Name: _____________________________
Date: _____________________________
Introduction to Psychology
Mr. LaBrache
Psychology and Personality
Theories and Perspectives on Personality Formation and Analysis
I.
Approaches to Personality
A. The Trait Approach
1. Psychologists: Hans Eysenck
2. General idea of why people behave differently
3. Describe peoples’ personalities by specifying their main
___________________ (traits).
4. These traits are inborn and _________________
B. Personal Construct Theory of Personality
1. Psychologists: George Kelly
2. Constructs (ideas of the world) are flexible
3. ______________ are templates that people fit over the world and they try
to predict what is to come.
a. When prediction is wrong, they adjust the construct
4. People form personality based on the meaning that they get from the
_______ around them and they can choose and develop different meanings.
C. Challenges to Trait Theory
1. Focuses on Traits and not ________________
a. There is little link to ______________ factors
b. Does not really explain the origin of traits
c. Does not focus on how undesirable traits can be changed
2. Person-Situation Controversy
a. Trait Psychologists – people have _____________ personalities that
guide their actions through scenarios
b. Situationists – people change from situation to situation and cannot
be put into one personality trait
D. The Psychoanalytic Approach
1. Psychologist: Sigmund Freud
2. Id
a. Exists entirely in the unconscious
b. Hidden wants and desires
c. _______________ Principle
d. Avoid pain and receive instant gratification
3. Ego
a. Develops after Id
b. _____________ Principle
c. Negotiates between the Id and the environment
d. It is what everyone sees as our personality.
4. SuperEgo
a. Develops last at about the age of 5
b. Our ________________
c. The Ego often mediates between the superego and Id.
5. Oedipus Complex
a. Boy’s sexual desire for his mother and feelings of jealousy and
hatred for father
b. Electra complex: girl’s desire for her father
6. Defense Mechanisms
a. Protect you from threatening thoughts in our unconscious
b. One way it protects us is through defense mechanisms
c. You are usually unaware that they are even occurring
7. Repression
a. Pushing thoughts into our _______________
b. When asked about Jasmine, Brandon may say “Who? I have not
thought about her for a while.”
8. Denial
a. Not accepting the ego-threatening truth
b. Brandon may act like he is still together with Jasmine
9. Displacement
a. Redirecting one’s feelings toward another person or object
b. Often displaced on ____________ threatening things.
c. Brandon may take his anger on another kid by bullying
10. Projection
a. Putting our own “crap” onto others
b. Brandon insists that Jasmine is controlling even though he is the
controlling one
11. Reaction Formation
a. Expressing the __________ of how one truly feels
b. Cootie stage in Freud’s Latent Development
c. Brandon claims he hates Jasmine
12. Regression
a. Returning to an earlier, ___________ form of behavior
b. Brandon begins to sleep with his favorite childhood stuffed animal
13. Rationalization
a. Coming up with a beneficial result of an undesirable outcome
b. Brandon thinks he will find a better girlfriend.
14. Sublimation
a. Channeling one’s frustration toward a different ___________
b. Brandon starts to learn how to play the guitar and writing songs (or
maybe starts to body build).
15. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
a. Psychologist: Henry A. Murray
b. Subject compose a narrative based off an image
c. It will reveal the subjects view of the social world, as well as their
motives and concerns
d. So involved with the story that they will not realize that they have
let their “guard down” and divulge valuable information
E. The Humanistic Approach
1. Psychologists: Abraham Maslow & Carl Rogers
2. Personality is formed by free choice and action
3. Maslow: people are motivated by a hierarchy of needs
4. Before reach “self-actualization” must work their way through the
pyramid
5. There is a freedom of choice in the quest to reach the top
F. The Learning Approach
1. Behaviorism
a. Psychologists: John Watson & B.F. Skinner
b. No traits nor inner conflict form personality, rather, external
forces/influences
c. Reinforcement the real influence on behavior
d. Personality is formed by free choice and action
e. Through socialization people learn socially desirable behaviors and
then adopt them as part of personalities
2. Social-Learning
a. Psychologists: Albert Bandura
b. Learning through observation
c. Don’t need to “experience” all learning, but can learn by watching
and “modeling” other people