Psychology 305A:
Personality Psychology
November 14
Lecture 19
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Scoring Your Questionnaire: SA
1. Reverse score items 2, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 14.
41
32
23
14
2. Sum your responses to the 15 items.
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A little R&R ….
(Review and Reflect)
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The Cognitive and Motive Perspectives
1. Can personality be described in terms of “cognitive
styles?” (continued)
2. What are needs?
3. What are motives?
4. What is environmental press?
5. How are needs measured?
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By the end of today’s class, you should be able to:
1. describe the construct: need for cognition.
2. identify the correlates of: need for cognition.
3. describe Mischel’s cognitive-social learning person
variables.
4. define the term need.
5. distinguish between Murray’s categories of needs.
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6. distinguish between a need and motive.
7. define the term environmental press.
8. describe contemporary measures of needs.
9. identify common criticisms of contemporary measures
of needs.
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Can personality be described in terms of “cognitive styles?”
(continued)
4. Need for Cognition
 Defined as “the tendency for an individual to engage in
and enjoy thinking.”
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 Need for Cognition Scale (NC):
 Alpha reliability coefficient: .85
 Maximum possible score: 90
 Mean (university students): 62.3 (SD = 9.6)
 Scores associated with:
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 the use of planful, self-regulated study strategies and
higher grades.
 less ambivalence about holding conflicting attitudes.
 greater curiosity.
 higher levels of intelligence.
 higher self-esteem (general and social).
 lower social anxiety.
 greater life satisfaction.
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 With respect to the Big 5, need for cognition is:
(a) positively correlated with O and C.
(b) negatively correlated with N.
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5. Cognitive-Social Learning Person Variables
 Mischel suggested 5 cognitive variables be used to
describe personality:
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(a) Competencies.
(b) Encoding strategies and personal constructs (i.e.,
schemas, self-beliefs).
(c) Expectancies.
(d) Subjective values.
(e) Self-regulatory systems and plans.
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What are needs?
• “A need is a physiochemical force in the brain that
organizes perception, intellection, and action in such a
way as to transform an unsatisfying situation into a more
satisfying one” (Murray, 1981).
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• Murray identified several categories of needs.
• Each person’s needs can be rank ordered from
strongest to weakest, creating a “hierarchy of needs”
that characterizes the person’s personality.
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What are motives?
• According to Murray, motives:
(a) are elicited by needs.
(b) influence thought.
(c) direct behaviour toward or away from specific objects,
people, or goals.
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E.g.,
Thought (thinking of
last night’s dinner,
fantasizing about a big
meal, perceiving a rock
as a loaf of bread)
Need
(for food)
Motive
(hunger)
Behaviour (prepare a
meal, go to a restaurant)
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What is environmental press?
• Refers to any environmental or situational factor that
influences people’s motives.
• Through its influence on motives, environmental press
can alter thought and behaviour.
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E.g.,
Thought (thinking of
last night’s dinner,
fantasizing about a big
meal, perceiving a rock
as a loaf of bread)
Need
(for food)
Motive
(hunger)
Environmental press
(upcoming exam, exposure
to a noxious stimulus)
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Behaviour (prepare a
meal, go to a restaurant)
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E.g.,
Thought (I’ll eat after I
finish reading this
chapter, I’ll fail the exam
if I don’t focus on
studying right now)
Need
(for food)
Motive
(hunger)
Environmental press
(upcoming exam)
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Behaviour (continue
studying)
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How are needs measured?
1. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and Picture Story
Exercise (PSE)
 Currently, the most widely used measures of needs.
 Involves presenting participants with images that depict
ambiguous situations.
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 Instructions for the TAT:
I am going to show you some pictures, one at a time,
and your task will be to make up a story for each card.
In your story, be sure to tell what has led up to the
event shown in the picture, describe what is happening
at the moment, what the characters are feeling and
thinking, and give the outcome. Tell a complete story
with a beginning, middle, and end. Do you
understand? I will write your stories verbatim as
you tell them. Here’s the first card.
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 Assumes that people’s needs influence how they
interpret ambiguous stimuli.
 A projective test; participants “project” their needs onto
the images.
 “Apperception” refers to the process of projecting
needs onto external stimuli; may be conscious or
unconscious.
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 A participant’s stories are analyzed to identify her/his
dominant needs; this is accomplished by counting
references to specific needs.
 The dominant needs form the defining characteristics
of the participant’s personality.
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Interpretation 1
This is a picture of a woman who all of her life has been a
very suspicious and conniving person. She’s looking in the
mirror and she sees reflected behind her an image of what
she will be as an old woman—still a suspicious, conniving
sort of person. She can’t stand the thought that that’s what
her life will eventually lead her to and she smashes the
mirror and runs out of the house screaming and goes out of
her mind and lives in an institution for the rest of her life.
Dominant needs: n Abasement, n Dominance, ….
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Interpretation 2
This woman has always emphasized beauty in her life. As a
little girl she was praised for being pretty and as a young
woman was able to attract lots of men with her beauty.
While secretly feeling anxious and unworthy much of the
time, her outer beauty helped to disguise these feelings from
the world and, sometimes, from herself. Now that she is
getting on in years and her children are leaving home, she is
worried about the future. She looks in the mirror and
imagines herself as an old hag—the worst possible person
she could become, ugly and nasty—and wonders what the
future holds for her. It is a depressing time for her.
Dominant needs: n Abasement, n Defendance, n Exhibition ….
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Thematic Apperception Test
Images
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By the end of today’s class, you should be able to:
1. describe the construct: need for cognition.
2. identify the correlates of: need for cognition.
3. describe Mischel’s cognitive-social learning person
variables.
4. define the term need.
5. distinguish between Murray’s categories of needs.
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6. distinguish between a need and motive.
7. define the term environmental press.
8. describe contemporary measures of needs.
9. identify common criticisms of contemporary measures
of needs.
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