacy, Drew Westen begins, “Freud, like Elvis, has been dead for a
number of years but continues to be cited with some regularity.” Westen notes that “Many aspects of
Freudian theory are indeed out of date, and they should be: Freud died in 1939, and he has been slow to
undertake further revisions. His critics, however, are equally behind the times, attacking Freudian views of
the 1920s as if they continue to have some currency in their original form. Psychodynamic theory and
therapy have evolved considerably since 1939 when Freud’s bearded countenance was last sighted in
earnest.”
Westen argues that contemporary psychoanalysts and psychodynamic theorists no longer write about
ids and egos or view psychotherapy as the search for lost memories. However, they do embrace the
following five core postulates, which in large measure reflect Freud’s enduring contributions to the
understanding of human personality.
1
The most central proposition is that much of mental life—thoughts, feelings, and motives—is
unconscious. This means that people show behavior pat-terns and develop symptoms that are inexplicable
to themselves.
2
Mental processes, including affective and motivational processes, operate in parallel, so that
individuals can have conflicting feelings toward the same person or situation. These conflicting feelings
motivate them to act in opposing ways and often lead to compromise solutions.
3
Stable personality patterns start to form in earl childhood, and people’s early experiences play a
significant role in personality development, especially in the ways they form later social relationships.
4
Mental representations or understandings of the self, others, and relationships guide people’s social
interactions and influence the ways in which they develop psychological symptoms.
5
Personality development involves more than learn-ing to regulate sexual and aggressive impulses.
It requires moving from immature, social dependence to mature independence.
Westen, D. (1998). The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psycholog-ical
science. Psychological Bulletin, 124, 333–371.
C. Assessing Unconscious Processes (pp. 485–486)
D. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective (pp. 487–490)
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Unconscious Insights
Robert Siegler asks the following intriguing questions: Do our insights occur at an unconscious (i.e.,
nonreportable) level before they occur consciously? Do our insights arise suddenly or gradually? The
questions have been difficult to address empirically simply because we cannot know that people have an
insight until they tell us.
Working with Elsbeth Stern, Siegler found a way to obtain independent measures of conscious and
uncon-scious insights and thus to examine the relation between them. On an inversion problem of the form A
+ B – B (e.g., 18 + 24 – 24), the answer is always A. Such a problem can be solved in either an insightful or a
com-putational way. In addition to allowing both insightful and noninsightful solutions, the inversion task has
the unusual property of allowing independent measurement of conscious insight through verbal report and
uncon-scious insight through solution time. (Insightful solution times are significantly shorter.)
Previous research has indicated that young school-age children are quite accurate in reporting their
arithmetic strategies. Thus, they were involved in testing the unconscious activation hypothesis, namely,
that people first use a strategy unconsciously and then, as the activation increases they become conscious
of using the strategy. In short, the unconscious shortcut emerges before the conscious version of the
strategy.
Siegler and Stern created two experimental conditions. In the blocked-problems condition, children were
presented only problems that could be solved by the inversion principle. In the mixed-problems condition,
half the problems could be solved by the shortcut strategy. On the basis of the unconscious activation
hypothesis, the researchers predicted that presenting inversion problems on all trials would lead children to
activate the shortcut more rapidly, which in turn would lead to (a) more rapid discovery of the shortcut
strategy (discovery after fewer inversion problems), (b) a shorter gap between discovery of the unconscious
shortcut (short solution time but nonreport of strategy) and conscious (short solution time and report of
strategy) discovery of the shortcut, (c) more consistent use of the shortcut on inversion problems once it was
discovered, and (d) greater generalization of the strategy to novel problems.
Working with 31 German second graders, the researchers found support for each of their predictions.
Almost 90 percent of the children discovered the unconscious version of the shortcut before the conscious
version. Moreover, relative to the children in the mixed-problems condition, children in the blocked-problems
condition discovered both the unconscious-shortcut and shortcut strategies after seeing fewer inversion
problems, they exhibited a shorter gap between discovery of the two strategies, they used the strategies
more often once they discovered them, and they generalized the strategies more widely to novel types of
problems. Interestingly, results in the blocked-problems condition indicated that just before their first use of
the unconscious shortcut, all the children used the computational strategy. After their initial use of the
unconscious short-cut, most of them continued to use the unconscious shortcut over the next three trials. By
the fourth trial, half the children reported using the shortcut. By the fifth trial, 80 percent of the children did so.
Results indicated that insights are not always conscious. Furthermore, insights are abrupt in one sense
but gradual in another. The dramatic reduction in solution times that accompanied the first use of the
unconscious shortcut indicated insight was abrupt. On the other hand, insight was gradual in that children
initially discovered the strategy in a nonreportable form and only later became able to report using it.
Unit 3B of these resources provides examples of unconscious adult insights, including the role of the
unconscious in decision making and evaluative judgment. If you did not use the Lecture/Discussion topics
“’Deliberation-Without-Attention Effect” or “Psychological Distance and Evaluative Judgment” earlier, you
may want to do so now.
Siegler, R. (2000). Unconscious insights. Contemporary Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 79–83.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Terror-Management Theory and the Scrooge Effect
As noted in the text, research on terror-management theory indicates that thinking about one’s mortality
provokes enough anxiety to intensify prejudices. Findings suggest that death anxiety motivates contempt
for others and esteem for oneself. All of this points to a rather bleak picture regarding the effect of mortality
salience (our awareness of our personal mortality).
However, as Jeff Joireman and Blythe Duell have noted, other studies suggest that thinking about one’s
death has a silver lining. For example, mortality salience seems to lead people to contribute more money to
ingroup charities, a result that has been dubbed the Scrooge effect (after, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge in
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol).
Because mortality salience increased contributions to ingroup but not outgroup charities, Joireman and
Duell wondered whether the Scrooge effect reflected a strengthening of ingroup bias or a fundamental shift
toward a more prosocial orientation. In an effort to answer that question, they examined how mortality
salience and preexisting individual differences in social value orientation (“proselfs” value their own wellbeing, “prosocials” value others’ well-being) jointly influence the importance that people assign to selftranscendent values (benevolence and universalism) versus self-enhancement values (power,
achievement, hedonism).
The researchers reasoned that thinking about one’s death might make proselfs but not prosocials more
likely to endorse self-transcendent values (i.e., the Ebenezer Scrooge hypothesis). This hypothesis assumes
that both prosocials and proselfs share the common worldview that prosocial values and behavior are good.
However, when that worldview is made salient, proselfs are reminded that they are not living up to those
values; prosocials already live up to the worldview, so they will remain unaffected. Another possible
explanation is that mortality salience will exaggerate preexisting differences between prosocials and proselfs
because they hold very different worldviews, with the former emphasizing the importance of morality and the
latter the importance of power. Still a final possibility is that both prosocial and proselfs will show an increase
in self-transcendent values.
In initial experiments, proselfs were less likely than prosocials to endorse self-transcendent values in a
den-tal pain-control condition but were indistinguishable from prosocials in a mortality salience condition as
pro-selfs increased their endorsement of self-transcendent values. This was consistent with the Ebenezer
Scrooge hypothesis. Subsequent studies, however, indicated that proselfs did not transform into prosocials
as a result of mortality salience if they were given reasons to disidentify with self-transcendent values and
behavior or to identify with self-enhancement values. (In effect, they read an unfavorable story about a
prosocial person or a favorable story about a proself person before thinking about death.)
Joireman and Duell conclude that their first hypothesis is correct, that at a fundamental level pros-elfs
and prosocials share a common cultural worldview that prosocial values and behavior are good and that
proselfs believe they fall short of meeting the standards of that worldview. Thus, mortality salience
transforms Ebenezer Scrooges into being more prosocial but does not have the same effect on the Mother
Teresas of the world, who already are inclined to be prosocial. At the same time, it does not seem difficult to
eliminate the Scrooge effect. This is consistent with other studies that have found that mortality salience does
not increase ingroup bias when people are given reasons to disiden-tify with their ingroup.
Joireman, J., & Duell, B. (2005). Mother Teresa versus Ebenezer Scrooge: Mortality salience leads proselfs to
endorse self-transcendent values (unless proselfs are reassured). Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31,
307–320.
Classroom Exercise: The False Consensus Effect
Mary E. Kite provides a brief yet effective classroom demonstration of the false consensus effect. Present
stu-dents with an opinion—for example, “Barack Obama is a good president,” or “I like David Letterman,”
and ask them to indicate their degree of agreement on a scale ranging from (1) strongly agree to (5) strongly
disagree. (To simplify, you could use a yes-no format.) Also ask students to estimate the percentage of
people in the class that they believe share their opinion. By a show of hands, ask how many selected each
response and record the number on the board. After computing the percent-age of students choosing each
option, have students indicate by a show of hands whether they overestimated the number of people in
agreement with them. Kite reports that in her classes at least 60 percent of students overestimated the
commonality of their opinions.
Note that research indicates that the false consen-sus effect seems to hold across reference groups
(e.g., friends in school versus all students in general) and issues (e.g., preferred type of bread or preferred
presi-dential candidate). However, the strongest false consen-sus effects emerge with factual information
or political expectations (e.g., future use of nuclear weapons, out-come of presidential elections). Some
have suggested that the bias may reflect people’s tendency to overesti-mate the probability of events
easily brought to mind (the availability heuristic). Ask students what might be some costs and benefits of a
false consensus for indi-viduals and society. Finally, ask them whether having others agree with us makes
our opinions “correct.”
Kite, M. (1991). Observer biases in the classroom. Teaching of Psychology, 18, 161–164.
III. The Humanistic Perspective (pp. 490–493)
A. Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person
(p. 491)
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Obstacles to Self-Actualization
If the tendency toward self-actualization is innate, why are not more adults self-actualized? Maslow
estimated that only one percent are. He offered four basic explanations for this low number.
1
Self-actualization is at the top of the motivational hierarchy. This makes it the weakest of all needs
and the most easily impeded. He wrote, “This inner nature is not strong and overpowering and unmis-takable
like the instincts of animals. It is weak and delicate and subtle and easily overcome by habit, cultural
pressure, and wrong attitudes toward it.”
2
Maslow identified the Jonah complex as another obstacle to self-actualization. We fear and doubt
our own abilities and potentialities. To become self-actualized, one must have enough courage to sacri-fice
safety for personal growth. Too often, fear takes precedence over the challenge of self-actualization.
3
The cultural environment may also stifle self-actualization by imposing certain norms on major
segments of the population. Definitions of “manli-ness” may prevent the male child from developing traits
such as sympathy, kindness, and tenderness, all of which characterize the self-actualized person.
4
Childhood experiences may inhibit personal growth. Maslow observed that children from warm,
secure, friendly homes are more likely to choose experiences that lead to personal growth. Excessive
control and coddling is obviously harmful but so is excessive permissiveness. Too much freedom in
childhood can lead to anxiety and insecurity, which can prevent further growth. Maslow called for “freedom
within limits” in which there is the right mixture of permissiveness and regulation.
Hergenhahn, B., & Olson, M. (2007). An introduction to theories of personality (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
B. Carl Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective (pp. 491–492)
Feature Film: Dead Poets Society—Burying the True
Self (14 minutes) Dead Poets Society, an older film students are sure to appreciate, and readily available on
DVD, provides a good opportunity to explore some of the central themes of the humanistic perspective.
Robin Williams portrays English professor John Keating, who inspires students to find and express their true
selves. He tries to provide a growth-promoting environment through genuineness, acceptance, and
empathy. Like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers, Keating obviously recognizes the human
need for self-actualization.
At the same time, his school promotes conformity and his students’ parents, in imposing their own
dreams for their children, inhibit their sons’ growth. They bury their children’s true selves. One of the most
moving scenes comes 93 minutes into the film and runs approx-imately 14:30 minutes. Students who have
wrestled with parental expectations will clearly identify with Neal Perry. Set the scene for your class by
describing how, inspired by Keating, Neal is for the first time ful-filling his dream to be an actor. He does so
despite his father’s strong objections and expectation that his son will become a doctor. The clip begins with
Neal’s extraordinarily well-received performance in a commu-nity play. Clearly, Neal relishes his role as
actor; he has found his true self. However, midway through the play his father unexpectedly appears in the
audience. His strong disapproval is obvious. Taking his son away immediately after the play, he delivers a
tongue-lashing. He announces that Neal will be transferring to a mili-tary school. Initially protesting, Neal
succumbs. Asked by his father what he’s feeling, he finally responds, “Nothing.” He buries his true self. The
scene concludes tragically. During the night, Neal commits suicide.
Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Perceived Self Versus Ideal Self
Patricia Jarvis, Cynthia Nordstrom, and Karen Williams suggest a useful classroom exercise to highlight the
dis-tinction between the perceived self and the ideal self. As the text indicates, Carl Rogers suggests that if
our self-concept is negative, that is, if we fall far short of our ideal self, we feel dissatisfied and unhappy. It
fol-lows that parents, teachers, and friends should help oth-ers know, accept, and be true to themselves.
Distribute two sheets of paper and have your stu-dents label the first sheet “Perceived Self.” Give them
10 minutes or so to write a description of how they see themselves. Giving them some examples of how you
yourself might begin such an essay will help them get started.
After the allotted time, have them label the second sheet “Ideal Self.” Tell them they have some
“fantasy” time to describe who they would like to be. Again give them 10 minutes or so to write.
Begin the discussion by asking your class if anyone wrote the same thing on both pages. Probably no
one has described the perceived and ideal selves in the same way. Note that from a humanistic perspective,
a fully functioning, self-actualized person finds the perceived self as completely congruent with the ideal self.
Ask volunteers to indicate what might account for the discrepancies or incongruence. Why is there not
complete overlap? Among the possible answers might be that people, particularly young people, are
growing or maturing, or that most people have not yet achieved all the goals that parents or teachers have
set for them.
From a humanistic perspective, self-actualization includes the process of completely knowing and
accepting ourselves. So, our major challenge is to achieve congruence between who we think we are
(description 1), who we really are, and who we want to be (description 2).
Jarvis, P. A., Nordstrom, C. R., & Williams, K. B. (2001). In-class activities manual for instructors of intro-ductory
psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
C. Assessing the Self (p. 492)
D. Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective (pp. 492–493)
IV. The Trait Perspective (pp. 493–503)
A. Exploring Traits (pp. 494–496)
Classroom Exercise: Extraversion and Emotional Stability
The text reports that Hans and Sybil Eysenck believe that we can reduce many of our individual variations to
two or three genetically influenced dimensions, includ-ing extraversion–introversion and emotional stability–
instability (also called neuroticism). Analysis of the answers to specific questions given by people around the
world have found that these two factors inevitably emerge as basic personal\ity dimensions. A scale to
assess these two personality factors is provided in Unit 11 (see “The Factor Analysis Approach”); you may
pre-fer to use it now rather than with Unit 11.
Each factor represents a continuous, normally dis-tributed range between polar opposites. Each
respon-dent can be placed somewhere along the line between extreme introvert and extreme extravert or
between per-fect emotional stability and complete emotional chaos. Most people fall somewhere near the
middle.
The third underlying aspect of personality, which is not identified in the text, is psychoticism. Playing a
somewhat smaller role in personality than the first two factors, psychoticism is not a dimension with polar
opposites. Rather, it is an ingredient that is present to varying degrees in individual personalities. Psychot icism is characterized by 11 dispositions: solitary (not caring for people); troublesome or not fitting in; cruel;
lacks feeling; sensation seeking; aggressive; likes odd, unusual things; disregards danger; likes to make
fools of other people, upsetting them; opposes accepted social customs; engages in little personal
interaction— for example, prefers “impersonal sex.”
Liebert, R., & Spiegler, M. (1998). Personality: Strategies and issues (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA:
Brooks/Cole.
Classroom Exercise: Shyness
You can extend a discussion of the trait perspective by introducing shyness, a trait that 80 percent of
Americans claim to have possessed at some time and that 40 percent say continues to cause problems.
Indeed, some celebrities have considered themselves to be shy, including David Letterman and Garrison
Keillor.
What is shyness? One model suggests that it con-sists of a cognitive component (acute public selfconsciousness, self-deprecating thoughts, and worries over a negative evaluation), a physiological
component (heart pounding, upset stomach, and sweating), and a behavioral component (social
incompetence, reticence, and inhibition). Jonathan Cheek reports that shy people suffer most from
interactions with strangers, particular-ly those of the opposite sex. Shy people also typically feel more
responsible for failure than for success, they remember mostly negative information about them-selves, and
they have a low expectancy for social success.
Neuroscientists suggest that shy persons may have a more reactive amygdala (the part of the limbic
system associated with fear). For example, Carl Schwartz and his colleagues found that adults who had
been assessed as shy in early childhood showed a greater fMRI response within the amygdala to novel
versus familiar faces, compared with “nonshy” adults. Jacqueline Bruce’s research team examined levels of
the stress hor-mone cortisol (see Unit 8B) in first-graders during the first week of school. They found that, in
contrast to their nonshy counterparts, shy first graders showed an elevated cortisol level continuing into the
fifth day.
Jules Asher’s review examines the interaction of biology and environment in shyness. Some infants
show a strong physiological response to even mildly stressful situations and seem inherently inhibited.
Others do not become shy until early adolescence, perhaps because their parents are socially anxious and
provide models of shyness. Even the temperamentally shy, however, can be helped through good parenting
and, if necessary, psychotherapy.
Handout 10–5, the Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale, can be used to test students for this trait.
Reverse the scores for items 3, 6, 9, and 12 (5 = 1, 4 = 2, 2 = 4, and 1 = 5). Cheek and Buss report a mean
score of 36 for students. Keep the handouts anonymous; the shy students will naturally be embarrassed.
Asher, J. (1987, April). Born to be shy? Psychology
Today, 56–64.
Bruce, J., Davis, E. P., & Gunnar, M. R. (2002).
Individual differences in children’s cortisol response to
the beginning of a new school year. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 27, 635–650.
Cheek, J. M., & Buss, A. H. (1981). Shyness and socia-bility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41,
330–339.
Cheek, J. M., & Melchior, L. A. (1990). Shyness, self-esteem, and self-consciousness. In H. Leitenberg (Ed.),
Handbook of social and evaluation anxiety (pp. 47–82). New York: Plenum.
Schwartz, C. E., Wright, C. I., Shin, L. M., Kagan, J., & Rauch, S. L. (2003). Inhibited and uninhibited infants
“grown up”: Adult amygdalar response to novelty. Science, 300, 1952–1953.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Personality Traits of U.S. Presidents
Steven J. Rubenzer and his colleagues have provided an interesting analysis of the personality traits of past
U.S. presidents. The researchers asked 115 biographers, his-torians, and political scientists to help them
rate the presidents on detailed personality trait scales in the five years before they took office. Rubenzer and
his col-leagues were particularly interested in the qualities linked to successful presidential job performance
(rat-ings of success were obtained from hundreds of historians).
The researchers reported that “openness to experi-ence” produced the highest correlation with
historian’s ratings of greatness. The best performers could learn as they went along. Being an extravert,
assertive, and achievement-oriented were also strongly associated with success. On the other hand, being
agreeable was not. That is, being cooperative and easily led did not mesh with greatness. Being
straightforward was not predic-tive of greatness. In fact, a tendency to tell the truth, suggests Rubenzer, can
actually harm a president’s shot at being considered historically “great.” Finally, “ten-dermindedness” is
predictive of effectiveness. Great presidents “know it’s all about feelings,” argued Rubenezer, “theirs and
the voters’.”
Other interesting findings:
In general, the historians rated all the presidents as far less “straightforward” than typical citizens.
Presidents scored only at the fifteenth percentile. Among those scoring lowest on being honest were
Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lincoln seemed to soften his position on slavery in an attempt
to keep the country unified.
Over time, presidents have become more extravert-ed but less curious and creative.
Washington was at the top of the class at being conscientious but ranked lower than today’s average
American in openness, extraversion, and agreeableness.
Lincoln was moderately extraverted, agreeable, and conscientious. But, unlike other successful
presi-dents, he was neurotic, occasionally suffering bouts of deep despair.
Being a bit disorganized, like Lincoln, was also an asset. Tidiness was not.
Openness to experience overlaps with intelligence, because one must be intelligent to appreciate
new experiences. Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson scored high on both.
Jimmy Carter had two fatal flaws: a lack of assertiveness and a tendency to be straightforward.
Dingfelder, S. F. (2004, November). A presidential per-sonality. Monitor on Psychology, 26–28.
Rubenzer, S., Ones, D. S., & Faschingbauer, T. (2000, August). Personality traits of U.S. presidents. Paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.
B. Assessing Traits (pp. 496–497)
Classroom Exercise: Empirically Derived Tests and the
Importance of Cross-Validation An inventory is empirically derived by testing a large pool of items and then
selecting those that are found to differentiate particular groups. For example, Alfred Binet developed the first
intelligence test by selecting items that successfully discriminated children who were and were not
progressing in Paris schools.
When the original pool contains a large number of items, there is the real possibility that some will distin
-guish between the criterion groups by chance alone. To deal with this problem, the researcher must
administer the test again with a new sample of participants. This cross-validation is a crucial step because an
item is not likely to distinguish between both groups on a chance basis. Any item that does discriminate twice
is likely to be a valid item.
W. S. Blumenfeld demonstrated the importance of the cross-validation process by using Art
Buchwald’s amusing North Dakota Null-Hypothesis Brain Inventory, adapted for Handout 10–6, as his item
pool.
Distribute the test and have students complete it. Blumenfeld attempted to determine whether the items
would discriminate between different levels of ability using grade point average (GPA) as the criterion.
Students in an introductory management course at Georgia State University completed the test, and eight
of the items shown in this adapted inventory had distin-guished those with a higher GPA from those with a
lower GPA. The eight items that correlated positively with GPA are scored as follows: 6-T, 11-F, 16-T, 17-T,
18-T, 20-T, 25-T, 29-T.
Would this eight-item test be a good measure of ability? When these items were given to a new sample of
participants, none of them were related to GPA. In this way, Blumenfeld demonstrated the importance of
cross-validation. It would, of course, be relatively easy to replicate Blumenfeld’s study in class. If students
anonymously place their GPA at the top of their com-pleted survey, you can do a median split and see if any
items discriminate between different levels of ability. These items can then be administered to a second
group of students.
Blumenfeld, W. S. (1972). “I am never startled by a fish.” APA Monitor, 3(9, 10), 3, 14.
Classroom Exercise: Assessing Social Desirability
One problem with self-report personality inventories is that some respondents tend to give socially desirable
rather than honest responses. Handout 10–7, the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, attempts to
assess this response tendency. To score the inventory students should give themselves one point for indicat-
ing true to items 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 13, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, and 33, and one point for indicating
false to 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 19, 22, 23, 28, 30, and 32. Douglas Crowne and David Marlowe report a
mean of 13.72 for undergraduate students. People with high scores tend to present themselves in a
favorable light that probably does not reflect reality.
Explain the purpose of the scale by reviewing a few specific items with students. For example, the fourth
item states that “I have never intensely disliked any-one.” Probably everyone has at one time or another
intensely disliked another person. People who indicate they have not are trying to present themselves in a
socially desirable light. As Jerry Burger notes, Marlowe-Crowne scores are particularly useful when testing
the discriminant validity of a new scale. For example, suppose you had developed a self-report inventory for
friendliness in which most of the items were relatively straightforward, such as, “Do you make a good
friend?” While high scores may reflect friendli-ness, they might instead be respondents’ attempts to present
themselves as pleasant people. If the scores on the new scale and that of Marlowe-Crowne are highly
correlated, you really have no way of knowing whether the scale is measuring friendliness, social
desirability, or both. If, however, friendliness scores do not correlate highly with social desirability scores,
you can be fairly confident that the new scale does in fact measure friendliness.
Social desirability is only one response tendency testers have to worry about. Another is an
acquiescence response set in which people tend to agree with test questions regardless of their content. For
this reason, it becomes important that scores for a particular trait are not simply the number of “true”
answers on a scale. To be safe, many test makers word as many as half the items in the opposite direction.
The Marlowe-Crowne scale is itself a good example—social desirability is a sum of both true and false
statements.
Burger, J. (2007). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology.
Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24, 349–354.
Classroom Exercise: The Self-Monitoring Scale
People who perceive themselves as strongly inner-directed tend to act more consistently across different
situations than do people who perceive themselves as shaping their behavior to fit specific situations. Mark
Snyder has developed the Self-Monitoring (SM) Scale (Handout 10–8) to assess the extent to which people
observe and control their expressive behavior and self-presentation out of a concern for social
appropriateness. Have students complete the scale and score their own responses. The items are keyed for
high self-monitoring.
1
F 10. T 19. T
2
F 11. T 20. F
3
F 12. F 21. F
4
F 13. T 22. F
5
T 14. F 23. F
6
T 15. T 24. T
7
T 16. T 25. T
8
T 17. F
9
F 18. T
Snyder conducted a series of studies to validate the scale. In one study, he had participants complete the
scale themselves, then asked their peers to complete the scale as the items related to the participants. He
found, for example, a significant positive relationship between scores and peer ratings on a number of selfmonitoring attributes (e.g., “To what extent does he express his true inner feelings, attitudes, and beliefs?”).
Snyder also rea-soned that professional actors are in particularly good control of their expressive behavior
and self-presenta-tion, while the behavior of hospitalized psychiatric patients is likely to be less variable
across situations. Thus, the former should score higher on the scale than the latter. Results were consistent
with this prediction: Stage actors scored 18.41 and patients scored 10.19. In yet another study, Snyder found
that high self-monitors, when given the opportunity, were better at communicat-ing an arbitrary emotional
state through their vocal and facial expressions.
Jeffrey Simpson has suggested that individual dif-ferences in self-monitoring can be strongly and
system-atically related to important aspects of social behavior. In research on commitment to dating
relationships, Mark Snyder and Simpson hypothesized that because the social behavior of low self-
monitors tends to be guided by relatively stable factors, such as personal atti-tudes and feelings, they should
have more stable rela-tionships with persons toward whom they have strong, positive attitudes and feelings
(e.g., dating partners). In contrast, high self-monitors, who are guided by more transient external factors,
should have less durable and rather short-term relationships with others. Two separate studies confirmed the
hypothesis.
Simpson devised Handout 10–9 for classroom demonstration of their research. After students have
completed and scored the SM scale on Handout 10–8, distribute this dating survey. If time permits and your
class is not too large, collect and analyze student responses immediately. Otherwise, analyze the data outside of class and report the results during the next session.
A median split on the SM scale divides the class into high and low self-monitors. Students who answer
“yes” to the first question on the dating survey are referred to as exclusive daters. Those who answer “no” to
the first question but “yes” to the third are referred to as multiple daters. (Those who respond “no” to both 1
and 3 because they do not date cannot provide data for analysis.) A larger percentage of exclusive daters
should be low rather than high self-monitors. Conversely, a larger percentage of multiple daters should be
high rather than low self-monitors.
Responses to the second question should indicate that among exclusive daters, low self-monitors have
dated their current partner for a significantly longer time than have high self-monitors. Responses to the
fourth question should reveal that among multiple daters, high self-monitors have dated a larger number of
persons than have low self-monitors. Finally, responses to questions 6 to 8 should show that high selfmonitors choose a significantly larger number of friends as pre-ferred dating partners than do low selfmonitors.
Simpson, J. (1988). Self-monitoring and commitment to dating relationships: A classroom demonstration.
Teaching of Psychology, 15, 31–33.
Snyder, M. (1987). Public appearances/private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring. New York: Freeman.
Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behav-ior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30,
526–537.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: The NEO Personality Inventory
You might complement the text discussion of the Big Five (discussed in the next text section) and the MMPI
with coverage of the NEO inventories in class (see also the Classroom Exercise on Empirically Derived
Tests). The NEO Personality Inventory and its successors, the NEO-PI-R and the NEO Five Factor Inventory
(NEO-FFI), were developed by Paul Costa and Robert McCrae in an effort to assess the major domains in
the five-factor model of personality described in the text. In contrast to the MMPI, which measures
psychological disorders, the NEOs are designed to measure “normal” personality. These inventories have
become among the most popular for research on personality and for clini-cal use.
The five-factor model states that emotional stability (or neuroticism), extraversion, openness,
agreeableness, and conscientiousness are the basic personality factors. The NEO-PI-R, the current full
inventory that replaced the original NEO-PI in 1992, consists of 240 items, each answered on a 5-point
scale from ”strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” Any given statement is scored for only one factor and
thus each factor is assessed with 48 items. (The NEO-FFI, a shortened version with five 12-item scales
measuring the major domains, can usual-ly be completed in 10 to 15 minutes. It comes as a com-bination
test booklet and answer sheet and, remarkably, can be scored in less than a minute.)
Unlike the MMPI, NEO items were not empirically derived. Rather, the items were chosen on the basis of
their correlation with other measures of the factor being studied (criterion validity), as well as their adherence
to standards of plausibility and reasonableness (content validity). Thus, it is fairly obvious what each item is
designed to assess. For example, “I am easily fright-ened” is an item from the neuroticism scale; “I am a
warm and friendly person” is a statement from the extraversion scale.
In addition to measuring the major domains of per-sonality, the NEO-PI-R assesses the narrower traits
or facets covered by each domain. In fact, because each dimension includes six “subtraits,” the NEO-PI-R
has a total of 30 different scale scores. Neuroticism covers anxiety, anger-hostility, depression, selfconsciousness, impulsiveness, and vulnerability. Extraversion includes warmth, gregariousness,
assertiveness, activity, excitement-seeking, and positive emotions. Openness covers fantasy, aesthetics,
feelings, actions, ideas, and values.
Agreeableness includes trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tendermindedness.
Conscientiousness is composed of competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline,
and deliberation.
Developed for use with normal populations, the inventories have separate norms for males and females,
and for postsecondary-age individuals and adults. Psychological Assessment Resources, who publish the
test, provide machine-scorable answer sheets that can be interpreted by a computer. The interpretations
provide a global assessment of the respondent’s personality, along with a detailed interpretation of the facets
and possible implications (e.g., how the individual is likely to cope with daily stress). Finally, there are two
versions of the NEO-PI-R: one for the respondent and one for an observer, which can be completed by a
peer, spouse, or psychologist. If both complete the inventory, a fairly detailed and complicated profile
emerges. The test can be administered individually or in small groups.
Assuming small enough classes and the necessary time and competence, it is possible that you could
have your students complete the inventory. The NEO-PI-R Comprehensive Kit (approximately $260)
includes a manual, 20 reusable test booklets (10 for respondents, 10 for observers), 25 handscorable
answer sheets, 50 profile forms (25 for respondents, 25 for observers), and 25 feedback sheets. Address:
Psychological Assessment Resources, Inc., 16204 N. Florida Avenue, Lutz, FL 33549. Telephone: 1-800331-TEST. The Web site is www3.parinc.com.
Liebert, R., & Liebert, L. (1998). Personality: Strategies and issues (8th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
C. The Big Five Factors (pp. 497–499)
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Evolution and the Big Five Personality Traits
Lawrence Pervin and his colleagues note that many personality theorists view traits from within an
evolutionary perspective. For example, Lewis Goldberg suggests that, over time, humans have found that
certain basic traits underlie all social interaction and that knowing how people differ in these traits can help us
understand these interactions. These traits can be identified through answers to the following questions,
using terms that we all recognize from the list of the Big Five (X refers to the person with whom we are
interacting).
1
Is X active and dominant or passive and submissive (Can I bully X or will X try to bully me)?
2
Is X agreeable (warm and pleasant) or disagreeable (cold and distant)?
3
Can I count on X (Is X responsible and conscientious or undependable and negligent)?
1
2
Is X crazy (unpredictable) or sane (stable)?
Is X smart or dumb (How easy is it for me to teach X)?
Goldberg, L. R. (1981). Language and individual differ-ences: The search for universals in personality lexicons. In
L. Wheeler (Ed.), Review of personality and social psychology (pp. 141–165). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative “description of personality”: The Big-Five structure. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 59, 1216–1229.
Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A., (2008). Personality: Theory and research (10th ed.) New York: Wiley.
Classroom Exercise: “Big Five” Inventories
Handout 10–10, designed by Samuel Gosling and his colleagues, provides a brief measure of the Big Five
personality dimensions. The authors state that the instrument, although somewhat inferior to standard multiitem scales, showed significant convergence with widely used Big Five measures in self, observer, and peer
reports; test-retest reliability; patterns of predicted external correlates; and self and observer ratings.The
scale takes only a minute to complete, so using it in the classroom can provide an efficient introduction to trait
theory.
In scoring, students should reverse the numbers they place in response to items 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 (1 = 7,
2 = 6, 3 = 5, 4 = 4, 5 = 3, 6 = 2, 7 = 1). Then they should combine the numbers for items 1 and 6 to obtain their
extraversion score, 2 and 7 for agreeableness, 3 and 8 for conscientiousness, 4 and 9 for emotional stability, and 5 and 10 for openness to experience. Scores can range from 1 to 14 for each trait, with higher
scores reflecting strong exhibition of a trait.
Handout 10–11, the Big Five Inventory designed by Oliver P. John and his colleagues, provides another
assessment of the Big Five personality dimensions. Following are directions for students to measure the
degree to which they exhibit each dimension:
Extraversion: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 6, 21, and 31 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 =
2, 5 = 1), then add all the numbers for 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26, 31, and 36. Scores can range from 8 to 40, with
higher scores reflecting greater extraversion.
Agreeableness: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 2, 12, 27, and 37 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 =
3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1), then add all the numbers for 2, 7, 12, 17, 22, 27, 32, 37, and 42. Scores can range from 9 to
45, with higher scores reflecting greater agreeableness.
Conscientiousness: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 8, 18, 23, and 43 (1 = 5, 2 = 4,
3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1), then add all the numbers for 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 28, 33, 38, and 43. Scores can range from 9
to 45, with higher scores reflecting greater conscientiousness.
Neuroticism: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 9, 24, and 34 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 =
2, 5 = 1), then add all the numbers for 4, 9, 14, 19, 24, 29, 34, and 39. Scores can range from 8 to 40, with
higher scores reflecting greater neuroticism.
Openness: First reverse the numbers placed in front of items 35 and 41 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 =
1), then add all the numbers for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 41, and 44. Scores can range from 10 to 50, with
higher scores reflecting greater openness.
Stephen Dollinger and Anne Kilman LaMartina describe a class exercise that encourages students to
reflect on the relationship between the five personality dimensions and behavior. The exercise also provides
a good review of the correlational approach in psycholog-ical research that was first introduced in text Unit
2. Dollinger and LaMartina suggest that some time before your discussion of personality, invite students to
partici-pate in an extra-credit research day in which the volun-teers complete various questionnaires,
including the NEO Personality Inventory (or you could use the Big Five Inventory—Handout 10–11) and a
“twenty-to forty-item behavior checklist of actions or activities that students occasionally perform and that
are of psycho-logical interest.” You may want to select some questions from the following list created by
Dollinger and LaMartina or you can design your own.
“Ever had a vacation in Florida or Mexico?”
“Ever dated a person of a different race or nationality?”
“Ever kept a personal journal or diary of your life and feelings?”
“Ever read 12 or more books in one year, not counting those for school assignments?”
“Ever marched or protested against an injustice?”
“Ever fell in love at first sight?”
“Ever thrown a party for 20 or more people?”
“Ever written a poem spontaneously (not for a class assignment)?”
“Ever listened to music by yourself in the dark?”
“Ever had a girlfriend/boyfriend whose name you have forgotten?”
“Ever pulled an all-nighter to complete an assignment?”
Have students use optical scanning forms to respond so their answers can be readily scored and
intercorrelations between the personality dimensions and behavior can be more easily calculated.
(Scores on each personality dimension are correlated with each behavior, with 0 = did not engage in the
behavior or 1 = engaged in the behavior.) These calculations are to be completed in preparation for the
small-group, in-class activity.
After you have introduced the five-factor model of personality, divide your class into small groups of four
or five students each and have them predict the relation-ship (positive or negative correlation) that they think
might exist between each personality factor and each behavior that appears on the checklist. To simplify the
process, Dollinger and LaMartina suggest creating a handout with a grid listing the five personality factors as
column headings and the specific behaviors as rows. Include only those behaviors that showed a significant
correlation with one or more of the personality factors. To further simplify the task for students, you can (in
parentheses behind each behavior) indicate how many personality dimensions (from 1 to 5) correlated with
the behavior. After the small groups have made their pre-dictions, announce the results and, if you like,
declare the small group with the best predictions the winner.
Alternatively, you can use Dollinger and LaMartina’s results, which follow.
Neuroticism Correlation
“Ever had a vacation in Florida or
Mexico?”
“Ever dated a person of a different
race or nationality?”
“Ever kept a personal journal or
diary of your life and feelings?”
Extraversion
Correlation
positive
Openness
Correlation
Agreeableness
Correlation
Conscientiousness
Correlation
positive
positive
“Ever read 12 or more
books in one year, not counting
those for school assignments?”
negative
“Ever marched or
protested against an
injustice?”
negative
“Ever fell in love at first
sight?
“Ever thrown a party for 20 or more
people?”
“Ever written a poem
spontaneously (not for a class
assignment)?”
“Ever listened to music by yourself
in the dark?”
“Ever had a girlfriend/boyfriend
whose name you have forgotten?”
“Ever pulled an all-nighter to
complete an assignment?”
positive
positive
positive
positive
positive
positive
negative
negative
Source: Stephen J. Dollinger. “Predicting Personality-Behavior Relations: A Teaching Activity.” Teaching of
Psychology, Copyright © 2004 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted by permission.
Dollinger and LaMartina also found interesting correlations between the Big Five and other personality
measures, including the following: Emotional Stability and Extraversion showed a negative correlation
with shyness, social anxety, and loneliness. Openness showed a negative correlation with
authoritarianism. Emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness all correlated positively with life
satisfaction.
Dollinger, S. J., & LaMartina, A. K. (1996, August). Predicting behavior from personality: A teaching
activity. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association,
Toronto.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Personality Traits in the Workplace
Psychologists have long debated the usefulness of personality tests to predict occupational success.
Research with the Big Five traits provides much stronger support for the relationship between personality
and job performance than was found in earlier research that typically used a larger number of personality
variables as predictors.
Jerry Burger poses this dilemma: Assume that you own a business and have to make a quick decision to
hire one of five nearly identical applications. You do have the applicants’ scores on the Big Five personality
dimensions. Each applicant is high on a different dimension—Emotional Stability, Extraversion, Openness,
Agreeableness, or Conscientiousness. Which of these people should you hire? Who is likely to be the best
employee?
Although one could build a case for each applicant, significant research indicates that, of the Big Five,
conscientiousness may be the best predictor of job performance. Respondents who score high on this
dimension are careful, thorough, and dependable. In addition, they take time to do a job accurately and
completely. They tend to be organized, plan oriented, and persistent.
One study examined the job performance of sales representatives for an appliance manufacturer.
Consistent with other research, conscientiousness was a significant predictor of how many appliances the
salespersons sold. A closer look at these employees indicated why this trait may be associated with superior
job performance. Highly conscientious workers set higher goals for themselves than did other employees. In
addition, they were more committed to reaching those goals. They expended greater effort to reach their
targets and were more persistent than others when encountering the inevitable obstacles. One team of
investigators concluded, “It is difficult to conceive of a job in which the traits associated with the
conscientiousness dimension would not contribute to job success.” Research findings also indicate that
highly conscientious employees receive higher evaluations from their supervisors and are least likely to be
laid off when companies are forced to reduce their labor force.
Obviously, conscientiousness is not the only trait related to job performance. Depending on role
requirements, a case could also be made for hiring applicants high in agreeableness. These people are
trusting, cooperative, and helpful—characteristics particularly important if the job requires teamwork. Other
studies indicate that extraverts may have the advantage over introverts in the business world. Clearly, the
best match between personality and job demands varies across occupations.
Handout 10–12 provides Lewis R. Goldberg’s measure of conscientiousness. Have students reverse the
numbers they placed before the 10 items with an asterisk and than add all 20 responses together. The mean
score obtained in a sample of students was 123.11.
Burger, J. (2007). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment,
4,, 26–42.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Hogan Personality Inventory
Appendix B of these resources includes a discussion of the Hogan Personality Inventory, which focuses on
the relationship between specific personality traits and job performance. Robert Hogan used research on the
Big Five traits in developing his own measure of personality relevant to the workplace. If you prefer, you may
choose to cover his research now.
D. Evaluating the Trait Perspective (pp. 500–503)
Lecture/Discussion Topic: The HEXACO Model of Personality Structure
Recently, Michael C. Ashton and Kibeom Lee have pro-posed a new six-dimensional framework for
personality structure as an alternative to the Big Five model. HEXACO has been developed in the same way
that the Big Five model emerged, namely with a lexical approach that analyzes personality-descriptive
adjectives. HEXACO’s six factors have emerged across numerous languages, including English, Dutch,
French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, and Polish. The analyses have found variants of the Big Five
factors, plus a new sixth factor: Honesty-Humility.
HEXACO’s six factors (along with common descriptive adjectives) include the following: Honesty-Humility:
sincere, honest, faithful, loyal, modest/unassuming, fair-minded versus sly, greedy, pretentious,
hypocritical, boastful, pompous
Emotionality: emotional, oversensitive, sentimental, fearful, anxious, vulnerable versus brave, tough,
independent, self-assured, stable
eXtraversion: outgoing, lively, extraverted, sociable, talkative, cheerful, active versus shy, passive,
withdrawn, introverted, quiet, reserved
Agreeableness: patient, tolerant, peaceful, mild, agreeable, lenient, gentle versus ill-tempered,
quarrelsome, stubborn, choleric
Conscientiousness: organized, disciplined, diligent, careful, thorough, precise versus sloppy, negligent,
reckless, lazy, irresponsible, absent-minded
Openness to Experience: intellectual, creative, unconventional, innovative, ironic versus shallow,
unimaginative, conventional.
Ashton and Lee note that the HEXACO model (partly by virtue of its inclusion of the HonestyHumility factor) has outperformed the Big Five model in predicting several variables of practical
importance. For example, HEXACO better predicts workplace delinquency and the likelihood that the
person will engage in sexual harassment.
Ashton, F. C., & Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality
structure. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 150–166.
Classroom Exercise: The Barnum Effect
Before students read the text, you might demonstrate the Barnum effect in class. Have students complete
some bogus personality scale, such as the North Dakota Null-Hypothesis Brain Inventory in Handout 10–
6. At the next class meeting, give each student a computerized personality description supposedly based
on responses to the inventory. (Alternatively, you can have them submit a sample of their handwriting to
be analyzed or even some basic information such as their birthdate, hair color, sex, weight, height, etc.)
Make a copy of B. R. Forer’s set of Barnum descriptions (see below) for your students and ask them to
evaluate its accuracy. Most will agree that the description fits very well. You can then reveal the hoax,
using it to introduce the Barnum effect—our tendency to accept as valid descriptions of our personality
that are generally true of everyone. This tendency is strongest, of course, when the descriptions are
generally favorable. Explain how astrologers, palm readers, and crystal-ball gazers regularly use the
effect to persuade people that they can accurately assess their personalities and problems. You can
conclude discussion of the Barnum effect with Handout 10–13, which contains quotes from David Levy’s
hilarious “Psychometric Infallibility Realized: The One-Size-Fits-All Psychological Profile.” Students will
surely want to share it with their friends.
Forer, B. R. (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility. Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44, 118–123. Copyright 1949 American Psychological Association. Reprinted
by permission of the publisher and the author.
Levy, D. A. (1993). Psychometric infallibility realized: The one-size-fits-all psychological profile. Copyright © 1993
by Wry-Bred Press, Inc. Journal of Polymorphous Perversity, 10, 3–6.
Personalized Personality Description for:
You have a strong need for other people to like you and for them to admire you. You have a tendency to be critical of
yourself. You have a great deal of unused energy, which you have not turned to your advantage. While you have
some personality weaknesses, you are generally able to compensate for them. Your adolescent adjustment has
presented some problems for you.
Disciplined and controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside. At times you have serious
doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change
and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations.
You pride yourself on being an independent thinker and do not accept other opinions without satisfactory proof. You
have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extraverted, affable, and
sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty
unrealistic.
Levy, D. A. (1993). Psychometric infallibility realized: The one-size-fits-all psychological profile. Copyright © 1993
by Wry-Bred Press, Inc. Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. Reprinted by permission of Dr. Glenn Elenbogen.
Classroom Exercise: Astrology and the Barnum Effect
Our tendency to accept astrologers’ descriptions of our personality as valid can be explained in terms of
the Barnum effect. William Balch provides a classroom exercise that permits testing the validity of
astrology. Distribute Handout 10–14 to students and have them complete the 12 items. Each set of
adjectives denotes traits associated with one of the zodiacal signs. After students have completed the
exercise, instruct them to draw a vertical line through all the scales, so that six of their responses (vertical
marks) appear on each side. Next, read the zodiacal signs for each set of traits along with the following
corresponding dates.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Taurus: April 20–May 20
Gemini: May 21–June 21
Cancer: June 22–July 22
Leo: July 23–August 22
Virgo: August 23–September 22
Libra: September 23–October 22
Scorpio: October 23–November 21
Sagittarius: November 22–December 21
Capricorn: December 22–January 19
Aquarius: January 20–February 18
Pisces: February 19–March 20
Now have students determine whether their rating of the description for their own sign is relatively
applicable (on the right side of the median line) or inapplicable (on the left side). A show of hands will
indicate a roughly equal number of each. Also ask students to indicate whether the median line they drew
falls to the right of the midpoint. Most hands will go up. People tend to agree with all the personality
descriptions, a fact that helps explain the apparent validity of astrologers’ descriptions.
Balch, W. R. (1980). Testing the validity of astrology in class. Teaching of Psychology, 7(4), 247–250.
V. The Social-Cognitive Perspective
(pp. 503–510)
Classroom Exercise: Self-Efficacy Scale
Unit 3C of these resources included Gilad Chen and colleagues’ measure of self-efficacy along with
relevant research findings. If you did not use the scale earlier, you may choose to do so now.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Perceived Efficacy and Acquirable Skills
“Unless people believe they can produce desired effects, and forestall undesired ones by their actions,”
argues Albert Bandura, “they have little incentive to act, or to persevere in the face of difficulties.”
Furthermore, he observes that perceived efficacy is closely linked to our belief that important skills can be
acquired through practice.
In a study conducted with his colleague Bob Wood, Bandura asked business graduates to manage a
computer simulation of an organization. Perceived efficacy was manipulated by telling the participants that
the simulation demanded skills that were either innate, or that could be acquired through practice. Those
who thought the skills could be acquired set challenging goals for themselves, were efficient in their analytic
thinking, and achieved high performance. In contrast, those who believed the skills were innate set lower
goals and were more erratic in their thinking, and their performance gradually deteriorated.
These findings highlight the danger of what Bandura calls “Bell Curve thinking,” the belief that
intelligence is largely innate. “We argue over small ethnic and racial differences (but) we ignore the huge
influence of motivation and self-management factors in intellectual performance.”
Bandura’s daughter, Mary Bandura, has demonstrated that children who view intelligence as an
acquirable skill are highly resilient in their personal efficacy beliefs. Setbacks are viewed as correctable, as
due to insufficient effort, lack of knowledge, or faulty strategies rather than as the result of inherent personal
deficiencies. Children with strong efficacy beliefs redouble their efforts in the face of difficulty. While one must
be realistic about difficult odds, it is equally important to be optimistic that one can beat the odds.
Bandura’s ideas are related to the distinction Carol Dweck has made between entity theorists who
believe human traits are fixed and incremental theorists who maintain that traits are malleable. A classroom
exercise to assess this difference can be found in Unit 1 of these resources. If you did not use it earlier, you
may want to do so now.
Kester, J. D. (2001, July/August). Bandura: Beliefs, Bobo, and behavior. American Psychological Society
Observer, 8–9.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: George Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory
You can extend the text discussion of the social-cognitive perspective on personality by introducing George
Kelly’s personal construct theory. Kelly’s basic assumption is that we are strongly motivated to make sense
of our worlds. Like scientists, we are always attempting to make better predictions about what will happen
to us. Thus we generate and test hypotheses.
Kelly argued that we use bipolar personal constructs to interpret and predict events. For example, we
might use the personal constructs warm–cold, flexible– dogmatic, intelligent–unintelligent, and tall–short to
create an image of a new acquaintance. Using these bipolars, a person might conclude that the stranger is
warm, flexible, intelligent, and tall. One may use further bipolar constructs to judge the nature of his
intelligence, for example, academically intelligent–common sense intelligent.
Personality differences result largely from differences in the way people construe their worlds. We may
use very different descriptors to characterize the same person. Those different construals will produce
different social behaviors toward the person. Our relatively consistent patterns of behavior occur because
of the relatively stable way we construe the world.
To understand their own personal constructs, students need only reflect on what they tend to notice first
about a person. To assess individual differences in personal constructs, Kelly introduced the Role Construct
Repertory Test, or the Rep Test for short. Handout 10–15, designed by Jerry Burger, represents a
shortened version of the Rep Test. Although it is abbreviated, it can provide students with insight into how
they construe the world. They may be surprised by the ways they typically organize the people in their social
lives.
As a practicing psychotherapist, Kelly rejected the idea that psychological disorders are the result of
past traumatic experiences. Rather, people suffer from psychological problems because of defects in their
construct systems. He called anxiety the “most common of all clinic commodities.” We feel anxious when
our personal constructs fail to make sense of life events. Healthy people are constantly generating new
constructs to replace old, inadequate ones.
Burger, J. (2007). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
A. Reciprocal Influences (pp. 503–504)
Feature Film: The Shawshank Redemption and Reciprocal Influences
Appendix C of these resources identifies a clip from The Shawshank Redemption that illustrates the
principle of reciprocal determinism (as well as perceived control, as noted in Appendix C) and how
individuals and situations interact. You may prefer to show the clip now rather than in connection with
stress and health. However, this is an R-rated movie with a fairly graphic depiction of suicide, so you may
not be able to show this clip, and you will certainly want to preview this before showing it. Responses by
Andy and Brooks to the prison environment illustrate how our personalities shape interpretations and
reactions to events. Andy’s success in prison also illustrates how our personalities help create the
situations to which we react.
B. Personal Control (pp. 505–509)
Feature Film/Classroom Exercise: Schindler’s List and
Personal Control A brief clip from Schindler’s List provides an excellent introduction to the psychological
research on personal control. Note that this film is R-rated, so you may not be able to show it, and you will
need to preview any clips before showing them in class. Start the clip at 98 minutes 16 seconds into the film
and run it for 4 minutes, 35 seconds. While at the commandant’s house party, Schindler walks down the
steps to the basement and introduces himself to Helen, a Jewish maid and prisoner. In reflecting on her
experience, Helen explains her despair to Schindler. She has learned that her actions and outcomes are
unrelated. After vividly describing the arbitrary beating she received at the hands of the brutal commandant
on her arrival, she goes on to give an account of how he recently shot and killed a passerby without reason.
“There are no set rules to live by,” she laments. Although Schindler tries to reassure her, it is clear that Helen
has lost all sense of personal control. After showing this powerful clip you might form small groups to
discuss the following questions.
1
One important aspect of personality is our sense of personal control—whether we learn to see ourselves as controlling, or as controlled by, our environments. Briefly describe a time in your life when your
efforts seemed to make little difference. What effects did those feelings have on you?
2
Concentration camp and prison inmates experience little control over their lives. What other groups
are likely to feel that they have little control over their outcomes? What do you think are the long-term effects
on them?
3
How do you think gender, age, and race might influence one’s feelings of control? How might
religious faith influence one’s feelings of control?
4
Do you feel you have more control in some areas of life than others? Describe and explain one
difference.
5
What are the most important factors influencing one’s sense of control?
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Locus of Control
Handout 10–16 is the Personal Efficacy subscale of Delroy Paulhus’ locus of control measure. It measures
one’s sense of control in personal achievement situations; two other subscales measure control in
interpersonal encounters and in social and political matters. Researchers find that respondents’ sense of
personal control may vary across different situations. To score, have students reverse the numbers they
placed before statements 3, 6, 7, 8, and 10 (i.e., 1 = 7, 2 = 6, 3 = 5, 5 = 3, 6 = 2, 7 = 1).Then they should add
the numbers in front of all 10 items. Jerry Burger reports that for a sample of students, the means were 51.8
and
52.2 for males and females, respectively.
Considerable research has been done on the locus of control concept, and the brief text discussion can
be readily expanded in class. Internals not only believe that they can control their own destinies, but in fact
they are more effective in influencing their environments. Re-searchers consistently find that internals
receive higher grades and better teacher evaluations than do externals. Although this is true across ages, the
relationship is particularly strong for adolescents. Internals feel more responsible for their achievements,
believe that studying will pay off, and generally seem to have a better idea of how to prepare for an exam.
They are more likely to attribute their grades to their abilities or effort and thus are more likely to study for the
next exam. Given the task of changing others’ beliefs, they are more successful. In one study, for example,
internals proved more persuasive in altering students’ attitudes toward fraternities and sororities. Internals
themselves, however, seem to be less susceptible to control and influence from others. They are particularly
resistant to subtle forms of attempted influence. Internals are less likely to conform and are not as likely to
respond to the prestige of a message’s source as are externals. Internals are, however, more accepting of
information when it has merit.
Just as internals are more effective in controlling their social world, they also seem to exhibit greater
self-control. Among those who attempt to quit smoking, internals show fewer relapses. They are also more
likely to engage in physical exercise, better at losing weight, more apt to use seatbelts, and more likely to
practice preventive dental care. As hospital patients, they are likely to know more about their medical
condition and to be less satisfied with the amount of information they receive from physicians and nurses.
Although many studies find a positive correlation between internality and health, it is not always true. Julian
Rotter noted that behavior is a function of both expectancy and value. Thus, believing that your actions
affect your health is not enough. One must also place a high value on good health if one is to take appropriate
action.
What fosters internality? Research suggests that family environments characterized by warmth, protection, and nurturance are likely to lead to an internal locus of control. Furthermore, consistent parental
behavior is positively correlated with internality. Ordinal position in the family also seems to affect locus of
control. Generally, first-born and earlier-born chil-dren tend to be more internal. Conversely, persons with
limited access to social power or material resources often develop external orientations. Minority membership and lower socioeconomic status is associated with externality.
Hostages and prisoners of war often report that the most debilitating aspect of their experience was the
uncertainty of their fate and the loss of personal control over their environment. The sense of helplessness
may lead to physical illness, sometimes even death. Every effort will be made by these people to maintain
some sense of control. Among the Americans held captive by Iranian students in the early 1980s, one
hostage would save a small bit of food and then offer it to anyone who came to his cell. That strategy had the
effect of turning the cell into a living room and the hostage into a host welcoming visitors.
While it may be better to be internal than external, internality also has limits. To believe one can control
everything is maladaptive. Some Jews in Nazi Germany who were forewarned of disaster remained,
believing they could control their fate. Believing one can control the uncontrollable may also lead to
unwarranted self-blame when success does not come.
Burger, J. (2007). Personality (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Lefcourt, H. M. (1982). Locus of control: Current trends in theory and research (2nd ed.). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Paulhus, P. (1983). Sphere-specific measures of per-ceived control. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 44, 1253–1265.
Classroom Exercise: Satisficers Versus Maximizers
In discussing personal control, the text notes Barry Schwartz’s claim that “an excess of freedom” in today’s
Western cultures has contributed to decreasing life sat-isfaction. Schwartz has also suggested that the way
people make choices affects their sense of well-being.
In considering life’s many choices—from selection of toothpaste to that of college or university—some
of us ask, “Is this alternative acceptable?” Others are more likely to wonder, “Is this the best?” Satisficers set
“good enough” as their criterion for outcomes. For max-imizers, outcomes must be optimal. Barry Schwartz
and his colleagues designed Handout 10–17 to assess these two contrasting orientations to choosing goals.
To score, students should simply add the numbers they circled. Total scores range from 13 to 91, with
higher scores reflecting a greater tendency to be a maxi-mizer, trying to get the very best or absolute most
out of every situation. Several samples of adults obtained a mean score slightly above 50.
In some cases, maximizing is the better strategy for making decisions. For example, in responding to a
seri-ous health threat, seeking and settling only for the best treatment increases your chances of survival.
Maxi-mizers plan more carefully in solving problems, and their high standards may spur them on to greater
achievement.
However, maximization can come at a significant cost to well-being. In several samples of adults, the
researchers found that maximization was negatively related to happiness, life satisfaction, optimism, and
self-esteem. It seems that the tendency to want to maxi-mize outcomes is highly correlated with potential
regret over choices that have been made.
Maximizers seem especially susceptible to social comparison and adaptation that can drain joy from
life. Maximizers also tend to keep their options open, which lowers life satisfaction.
To some degree, we all compare our life’s out-comes with those of others. The gap between what we
have and what our friends and neighbors possess can foster feelings of relative deprivation. As Unit 8A
explains, an important reason that money fails to boost life satisfaction is our strong tendency to compare
our-selves with those who have more. Especially as we climb the ladder of success, we are more likely to
compare ourselves with those one rung higher than with those a rung lower, and so we often become
dissatisfied.
Maximizers, in their eagerness to decide whether they have attained the “best” life outcomes, need
some standard for making that judgment. Because an objec-tive criterion often is not available, they
compare them-selves with others. Research confirms that, relative to satisficers, maximizers do engage in
more social com-parison and experience greater feelings of relative deprivation.
Our remarkable capacity to adapt also short-circuits happiness. Good experiences—a promotion, a new
car, gaining entrance to a prestigious school—boost our spirits only briefly. Similarly, bad experiences—a
car accident, a rejected job application, a low score on an entrance exam—deflate us, but only temporarily.
Although we may understand the adaptation princi-ple, we underestimate its power. We adapt more
quickly than we think. And because maximizers have higher standards of acceptability than do satisficers,
they tend to find adaptation more distressing. Given the huge investment they have made in weighing
alternatives before making a choice, maximizers feel that they deserve a higher rate of return. Expecting
more from every situation, maximizers more often experience disappointment.
Finally, maximizers strive to keep their options open. For this they may pay an unanticipated price. Dan
Gilbert and Jane Ebert conducted an intriguing series of studies in which participants made a reversible or
irre-versible choice. Participants strongly preferred keeping their options open to having their choice made
final. Surprisingly, however, the researchers found that partic-ipants were less satisfied with the outcomes of
reversible decisions than with those that were irre-versible. Why? Perhaps when we make a final decision, we
work to convince ourselves that we made the right choice. In keeping their options open, as maximizers tend
to do, they remain ambivalent.
See Barry Schwartz’s popular The Psychology of Choice: Why More Is Less for additional coverage of
how excessive freedom can undermine life satisfaction. The book also includes more comprehensive
coverage of the important differences between maximizing and satisficing.
Gilbert, D. T., & Ebert, J. E. J. (2002). Decisions and revisions: The affective forecasting of changeable out-comes.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 503–514.
Schwartz, B. (2005). The psychology of choice: Why more is less. New York: Harper Perennial.
Schwartz, B., et al. (2002). Maximizing versus satisfic-ing: Happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 1178–1197.
PsychSim 5: Helplessly Hoping
In this activity, students learn the importance of a sense of personal control over the events in their lives.
Students participate in a simulated experiment on learned helplessness in dogs and then consider how the
results might apply to the behavior of people trapped in unpleasant situations.
Classroom Exercise: The Life Orientation Test and Optimism
Handout 10–18 is Michael Scheier and Charles Carver’s Life Orientation Test, which assesses a per-son’s
optimism, or more specifically, a person’s expec-tations regarding the favorability of future outcomes. In
scoring their scale, students should first reverse their responses on items 3, 8, 9, and 12 (0 = 4, 1 = 3, 2 = 2, 3
= 1, 4 = 0) and then add up their responses for items 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, and 12 to obtain a final score (items 2,
6, 7, and 10 are filler items). Scores can range from 0 to 32, with higher scores reflecting greater optimism.
The mean score is approximately 21.
You can readily extend the text discussion of opti-mism by drawing from Scheier and Carver’s review of
relevant research. For example, a growing number of studies have now shown that optimists typically maintain higher levels of subjective well-being during times of stress than do people who are less optimistic. A
study of undergraduate students’ adjustment to their first semester of school indicated that optimism was
associ-ated with lower distress three months after starting school. The effects of optimism were independent
of other personality variables, such as self-esteem and locus of control. Another study investigating the
devel-opment of postpartum depression in women having their first child reported that initial optimism was
inversely associated with depression three weeks post-partum, even when the initial level of depression was
controlled statistically.
Optimism also confers benefits on physical well-being. A study conducted on men undergoing heart
bypass surgery found that optimism is negatively asso-ciated with certain physiological changes that would
make one susceptible to suffer a heart attack during surgery. Optimism also predicted rate of recovery
during the immediate postoperative period. Optimists were faster to achieve behavioral milestones of
recov-ery, such as sitting up in bed and walking around the room. The benefits of optimism were also
apparent at the six-month follow-up. Optimistic patients were more likely than pessimistic patients to have
resumed vigor-ous physical exercise and to have returned to work full-time. In a much larger study involving
2428 Finnish middle-aged men, Susan Everson reported that those who felt hopeless about the future and
their chances of attaining goals were far more likely to die early than those who were equally healthy but
more hopeful. Everson and her colleagues controlled for risk factors such as blood pressure, weight, and
smoking. Six years later, the researchers found that, as compared with the hopeful, hopeless men were
about twice as likely to have died of any cause. The hopeless had double the heart attack risk; they were
also significantly more like-ly to die from accidents and violence. Recently, Hilary Tindle’s research team,
using data from the Women’s Health Initiative (an ongoing government study of more than 100,000 women
over age 50) found that, eight years into the study, optimistic women were 14 percent more likely to be alive
than their pessimistic peers. “Taking into account income, education, health behav-iors like controlling
blood pressure and whether or not you are physically active, whether or not you drink or smoke, we still see
optimists with a decreased risk of death compared to pessimists,” reported Tindle. “I was surprised that the
relationship was independent of all of these factors. . . . Our study reveals interesting findings. Now we
need to replicate them and find out why this association is happening.”
According to Scheier and Carver, research from a variety of sources indicates that optimists cope in
more adaptive ways than do pessimists. They are more likely to take direct action to solve their problems, are
better at making plans to deal with adversity, and are more focused in their coping efforts. Optimists tend to
accept the reality of the stressful situations they encounter, and they also seem intent on growing personally
from nega-tive experiences. They try to make the best of bad situa-tions. In contrast, pessimists are likely to
react to stress-ful events by denying that they exist or by avoiding dealing with problems. Pessimists are
more likely to quit trying when difficulties arise.
There may be additional pathways through which optimism conveys its benefits. For example, optimism
seems to promote social contact, and so optimists may enjoy greater social support. In contrast, pessimists
tend to be loners, and social isolation is a reliable predictor of poor health. Optimists, of course, are also
resistant to depression, which has been linked to increased risk for disease and poor health. Finally, findings
indicate that the immune systems of optimists respond better to a challenge than do the immune systems of
pessimists. This may explain why, compared with pessimists, opti-mists have a longer survival time after the
development of AIDS symptoms.
Both nature and nurture probably play a role in the development of optimism. Differences in optimismpessimism may be partly inherited. For example, in a sample of more than 500 same-sex pairs of middleaged Swedish twins, the heritability of optimism and pes-simism was estimated to be about 25 percent. It
also seems reasonable that optimism and pessimism are learned from prior experiences with success and
failure. To the degree that a person has been successful in the past, he or she should expect success in the
future. Children may also acquire a sense of optimism from their parents through modeling. Finally, parents
may shape children’s tendencies by instructing them in prob-lem solving. Parents who teach adaptive coping
skills will produce children who are better problem solvers and thus ultimately more optimistic.
Scheier and Carver recognize that optimism may not always be good. Unbridled optimism may lead
peo-ple to become inactive, that is, to simply sit and wait for good things to happen. Optimism may also be
detrimen-tal in situations that are not amenable to constructive action. For example, the optimist’s head-on
approach may be maladaptive in situations that are uncontrollable.
Elias, M. (1995, March 23). Pessimism linked to early death. USA Today, p. D1.
Larsen, R. J., & Buss, D. M. (2008). Personality psychol-ogy: Domains of knowledge about human nature (3rd ed).
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Park, A. (2009, March 5). Study: Optimistic women tend to live longer. Posted at www.time.com/time/health/
article/0,8599,1883402,00.html
Scheier, M., & Carver, C. (1993). On the power of posi-tive thinking: The benefits of being optimistic. Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 2, 26–30.
Classroom Exercise: Defensive Pessimism
Does pessimism ever work? Nancy Cantor and her stu-dents coined the term defensive pessimism to refer
to a cognitive strategy in which people set low expectations for a future performance despite having done
well in similar situations in the past.
Obviously, setting low expectations helps “cushion” the blow of possible failure. More important, people
may use the strategy to reflect on what might happen, and thus give special attention to problems they might
encounter. They then work hard to prepare for the upcoming situation or performance. Often, defensive
pessimists feel anxious and out of control. Their strate-gy helps them harness their anxiety as motivation,
with the result being a better performance.
Handout 10–19, designed by Nancy Cantor, is the Defensive Pessimism Questionnaire (DPQ). The
items reflect two important characteristics of defensive pes-simists. In addition to having negative
expectations, they reflect extensively about possible positive and neg-ative outcomes. Items 1, 2, 6, and 15
assess the “pes-simism” factor, and items 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 17 assess the “reflectivity” factor. To
score, students should reverse the numbers (1 = 7, 2 = 6, 3 = 5, 4 = 4, 5 = 3, 6 = 2, 7 = 1) placed before items
2 and 16 and then add the numbers in front of these 12 items. Scores can range from 12 to 84, with higher
scores reflecting greater defensive pessimism. Items 5 and 9 are filler items and items 11 and 13 are
experimental items. Item 3 tests for “realistic” pessimism—that is, if respondents have done poorly before in
a similar situation, they are simply being realistic when they think their future per-formance may be poor.
Cantor indicates that in student samples, fewer than 20 percent rate themselves below 5 on this item.
Theoretically, defensive pessimism has its basis in the need to manage anxiety. Thus, it is not surprising
that it is positively correlated with trait anxiety, neuroti-cism, the fear of negative evaluation, and selfhandicap-ping. It correlates negatively with self-esteem and with self-clarity.
Most of the research on defensive pessimism has contrasted it with strategic optimism (they obtain low
scores on Handout 10–18). Whereas defensive pessimists manage anxiety through extensive reflection
about possible outcomes, strategic optimists distract themselves to avoid anxiety and thereby maintain
their positive outlook. Both perform well in tasks in which they are allowed to pursue these respective
strategies. On the other hand, defensive pessimists perform more poorly if they are instructed to focus only
on positive outcomes and strategic optimists perform more poorly if they are encouraged to reflect about the
upcoming task.
As Jerry Burger notes, the benefits of defensive pessimism extend beyond achievement to social
interac-tions. For example, in one study defensive pessimists were told that after a short conversation with a
stranger, they would be evaluated by the stranger. (This experimental situation is similar to first dates and
job inter-views in which we are concerned about making a good impression.) Some defensive pessimists
were instructed to think about all the things that could go wrong (what defensive pessimists typically do);
other defensive pes-simists were told to imagine positive outcomes. All the participants then spent 5 minutes
talking to a stranger. In comparison to the defensive pessimists told to think about positive outcomes, the
defensive pessimists who had contemplated negative consequences talked signifi-cantly more with the
stranger and were liked more by the person. The pattern was not found for optimists. Thus in both social and
achievement situations, thinking about the worst seems to help some people do their best.
In her review of the research, Cantor suggests that defensive pessimism seems to be an excellent
strategy for those who are tense because it addresses their psy-chological reality, namely, the need to
control anxiety, which does not simply go away by wishful thinking. At the same time, there may be longterm costs. Prelimi-nary data indicate that after three years in college, defensive pessimists report slightly
lower grade-point averages and more physical and psychological symp-toms. Because people often react
negatively to others’ anxiety, defensive pessimists may also create negative impressions, annoying the
people around them. Defensive pessimists do not necessarily become less anxious or generally more
positive over time. In fact, the strategy, because it works, may be self-perpetuating.
Burger, J. (2007). Personality (7th ed). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Norem, J. K. (2001). Defensive pessimism, optimism, and pessimism. In E. C. Chang (Ed.), Optimism and
pessimism: Implications for theory, research, and practice (pp. 77–100). Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
C. Assessing Behavior in Situations (p. 509–510)
D. Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective (p. 510)
VI. Exploring the Self (pp. 511–518)
Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Possible Selves
Handout 10–20, designed by Randy Larsen and David Buss, introduces students to the concept of possible
selves. Proposed by Hazel Markus and her colleagues, possible selves include our visions of the self we
dream of becoming but also the self we fear becoming.
After students have completed the survey, have them compare their ratings for items that describe them
now with their ratings of future descriptions. When the ratings are the same, this indicates that they believe
this attribute will remain stable over time. The items that change reflect ways in which they believe their
personality will change.
Ask your students to identify aspects of their desired self, that is, the sort of person they want to
become, as well as aspects of their feared self, the sort of person they do not wish to become. Hazel Markus
and her colleagues have suggested that possible selves motivate us by identifying specific goals and eliciting
energy to work toward them. As the text states, “dreams do often give birth to achievements.” Possible
selves provide an important bridge between our present and our future.
Tory Higgins expands the concept of possible selves by distinguishing the ideal self (what persons
themselves want to be) from the ought self (a person’s understanding of what others want him or her to
be). Higgins refers to these two types of possible selves as self-guides, that is, standards that one uses
to organize information and motivate appropriate behavior. They can generate strong emotion. If the
real self fails to match the ideal self, one may feel sad, disappointed, despondent. If the real self does
not match the ought self, one can feel anxious and guilty.
Higgins further argues that the ideal self focuses our attention on achievement and goal attainment,
what he calls a promotion focus. The ought self, on the other hand, shifts our attention to avoiding harm and
seeking safety, what he calls a prevention focus. Some people tend to be more promotion focused and
direct their behavior to goals they want to achieve; others are more prevention focused and direct their
behavior to what they do not want to happen.
Higgins, E. T. (1996). The “self digest”: Self-knowledge serving self-regulatory functions. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 71, 1062–1083.
Larsen, R., & Buss, D. M. (2008). Personality psycholo-gy: Domains of knowledge about human nature. New
York: McGraw-Hill.
Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologists, 41, 954–969.
Classroom Exercise/Student Project: Exploring Possible Selves as Roadmaps to the Future
To help your class understand how the concept of pos-sible selves may motivate us to lay out specific goals
and call forth the energy to work toward achieving them, challenge students to apply the concept to themselves.
In their investigations, Daphna Oyserman and her research team have had participants think of “next
year” possible selves. The procedure is straightforward. First, students think about who they would like to be
next year. Explain that each of us has some image or picture of what we will be like and what we want to
avoid being like in the future. Have your students describe what they expect they will be like and what they
will likely be doing next year. Next to each expected goal, they should also indicate whether they are
currently doing something to achieve that expectation. And, final-ly, for each goal, they should write down
specifically what they are doing this year to attain it.
Students should then describe what they do not want to do or want to avoid being. They should identify
the concerns or selves to be avoided, indicate whether they are currently working on avoiding that concern or
self, and write down specifically what they are doing this year to reduce the chances that this will describe
them next year.
After students have completed the exercise (in or between classes), conduct a full-class discussion of
the importance of possible selves. Have volunteers share what they learned from applying the concept to
them-selves. In particular, have them comment on how possi-ble selves and specific strategies for attaining
possible selves are, as Oyserman’s team suggests, “roadmaps” to the future.
Larsen, R., & Buss, D. M. (2008). Personality psycholo-gy: Domains of knowledge about human nature. New
York: McGraw-Hill.
Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible selves. American Psychologists, 41, 954–969.
D. Oyserman et al. (2004) “Possible selves as roadmaps.” Journal of Research in Personality, 38, 130–149.
Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.
A. The Benefits of Self-Esteem (p. 512)
Classroom Exercise: Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
The text defines self-esteem as a person’s feelings of high or low self-worth. Handout 10–21, the Rosenberg
Self-Esteem Scale (SES), has been the most frequently used instrument for assessing self-esteem. In
scoring it, students should first reverse the numbers (1 = 4, 2 = 3, 3 = 2, 4 = 1) placed in front of items 3, 5, 8,
9, and 10, then add the numbers in front of all 10 items to obtain a total score. Scores can range from 10 to
40, with higher scores reflecting a greater sense of self-worth.
The SES is designed to assess the degree to which people are generally satisfied with their lives and consider themselves worthy people. Other researchers have attempted to measure self-judgments relative to
specific areas of daily functioning, with self-esteem being a summation of subscale scores. As the text
indicates, research suggests that those with high self-esteem are less likely to conform; are more persistent
at difficult tasks; and are less shy, anxious, and lonely. They are also more persistent at difficult tasks and
experience a greater sense of well-being. Feeling good about oneself in a general way seems to cause a
rosy glow over one’s specific self-schemas and possible selves.
Rosenberg, M. (1989). Society and adolescent social-image. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Classroom Exercise: A Single-Item Measure of Self-Esteem (SISE)
Richard Robbins and his colleagues demonstrated that a single item can provide a valid measure of global
self-esteem. The item? Rate on a 5-point scale from 1 (not very true of me) to 5 (very true of me) this
statement: “I have high self-esteem.”
Undergraduates from diverse backgrounds scored a mean of 3.5, a median of 4, and a mode of 4. In
three separate studies using adult participants, correlations with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSE)
were in the range of .75 to .80. The SISE and RSE had nearly identical correlations with a wide range of
criterion measures, including domain-specific self-evaluations, self-evaluative biases, social desirability,
personality, psychological and physical health, peer ratings of group behavior, academic outcomes, and
demographic variables.
Self-esteem scores correlated positively with extra-version, conscientiousness, optimism, life
satisfaction, and physical well-being. Self-esteem also related posi-tively to peer ratings of effectiveness at
a group task, talkativeness, and being task-oriented. Self-esteem scores correlated negatively with
neuroticism, shyness, depression, and perceived stress. No significant correla-tion was found between selfesteem and SAT scores, high school GPA, college GPA, or attrition rates. Males showed higher self-esteem
than females. Those higher in self-esteem also proved more prone to self-enhancement bias and selfserving attribution.
Robins, R. W., Hendin, H. M., & Trzesniewski, K. H. (2001). Measuring global self-esteem: Construct valida-tion
of a single-item measure and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27,
151–161.
Classroom Exercise: Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale
Jennifer Crocker and Connie Wolfe argue that we can better understand the links between self-esteem and
behavior by examining specific sources of self-esteem. “Contingencies” of self-worth are the areas of life in
which people believe that success means they are worthwhile and failure means they are worthless. Handout
10–22 contains sample items from the Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale designed by Crocker and her
colleagues. The scale identifies several possible domains that are relevant to a person’s self-esteem.
The full Contingencies of Self-Worth Scale uses five items, not just one, to assess the importance of
each domain to one’s sense of self-worth. Still, students can make some initial comparisons with Crocker
and Wolfe’s (2001) sample of 1300 college students, com-paring their number for each statement with the
follow-ing mean scores (also on a scale from 1 to 7) from the researchers’ sample.
(1) Family support = 5.3
(2) Competition = 5.0
(3) Appearance = 4.9
(4) God’s love = 4.2
(5) Academic competence = 5.3
(6) Virtue = 5.5
(7) Others’ approval = 4.6
Crocker and Wolfe do not claim that this is an exhaustive list of the areas in which people find their selfworth or that one contingency is necessarily prefer-able to another. The list merely reflects some of the more
common domains that respondents identify as important to their self-esteem. Perhaps your students can
identify other domains that might be important.
The source of our self-esteem provides a powerful guide for our behavior. If our self-worth is rooted in
being virtuous, we will act quite differently from some-one whose self-esteem is based on appearance.
In a study of 600 college freshmen, self-esteem based on appearance was linked to spending more
hours per week grooming, shopping, and partying. Self-esteem rooted in God’s love was linked to spending
more hours in religious activities, such as praying and going to church, synagogue, or mosque, and to fewer
hours partying. Self-esteem based on academic compe-tence was associated with greater success in
gaining admission to graduate school.
Crocker and Wolfe argue that major problems such as depression, drug abuse, and aggression may be
linked not so much to our general level of self-esteem as to the source of our self-esteem. For example,
research indicates that basing one’s self-esteem on phys-ical appearance increases one’s susceptibility to
eating disorders. Similarly, people who have high but fragile self-esteem that is based on social approval
seem espe-cially prone to anger and hostility when others chal-lenge them.
People who are unable to secure self-respect on one basis may shift to another source. Frustrated in
their pursuit of self-esteem, they may even reject goals that are important to a successful life. Some
research sug-gests that the high drop-out rate among African-American college students is the result of
disconnecting self-worth from academic performance after numerous frustrating attempts to succeed in an
environment that assumes they are academically inferior. Others who don’t have the means to garner a
positive image on the basis of good grades in school or strong relations with peers may organize their self-
esteem around strength, power, or physical superiority. Shifting sources of self-worth also explains why
overall level of self-esteem does not decline as we grow older. As people age, con-tingencies of self-worth
typically shift from competition and appearance to a more internal and intrinsic basis such as virtue or family.
More recently, Crocker and Katherine Knight have challenged the notion that self-esteem is a
fundamental human need and have argued that, in fact, pursuing self-esteem by attempting to prove one is a
success—for example, through competition or appearance—is costly. Although the successful pursuit of
self-esteem may have short-term emotional benefits such as increased happiness, such boosts are
“analogous to sugar: tasty but not nutritious.” The long-range pursuit of self-esteem has costs for learning,
relatedness, autonomy, self-regulation, and, over time, physical and mental health. People are distracted
from the task, become focused on themselves rather than on others, feel pres-sured, and experience
extraordinary stress. Rather than attempting to help children find some area in which they can prove their
self-worth, parents and teachers might better help children by focusing on what they want to contribute,
create, or accomplish and what they need to learn or improve in themselves in order to do so.
Crocker, J., & Knight, K. M. (2005). Contingencies of self-worth. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14,
200–203.
Crocker, J., Luhtanen, R., Cooper, M. L., & Bouvrette, A. (2003). Contingencies of self-worth in college students:
Theory and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 894–908.
Crocker, J., & Wolfe, C. T. (2001). Contingencies of self-worth. Psychological Review, 108, 593–623.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Dark Side of Self-Esteem In a Psychological Review article, Roy
Baumeister and his colleagues draw the following provocative conclusion: “The societal pursuit of high
self-esteem for everyone may literally end up doing considerable harm.” In a massive interdisciplinary
review of the literature on aggression, crime, and violence, the authors conclude that high (not low)
self-esteem underlies violent behavior, particularly “favorable self-appraisals that may be inflated or illfounded and that are confronted with an external evaluation that disputes them.” In short, some people
turn aggressive when they receive feedback that contradicts their favorable images of themselves.
Clearly, Baumeister and his colleagues are not say-ing that everyone with high self-esteem is
predisposed to violence. Rather, it is primarily those who refuse to lower their inflated self-appraisals
who become violent. Teenagers who do not feel they have received the respect they deserve are more
likely to strike out than those who genuinely believe themselves unworthy. Studies of murder, rape,
domestic abuse, and even ter-rorism show that violence occurs when a person with a high, often
inflated, opinion of himself or herself is challenged by someone considered inferior. For exam-ple, one
study of sexual offenders found that rapists sometimes choose a particular victim in order “to disa-buse
her of her sense of superiority. That is, the woman gave the man the impression that she thought she
was better than he was and so he raped her as a way of proving her wrong.”
Another interesting example of the relationship between high self-esteem and aggression involves racist
violence. Nazism includes an ideology of racial superiority that justifies violence against those deemed
weak or inferior. At its peak, the Ku Klux Klan was most vio-lent toward two groups that challenged the idea
of White supremacy, namely upwardly mobile Blacks and Whites who helped Blacks by treating them as
equals. One study of Whites belonging to hate groups indicated that those engaged in violent behavior
actually were better educated and had higher career aspirations than the less violent members of such
groups.
Baumeister and his colleagues conclude that if, as some have argued, low self-esteem (or even hidden
self-doubts) is the cause of violence, “it would be therapeutically prudent to make every effort to convince
rapists, murderers, wife-beaters, professional hit men, tyrants, torturers, and others that they are superior
beings.” However, there is clear evidence that this is something they already believe. “If any modifications to
self-appraisals were to be attempted,” suggest the authors, “then perhaps it would be better to try instilling
modesty and humility.”
Clearly, questions about the relationship between self-esteem and aggression continue. M. Brent
Donnellan and his colleagues reported a significant relationship between low self-esteem and real-world
externalizing problems such as delinquency and antiso-cial behavior. The relationship held for research
partici-pants from both the United States and New Zealand and for both adolescents and college students. In
attempting to reconcile their findings with Baumeister’s results, the researchers suggest that we must draw a
distinction between narcissism (Baumeister’s primary focus) and healthy self-regard. They believe it is
reasonable to con-clude that both low self-esteem and narcissism con-tribute to externalizing problems.
In addition, Donnellan and his colleagues suggest that self-esteem may relate differently to laboratory
aggression than it does to real-world aggression. For example, lab studies typically examine aggression
pro-voked by a competitive task in which self-evaluation processes have been activated. It may be socially
appropriate to blast one’s opponent with white noise in the context of an experiment that has been
sanctioned by a school. In contrast, real-world externalizing prob-lems occur in a wide range of contexts and
may have distinct correlates. Clearly, real-world externalizing problems are explicitly undesirable,
antisocial, and in most cases illegal.
Baumeister, R. F., Smart, L., & Boden, J. M. (1996). The relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. Psychological Review, 103, 5–33.
Donnellan, M. B., et al. (2005). Low self-esteem is relat-ed to aggression, antisocial behavior and delinquency.
Psychological Science, 16, 328–335.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: The Sociometer Theory of Self-Esteem
The construct of self-esteem has long occupied a cen-tral place in psychology. Some psychologists have
assumed that people have an inherent need to feel good about themselves. Humanistic psychologists
suggest that self-esteem tells us when we are behaving in self-determined, autonomous ways. Still other
psychologists propose that people seek high self-esteem because it fosters goal achievement.
Mark Leary has proposed that self-esteem is a psy-chological meter or gauge that monitors the quality
of people’s relationships with others. His sociometer theo-ry states that the so-called self-esteem motive
does not function first of all to maintain self-esteem but rather to minimize the likelihood of social rejection or
more pre-cisely relational devaluation. The theory assumes that people’s pervasive drive to maintain
significant inter-personal relationships evolved because early human beings who belonged to social groups
were more likely to survive and reproduce than those who did not. Leary argues that in focusing on the
monitor rather than on what it measures, psychologists have been distracted from the underlying
interpersonal process and the importance of social acceptance to human well-being.
Leary argues that sociometer theory provides a par-simonious explanation for much of what we know
about self-esteem. For example, it explains why events that are known by others have much greater effects
on self-esteem than events only known by individuals them-selves. It also accounts for why the primary
determi-nants of self-esteem involve the perceived reactions of others as well as self-judgments on
dimensions that the person thinks are important to significant others. Most often, self-esteem is lowered by
criticism, rejection, and other events that have negative implications for relation-al evaluation. On the other
hand, self-esteem is positive-ly associated with the belief that one possesses socially desirable attributes
such as competence, personal lika-bility, and physical attractiveness.
Sociometer theory challenges the humanistic assumption that self-esteem based on the approval of
others is false or unhealthy. If, in fact, the function of self-esteem is to avoid social ostracism, then the system
must be responsive to others’ reactions. Sociometer the-ory also challenges the notion that low self-esteem
is a cause of psychological difficulties such as depression, loneliness, substance abuse, or criminal
behavior. Leary notes that, in fact, the relationships between self-esteem and psychological problems is
weaker and more scat-tered than typically assumed. Moreover, problems are not caused by low self-esteem
but rather by a history of low relational evaluation if not outright social rejection. As a gauge of relational
evaluation, self-esteem may parallel these problems, but it is a co-effect, not a cause.
Leary, M. (1999). Making sense of self-esteem. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8, 32–35.
Classroom Exercise: Self-Concept Clarity
A good classroom complement to the text discussion of self-esteem is self-concept clarity. It refers to the
extent to which the contents of an individual’s self-concept (e.g., perceived personal attributes) are clearly
and con-fidently defined, internally consistent, and temporally stable. Handout 10–23 is Jennifer Campbell
and her colleagues’ Self-Concept Clarity Scale. In obtaining a total score, students should first reverse the
numbers they gave in response to items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 (1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1) and
then add the numbers in front of all the items. Total scores can range from 12 to 60, with higher scores
reflecting greater self-concept clarity. Mean scores for males and females are approximately 40 and 39,
respectively.
Ask students how self-concept clarity might make a difference in a person’s life. Campbell and her
associ-ates’ research indicated that self-concept clarity showed a strong positive relationship to selfesteem. If there is a causal relationship between clarity and self-esteem, its direction is unclear. Higher selfesteem may contribute to greater self-clarity, or vice versa. In terms of the “Big Five” personality
dimensions, self-concept clarity was positively related to conscientiousness, agreeableness, and emotional
stability but showed little correlation with extraversion or openness to experience. Findings also suggested
that whereas people with confused self-concepts may have a greater tendency toward chronic self-analysis,
they may be less in tune with their inter-nal states than people with more clearly articulated self-schemas.
Interestingly, Japanese research participants showed lower levels of self-concept clarity and lower
correlations of self-concept clarity with self-esteem. You might ask students to explain these latter relationships in terms of Japan being a more collectivist society.
Campbell, J. D., et al. (1996). Self-concept clarity: Measurement, personality correlates, and cultural bound-aries.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 141–156.
B. Self-Serving Bias (pp. 513–516)
Classroom Exercise: The Name-Letter Effect
Angela Lipsitz and Lance Gifford suggest using the name-letter effect to illustrate self-serving bias as well
as processing without conscious awareness. Both are important topics in this unit.
Research indicates that people think of the letters in their own name as better letters. This name-letter
effect may be a specific example of the mere ownership effect—valuing objects that are part of oneself more
than objects that are not.
To demonstrate the name-letter effect distribute a copy of Handout 10–24 to each student.
Acknowledge that, although the task may seem silly, you would like them to rate how much they like
each letter. Each student should do so rapidly just giving immediate impressions.
After everyone has finished, have each student print his or her first and last names at the top of the
handout. Next, explain the meaning of the letters above the columns on the right: IYFN represents “in your
first name,” NIYFN stands for “not in your first name,” IYLN represents “in your last name,” and “NIYLN”
stands for “not in your last name.” Tell students to fill in the rating for each letter under the appropriate column and finally calculate the mean for each column. Then ask, “How many of you had a higher average for
letters in your first name than for letters not in your first name?” Most hands will go up. Repeating the
question for the last name will typically give the same result.
Explain the name-letter and mere-ownership effects. Indicate that they have been found in over a dozen
languages. Through careful research, psycholo-gists have shown that the name-letter effect is not due to
name letters being more frequent, to an attachment to letters first written, or to participants guessing the
purpose of the research.
Lipsitz, A., & Gifford, L. A. (2003). The name-letter effect. Teaching of Psychology, 30, 58–59.
Classroom Exercise: Biased Self-Ratings USA Today “Snapshots” provide good examples of self-serving
bias. A total of 85 percent of respondents rated their own manners as good or excellent but only 23 per-cent
rated others’ manners as good or excellent. Similarly, a survey several years ago of NFL rookies found no
lack of self-esteem. Asked to identify their favorite athlete, 5 percent identified Michael Johnson; 7 percent
indicated Barry Sanders; another 7 percent, Deion Sanders; 13 percent, Jerry Rice; 28 percent, Michael
Jordan; and 28 percent identified themselves. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reports that adolescents have
particularly unrealistically high expectations of becom-ing professionals. In his survey, 15 percent expected
to become either doctors or lawyers (about 15 times more than the actual number of doctors and lawyers in
the labor force). And the 6 percent who expected to become professional athletes were overestimating their
chances by about 500-fold.
Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch have found that self-serving bias extends to more automatic, perceptual judgments as well. They reported that people see their own faces as being more physically attractive
than they actually are. In the study, participants’ faces were made more or less attractive using a morphing
procedure. Epley and Whitchurch found that partici-pants were more likely to recognize themselves in an
attractively enhanced version from a lineup that includ-ed their actual face along with attractive and unattractive morphs. The participants also identified an attrac-tively enhanced version of their face more quickly in a
lineup of distractor faces. The enhancement bias corre-lated with implicit but not explicit measures of selfesteem. This latter finding is consistent with the notion that this particular form of self-serving bias is
relatively automatic rather than a deliberative process.
On nearly any dimension that is both subjective and socially desirable, most people see themselves as
better than average. Handout 10–25 provides a vivid demon-stration of the better-than-average
phenomenon. Have students complete the exercise and then calculate their mean rating for the 15 items and
write it at the top of the sheet. To avoid invading privacy, collect the hand-outs, shuffle, and redistribute so
each student reports another’s score. By a show of hands ask how many have a mean over 5.0. Virtually
every hand will go up.
Handout 10–26, designed by John Brink, provides another dramatic demonstration of self-serving bias.
There’s an extremely high correlation between our self-rating on a trait and its perceived importance to us.
Although you may want to collect the handouts and cal-culate the correlations for the entire class, it’s not
neces-sary. The effect is so powerful students will see it by simply examining their own responses.
Three explanations have been offered for self-serving bias. First, self-presentation theory states that we
like to present a good image both to an external audience (other people) and to an internal audience
(ourselves). This explains why people express more modesty when their self-flattery is vulnerable to being
debunked or when experts will be scrutinizing their self-evaluations. The other two explanations suggest
that we genuinely perceive ourselves in self-enhancing ways. First, self-serving bias is a by-product of the
way we process and remember information about ourselves. For example, we may assume more
responsibility for our successes than for our failures because we intend success, and our efforts usually do
produce positive out-comes. If we occasionally fail, it makes sense for us to blame unusual circumstances.
Second, we are strongly motivated to protect and enhance our self-esteem. Studies indicate that the
emotions we experience after success and failure play a role in self-serving bias. For example, after people
have completed a test, those given information that implicates their self-esteem by casting doubt on their
ability exhibit greater self-serving bias than do people who are less ego-involved.
Epley, N., & Whitchurch, E. (2008). Mirror, mirror on the wall: Enhancement in self-recognition. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1159–1170.
Myers, D. G. (2008). Social psychology (9th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Classroom Exercise: Self-Handicapping
Self-handicapping—protecting one’s self-image by cre-ating a ready excuse for failure—is an interesting
topic for class discussion. It fits well with the text discussion of self-serving bias. As the text notes, we often
protect our self-image by attributing our failure to external factors rather than to ourselves. And with selfhandicap-ping, we enhance the opportunity to externalize failure. If we fear failure on a job interview, for
example, we might deliberately party the night before. Similarly, we might avoid studying before an
important exam. If we fail, we have a ready excuse and we have not damaged our sense of competence. If
we succeed, we have done so despite a significant obstacle. Only when we are pro-vided a ready excuse for
failure does self-handicapping become unnecessary. Self-handicapping creates a no-lose situation for our
self-esteem, as shown in Michael Strube’s review of research. Researchers have shown, for example, that
high self-handicapping intercollegiate swimmers and golfers practice little or not at all prior to competitions
that pose a threat to their self-esteem. Similarly, shy individuals are more likely to admit to shyness in
situations where their performance might be evaluated negatively. Interestingly, when students were
required to solve anagrams, they performed best on those that were alleged to be very difficult when
supposedly distracting music was played. Having an excuse for failure, students could try hard without
risking their self-esteem.
In a series of studies, Miron Zuckerman and Fen-Fang Tsai examined the association of selfhandicapping to various health-related measures. They found that, over time, self-handicappers scored
lower on measures of well-being, higher on negative mood and symptoms, lower on competence
satisfaction, higher on substance use (of alcohol and marijuana, for example), and lower on intrinsic
motivation. Zuckerman and Tsai report that self-handicapping was related over time to lower self-esteem,
and lower self-esteem was also related over time to higher self-handicapping. These reciprocal relations
between self-handicapping and poor adjustment tend to make a bad situation worse.
Once you have students thinking about self-handicapping behavior, administer the Self-Description
Inventory designed by Edward Jones and Frederick Rhodewalt (Handout 10–27). It is called the SelfDescription Inventory so as not to give its purpose away. Reverse the score for items 3, 5, 6, 10, 13, 20, 22,
and 23 (5 = 0, 4 = 1, 3 = 2, 2 = 3, 1 = 4, 0 = 5).The mean scores for undergraduate males and females were
32.99 and 33.15, respectively.
Rhodewalt, F. (1990). Self-handicappers: Individual dif-ferences in the preference for anticipatory, self-protective
acts. In R. L. Higgins, C. R. Snyder, & S. Berglas (Eds.), Self-handicapping: The paradox that isn’t. New York:
Plenum.
Strube, M. F. (1986). An analysis of the self-handicap-ping scale. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 7, 211–
224.
Zuckerman, M., & Tsai, F. F. (2005). Costs of self-handicapping. Journal of Personality, 73, 411–442.
Classroom Exercise: Taking Credit for Success, Denying Responsibility for Failure
Studies indicate that people readily accept credit for success but attribute failure to such external factors as
bad luck or a problem’s inherent “impossibility.” Handing back a psychology test provides a good
opportunity to demonstrate this self-serving bias. After students have received their score and grade on a
test, distribute Handout 10–28 and have them complete it. Collect the questionnaires and, between class
sessions, perform the necessary calculations. Do a median split on the basis of test performances and
calculate the mean ratings on each item of Handout 10–28 for high scorers and then for low scorers.
Comparisons between these ratings will show that those who did well are more likely to attrib-ute their scores
to their ability or effort, while those who performed poorly are more likely to explain their performance in
terms of test difficulty or bad luck. The latter are also less likely to see the test as a good meas-ure of what
they know. When you report these results to your students, be sure to note that teachers make simi-lar
attributions, taking credit for positive outcomes of their students and blaming failure on the student.
C. Culture and the Self (pp. 516–518)
Feature Film: Antz The opening scene (titled “Insignificantz” on DVD) from Antz contains the following
Woody Allen quote: “It’s this whole gung-ho superorganism thing that— that, you know, I can’t get. I try, but I
don’t get it. I mean, what is it? I’m supposed to do everything for the colony? And—and what about my
needs? What about me?” The clip that runs 6:20 minutes is an amusing study in the personal conflict that an
individualist worker ant faces in trying to fit into a collectivist colony. As the story opens, he is in therapy
struggling to find his identity. We see him next operating in the collective, where he is reminded that life is
“about us” and not “about me.” He becomes part of a giant wrecking ball composed of millions of ants; only
by working together do they accomplish their task. The short clip provides an excellent introduction to the
major value contrasts associated with individualism and collectivism.
Classroom Exercise: Assessing Individualism/ Collectivism
You can introduce this important topic of cultural difference with Richard Brislin’s “Who am I?” exercise. The
instructions are straightforward.
Please write 20 different statements in response to the simple question (addressed to yourself), Who am I?
Begin each statement with I am . . . Respond as if you are giving answers to yourself, not to someone else.
Write your answers in the order that they occur to you. Do not worry about importance or logic. Go fairly fast.
Students score their responses by doing a simple content analysis. They should examine each answer
and score it as an “S” if it implies a “social” response (e.g., I am a son = family; I am a Catholic = religious
group; I am a member of the XYZ Athletic Club = club). Those who have “S” scores in the 20+ percent range
are considered to be “collectivists”—they are more likely to define themselves in terms of their social groups;
those with “S” scores in the zero to 15 percent range are con-sidered to be “individualists”—they define their
identity mostly in terms of their personal attributes, not their social groups. If most of your students are
American-born, the number of social attributions is likely to be low. They are much more likely than
Japanese and Chinese students to complete the sentence “I am . . .” with “I am sincere” or “I am confident”
and much less likely to say, “I am a Keio student” or “I am the third son in my family.” In fact, in using this
exercise, Harry Triandis reports that the most common score (mode) of University of Illinois undergraduates
is zero.
Handout 10–29, designed by Karen and Kenneth Dion for use in research with students and based on
items originally developed by Breer and Locke (1965), is a more direct measure of individualism/collectivism.
To score, students should reverse the numbers they placed in front of items 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, and 15 (1 =
5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1).Then they should add all the numbers for a total score, which ranges from 15 to
75. The higher the score, the greater the collectivist tendency.
You might combine these scales with another exer-cise suggested by Harry Hui in which you simply ask
students to free associate, first to the word “individual-ism,” then to the word “collectivism.” Hui notes that
American students may quickly respond to the former with answers like “maturity,” “independence,” and
“self-reliance,” whereas they may struggle to come up with responses to the latter. In contrast, Chinese
students may respond to “individualism” with terms such as “egoism,” “selfishness,” even “Nazism.” On the
other hand, “collectivism” may elicit responses such as “patriotism” and “altruism.”
Breer, P., & Locke, E. (1965). Task experience as a source of attitudes. Homewood, IL: Dorsey.
Brislin, R. (1988). Increasing awareness of class, ethnici-ty, culture, and race by expanding on students’ own experiences. In I. S. Cohen (Ed.), The G. Stanley Hall lecture series (Vol. 8, pp. 137–180). Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Dion, K., & Dion, K. (1991). Psychological individualism and romantic love. Journal of Social Behavior and
Personality, 6, 17–33.
Classroom Exercise: Independent and Interdependent Selves
The text states that collectivism encourages the devel-opment of the interdependent self, whereas
individual-ism promotes the independent self. A good introduction to culture and the self is Theodore M.
Singelis’ (1994) revised measures of independent and interdependent self-construals, which is reprinted in
Handout 10–30. Students should add the numbers they placed before items 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 15, 18, 20,
22, 24, 26, and 28 to assess the strength of their independent self. Similarly, they should add the numbers
they placed before items 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, and 27 to assess the strength of their
interdependent self. In each case, total scores can range from 15 to 98, with higher numbers reflecting
higher degrees of inde-pendence or interdependence. Singelis’ research has indicated that these two
aspects of self are separate fac-tors and thus do not constitute a continuum.
Singelis suggests that an independent self-construal includes an emphasis on (1) internal abilities,
thoughts, and feelings; (2) being unique and expressing the self;
(3) realizing internal attributes and promoting one’s own goals; and (4) being direct in
communication. Similarly, he explains that an interdependent self-construal is a “flexible, variable self ” that
emphasizes
(1) external, public features such as status, roles, and relationships; (2) belonging and fitting in; (3)
occupy-ing one’s proper place and engaging in appropriate action; and (4) being indirect in communication
and “reading others’ minds.”
Singelis has shown that self-construals provide an important link between culture and behavior. In
responding to the criticism that cross-cultural studies often use culture as a “catch-all” variable to explain all
differences between national or ethnic groups, Singelis proposes that the effects of culture are often
mediated through an individual’s self-image. In short, culture shapes attitudes, values, and concepts of the
self. These individual differences, in turn, affect behavior. Among the fascinating links Singelis has
uncovered between these two selves and behavior is one between self-construal and embarrassability. As
predicted, he found embarrassability to be negatively associated with an independent self-construal and
positively related to an interdependent self-construal. In addition, Asian-Americans were more susceptible
to embarrassment than Euro-Americans.
Singelis, T. M. (1995). Culture, self, and collectivist communication: Linking culture to individual behavior. Human
Communication Research, 21, 354–389.
Singelis, T. M. (1995). Culture, self-construal, and embarrassability. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 26,
622–644.
Singelis, T. M. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-construals. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 580–591.
Lecture/Discussion Topic: Individualism Versus Collectivism
In discussing individualism and collectivism, you might note Harry Triandis’ observation that four kinds of
social patterns have been identified across cultures.
1
Community sharing is a pattern in which people know each other extremely well. Intimacy, cooperation, and self-sacrifice within the ingroup (for example, family, tribe) are emphasized.
2
Authority ranking is a pattern in which obedience, admiration, and giving and following orders without questioning are typical behaviors.
3
Equality matching involves equal-status friendship characterized by reciprocity. Taking turns and
dividing gains equally are common practice.
4
Market pricing involves the exchange of money for goods; friendship is instrumental and continues
only as long as the benefits outweigh the costs.
Triandis suggests that every culture emphasizes a particular combination of these four behavior
patterns. Cultures in traditional societies, especially those in East Asia, emphasize the first two patterns, and
cultures in northwestern Europe and North America emphasize the third and fourth patterns. These different
emphases rep-resent the contrast between collectivistic and individual-istic cultures, as well as the contrast
between cultures that are simple and homogeneous and those that are complex and heterogeneous.
People in simple, homogeneous cultures have few choices in terms of the groups they can join—either
their extended family or a few friends. The group is extremely important to the individual, and thus he or she
does what the group expects, that is, what the ingroup norms specify. Success is attributed to the help of
others, and failure is attributed to the individual’s own lack of ability. The cultural pattern is collectivism.
People in complex, heterogeneous cultures can belong to any number of groups; joining is a matter of
individ-ual choice. The individual joins if it pays to do so and leaves when the costs become excessive.
Behavior reflects personal attitude rather than ingroup norms. People attribute success to their own
intelligence, whereas failure is seen as the result of the difficulty of the task or bad luck. In short, the cultural
pattern is individualism. Triandis concludes that the contrast between individualism and collectivism is one
of the most important cultural differences in social behavior.
Typically, students are eager to discuss this differ-ence, and it’s easy to involve them in either smallgroup or full-class discussion by having them respond to a number of questions such as the following:
1. How do you think individualists and collectivists differ in their value systems? According to Triandis,
the values stressed by individualists are freedom, independence, autonomy, achievement, an exciting
life, winning the competition, and fair exchange. Collectivists’ values include security, obedience,
duty, interdependence, ingroup harmony, and self-restraint.
2. How do you think differences in individualism/ collectivism are likely to affect patterns of interaction
and relationships within—your family? your work group? your college or community? your classroom?
Almost by definition, the collectivism/individualism difference has its greatest impact on the patterns
of interaction within and between groups. The worst thing that can happen to a collectivist, notes
Triandis, is to be excluded from the ingroup. Thus, in relationships with-in the group, collectivists are
likely to sacrifice individual rights to the perceived well-being of the group. Collectivists value harmony
and allowing others within the group to save face. Direct confrontation and blunt honesty are rare.
Elders and superiors demand respect. Within the family, children are taught interdependence,
cooperation, and communal sensitivity. Collectivists agree that children should live with their parents
until they get married and that older parents should live with their children until they die. When there
is a clash between vertical (for example, parent to self) and hori-zontal (for example, spouse to self)
relationships, the vertical takes precedence. Similarly, in work groups, relationships are often long
term, and loyalties between employer and employees are strong. Within the classroom, cooperation
rather than competition is more likely the norm.
3. How do you think differences in individualism/collectivism are likely to influence the judgments made
of other groups and relationships between them? Which orientation is more likely to promote
ethnocentrism? altruism?
The worst thing that can happen to an individualist is to be dependent upon, and to have to conform to, the
ingroup. The individualist does not sacrifice personal welfare for the benefit of the group. Differences are
expressed openly and honestly. To gloss over them is judged insincere. Within the family, parents want their
children to become independent and self-reliant and to “show good judgment.” Children and adolescents
decide their own restaurant orders, open their own mail, choose their own friends, and chart their own goals
en route to leaving the family nest. The horizontal takes precedence over the vertical. Individualists feel free
to leave jobs, homes, and friends in search of better opportunities for themselves. In work and school
groups, competition rather than cooperation is likely the norm.
Although individualists may behave somewhat differently toward ingroups and outgroups, collectivists
make an even greater distinction between the groups. For example, collectivists are extremely hospitable,
cooperative, and helpful toward their ingroups, but can be rude, exploitative, and even hostile toward outgroups. More likely to help ingroup members, collectivists are also more likely to expect aid for themselves
should the need arise. Because social identity is so important, collectivists are somewhat quicker to judge
people by their group memberships. While individualists warn against stereotyping, collectivists maintain
that it helps to know people’s group identities. Individualists do prejudge people but more often by personal
attributes such as physical attractiveness.
4. What factors shape our becoming individualist or collectivist? How do gender, religious convictions,
and political attitudes influence individualism/ collectivism?
Triandis suggests that a major determinant of becoming a collectivist or an individualist is level of income.
Affluence enables independence from one’s ingroups; thus, the upper socioeconomic class tends to be more
individualistic than the lower class. Both social and geographic mobility also contribute to individualism.
Hunters, suggest Triandis, are less collectivistic than agricultural people because the latter must stay on the
land whereas the former can more easily walk away from their ingroups. Similarly, those who have migrated
to other countries tend to be more individualistic than those who have never moved. Movement from rural to
urban centers is also correlated with individualism.
Certain aspects of the environment can make peo-ple attend more to their ingroups. For example,
people who must dig large irrigation canals; build big, protec-tive walls; or share the products of their
hunting with their extended family become collectivists. Hunters may kill once every three or four days;
without refrigeration they must consume the animal quickly. One way to ensure immediate consumption
and enough to eat every day is to share what they kill, because the others will share as well. Similarly,
people may not be able to eat all they grow in their garden, and thus engage in mutual sharing with relatives
and friends. The system provides some protection from poor crops and bad weather.
The cultural difference in individualism versus collectivism parallels the gender difference in
independence versus social connectedness. Women’s greater con-nectedness seems to surface in
childhood. Whereas boys strive for independence, girls value interdepend-ence. Adult relationships extend
this difference: Men more often focus on tasks, women on relationships. Women are more likely to describe
themselves as having empathy, and their greater connectedness also is expressed in their smiling.
Research suggests that most men and women usually turn to women for empathy.
The relationship of religious and political attitudes to individualism/collectivism is probably more
complex. As merely one example, at one extreme, religious cults may include strong collectivistic
tendencies; on the other hand, religious persons may have belief systems that are strongly individualistic—
for example, in emphasizing self-reliance and personal accountability. Similarly, political orientation may
lead a person to make attributions that in certain respects parallel either an individualistic or collectivistic
orientation. Political conservatives tend to attribute social problems, such as poverty and unemployment, to
the personal dispositions of the poor and unemployed themselves and consider greater self-reliance to be
the answer. Political liberals are more likely to blame past and present situations and to call for a collective
response.
5. How do these two different orientations affect our personal and social well-being? Should present
emphases be changed? Are there ways of capturing the best of both individualism and collectivism?
Individualists enjoy more personal freedom, take greater pride in their achievements, enjoy more privacy,
live with greater spontaneity, and are more creative. Individualists are less dependent and more self-reliant.
But these advantages may have a high cost. Rugged individualism may be associated with greater loneliness, higher divorce rates, more homicide, and increased vulnerability to stress-related disease. Martin
Seligman has observed that “rampant individualism carries within it two seeds of its own destruction. First, a
society that exalts the individual to the extent ours now does will be ridden with depression. . . . Second, and
perhaps most important, is meaninglessness [which occurs when there is no] attachment to something
larger than you are.”
Elsewhere, David Myers explains how some social scientists are advocating a communitarian synthesis
of the best of individualist and collectivist values. The goal is to balance individual rights with the collective
right to communal well-being. This blend can already be seen in some Western cultures—for example,
Britain’s attempt to strengthen the individual incentives of a free-market economy while restricting individual
rights of gun ownership and Canada’s openness to cultural diversity while imposing restraints on violent
pornography.
Myers, D. G. (2000). Exploring social psychology (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Triandis, H. C. (1994). Social behavior and culture. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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