Unit 2: Personality
Lesson 1: Personality Theories
• Personality is the organized system of behaviors,
attitudes and values that characterize an
individual and account for a particular way in
which to function in the environment.
• Personality psychology is the study of these
characteristics as they make a person different
from others and consistent within themselves.
• Like other areas of psychology, personality study
deals with characteristics common to all – but
unlike other areas, the emphasis is on individual
variations.
Video
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqad4BUV
ju4
Cross-over between personality theories as
explained using life and personality of Nelson
Mandela
Invictus – the poem and the movie
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oIKqeZW
jis
• Poem by William Ernest Henley
• Used in the movie because of connection to
Nelson Mandela’s life
Invictus by William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Psychoanalysis
• based on the assumption that how we develop and
behave is the result of impulses or needs that are
unknown to us.
• In other words, what we are comes from hidden
forces.
• The theory arose from a belief that people with
psychological problems were unable to see the
origin of their difficulties.
• To view these forces requires a trained professional
who will analyze one’s thoughts, feelings, and
history to reveal what is going on beneath the
surface. That’s how we got the term psychoanalysis.
Sigmund Freud
• The most famous psychoanalyst
• His theory of how we develop and what controls us dominated
psychology from the early 1900s through the late 1940s.
• Freud believed that the core of one’s personality appeared within the
first five or six years of life and was more or less fixed by that age.
• For him, individual development had its source in the family and the
conflicts that every family has.
• Our feelings about ourselves come from jealousies, anxieties, and guilt
regarding how we relate to other family members and how they view us.
Poor Freud 
• This emphasis is not hard to understand since Freud’s own family life was
chaotic. His father was 20 years old than his mother, had a couple of
children by a previous marriage, and he had a mistress as well.
• Freud’s mother then had eight children. At one point, there were the
eight children, a half-brother the age of Freud’s mother, the father, and a
nephew all living in the same cramped 30-foot by 30-foot room. It makes
sense that the family friction and unwanted intimacy this brought about
would lead to many of Freud’s beliefs.
Quirks about Freud
• Freud studied to become a physician and for a
while practiced medicine.
But two things changed the course of his life:
1) as he listened to patients, he became more
and more convinced that the problems they
were having were coming from psychological
forces rather than physical ones
2) he couldn’t stand the sight of blood.
Weird Cases
• One of Freud’s first patients was a woman who couldn’t drink water but who
stayed alive by eating only fruit such as melons. This clearly wasn’t a normal
sickness, and Freud couldn’t make sense of it at first.
• A physician friend of Freud’s told him that he had been successful in using
hypnosis with patients with strange symptoms in order to find out what was going
on.
• So Freud thought he would try it. Under hypnosis, the woman recalled that when
she was a child, she one day found a hated servant’s dog drinking out of a water
glass in the kitchen.
• Thus, it seemed that hypnosis helped Freud get to parts of the patient’s mind that
were unknown to her normally.
• Another colleague of Freud’s had a truly bizarre case: he was treating a female
patient for dizziness, fainting, and coughing spells. Before long, the woman had
what is called an “hysterical pregnancy.” The word hysteria refers to physical
symptoms that come from a psychological problem.
• In hysterical pregnancy, the patient has all the symptoms, pains and even a major
swelling of the abdomen (from body water) that goes on for nine months, so you
expect a baby when it is all over. But there is no baby in there. A few such cases
still occur every year, even on occasion to males.
The Unconscious
•
•
•
•
•
•
Freud believed that childhood conflicts within the family are removed from
conscious memory but are still “in us.” These events are held in the unconscious,
the part of us we are not aware of. Our true feeling sometimes appear in dreams
or in mistakes we make when speaking.
Freud claimed that if he talked to a patient long enough, he found some of the
material that was causing the trouble buried below the surface. So, he gave up
hypnosis as not needed and used his “talking cure.”
Freud reached the unconscious by using free association, a process in which the
patient says everything that appears in the mind, even if seemingly not connected.
In other words, no censoring is allowed. The basis for this method of treatment
was Freud’s assumption that the unconscious always seeks expression in one way
or another.
If the patient talked long enough, more and more of the unconscious would
appear in what was being said. The analyst could then put it all together into a
coherent picture and thus explain problem-causing behavior.
For example, if you have a deep-seated anger toward a friend, the more you talk
about this person the more likely it is that some unconscious material about what
caused the anger will appear.
• Freud was quite taken by the theory and writings of Charles Darwin.
Darwin’s work suggested that the human was basically an animal, even
though we have higher mental abilities as well as the ability to make moral
decisions.
• As a result, Freud focused on our behavior as mostly animal-like – our very
strong drives to satisfy bodily needs such as food comfort, sex, and selfpreservation.
• Since all human societies try to block expression of too much animal-like
behavior, we hide from them by putting them into our unconscious. If
everything we wanted to do was good, there would be no problem.
• But all of us have desires that we would just as soon no one else knew
about, so we make them disappear.
• This disappearance is called repression. According to Freud’s theory, from
childhood on, needs and desires that are forbidden cause guilt.
• As a result, they are pushed out of consciousness (repressed) into the
unconscious where they live. They do not remain quiet, however, but
reappear as conflicts and anxieties that interfere with daily life.
Id, Ego, Superego
• Freud’s Map of the Mind
• Freud divided the individual’s inner world into three
parts.
1. One is responsible for survival needs
2. Another for society’s rules of behavior
3. The third part deals with the real world and tries to
keep the demands of the other two in balance.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O78LXXGQFvE
In Cartoons
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVBCo7hZ
OPU
• Id – All of our basic needs and drives make up the id. Therefore, it contains
our major energy force which is constantly seeking expression. We cannot
know, directly, what goes on in the id because it is unconscious. It is also
completely unconcerned about any reality except its own desires. Because
of its emphasis on sexual and aggressive impulses, the id can cause many
psychological problems. Without it though, we would not eat when hungry
or defend ourselves if attached. We need it to survive.
• Superego – Although the id is necessary, if we acted out any impulse we had
at any time, society would fall apart. To hold the id in check, we each have,
according to Freud, a superego, a term that is an approximately synonym for
conscience. The superego causes guilt for being bad and pride for doing the
right things. It develops out of the punishments and rewards we get from
our parents, the first representatives of society’s laws and customs. We
need a superego, but like the id, it exists only for what it wants. If allowed to
operate unchecked, it would block all our drives and instincts, letting us die
rather than break a rule.
• Ego - The ego is roughly the same as the self. The ego’s job is to follow what
Freud called the reality principle. This means that the ego tries to satisfy id
impulses, but is realistic about it. The ego may delay satisfying the id, or
may find alternate behaviors.
• If the id says I want to eat – I want to eat NOW, the ego
says Well, it’s the middle swimming practice: you will
probably get into trouble – let’s wait. The superego on the
other hand, tries to stop the id, primarily through guilt:
How could you even think about eating at a time like this?
What would the coach say, or your parents?
• Freud believed that once our repressed conflicts surface
and we face them, whatever physical or psychological
symptoms we have will eventually disappear. The id and
superego are both irrational, to the point that a person can
become self-destructive if they were not controlled by the
rational ego.
Can you think of other examples of the
Id, Ego and Superego in books,
cartoons, movies?
Id, Ego and Superego in….
• Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the
Hat
http://www.youtube.com/w
atch?v=4jK6l1WJKUU
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
• According to Freud, adults’ psychological
problems have their roots in early childhood
and can be traced to unresolved conflicts
during that time.
• When a conflict is not adequately resolved,
some energy gets stuck, or fixated at that
stage.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Oral Stage: Birth to Age One-and-a-Half
- pleasure comes from feeding
- main problem is weaning
- When a child is weaned too early or too late, personality problems develop.
- Examples: too much dependency on other people, rejection of others or being very sarcastic,
and either overeating or self-starvation.
Anal Stage: Ages One-and-a-Half to Two-and-a-Half
- toilet training
- If parents are either too lenient or too harsh will cause psychological problems.
- Ex. being excessively stingy or overly generous, sticking very rigidly to rules and regulations or
being irresponsible and rebellious.
Phallic Stage: Ages Two-and-a-Half to Five or Six
- “Oedipus complex” = involves a desire to marry the opposite-sex parent along with jealous and
hostile feelings for the same-sex parent
- Fear of punishment involved and causes guilt
- Complicated set of emotions must be dealt with during this stage, which can be solved by
“identifying” with the parent of the same sex
- Failure to resolve this conflict can lead to unreasonable anxiety, extreme guilt, phobias, and
depression original in the phallic stage of development.
Latency Stage: Ages Six to Preadolescence
- Latent means below the surface, hidden and not obvious.
- Conflicts and problems from the earlier stages remain subdued or hidden.
Genital Stage: Adolescence Onward
- Seeking marriage and preparing for adult life
- Conflict of early childhood reappear
Carl Jung
• Believed humans are controlled by certain
beliefs we inherit.
• All these archetypes together make up the
collective unconscious.
• It is called collective (meaning “everyone
together”) because the ideas are shared by
the entire human race.
• Jung felt that it was “unconscious” since we
are not fully aware that we are part of these
forces.
Social Psychoanalytic Theories
Karen Horney
• strongly disagreed with Freud’s focus on biological
drives
• stressed a different dynamic than id, ego and
superego.
• Part of us wants to socialize; part of us at times
wants to withdraw; and there’s a part of us that
competes with the others. We must learn to
balance these three urges.
• claimed that the human feels most helpless, anxious and lost in life around the issues of
getting enough love.
• All of us need love badly, so we are constantly afraid that important people (like our
parents when we are very young) will not like us.
• This is so threatening that we build our personalities around fighting rejection.
• A person who does not receive love is one who is always anxious and afraid, anxiety
gradually builds up in the unconscious because of confused or inadequate social
relationships.
• dominated by social concerns
Alfred Adler
• Follower of Freud who also had trouble with
the heavy emphasis on biological needs
• He believed, like Horney, that social
interaction was the key to proper
development.
• biggest problems people face is trying to feel
important and worthwhile around others
• Those who are insecure struggle to make
themselves look better. They spend their
lives trying to dominate and control others in
order to avoid their own inner feelings of
inferiority.
• Ex. School bullies
• When one gets beneath the surface to the
unconscious, one finds that these people
doubt themselves, are afraid and weak;
hence, they take off after those who are
physically weaker in order to try to make
themselves feel important and strong.
Example of Sibling Rivalry
Alfred Adler Psych of Personality
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xczVfSurtr
c
Erik Erikson
Erikson’s theory is appealing because it implies that we can “rescue” ourselves from
problems almost any time in life, all the way up to old age.
Behaviorism
• The unconscious is ignored altogether.
• Early theories in this area focused on
our acts or behaviors as if we were
robots.
• According to these theories, our
personalities evolve from a series of
rewards or punishments without
concern about any deep motives.
• For example, those who drop out of school to work will, in the
long run, lose a great deal of money. But for the short term, each
week or so they get a lot more money than their friends who are
still in school. Thus, they are getting a continued series of
rewards that are more important than the pleas of their parents
to stay in school.
• Note that the psychoanalysts would claim that these people have
a deep-seated fear of failing in school or that they feel
unimportant. As a result, they use the fact that they are making
more money than their peers to feel superior.
John B. Watson
• He believed that if he had complete control of
a person’s environment from infancy, he could
make that person become absolutely anything
at all – doctor, lawyer, beggar, or thief.
• His best known research was on learned fears.
According to Watson, we are afraid of objects
or situations because of frightening
associations we have made to them in the
past.
B.F. Skinner
• Skinner had a very strict religious upbringing. His
grandmother used to hold his face over a stove of hot coals
to show him “what hell was like.”
• Later, when he was in school, he chose to withdraw from
social activities, and he spent his time reading science
books instead of going to movies, hanging around, or dating
much.
• If we were using the psychoanalytic method, we might
come up with the idea that these early events in his life
were part of what led him to see people in mechanical
terms: the negative associations he had with religion and
social activities may have developed his late picture of
people as mechanical rather than as thinking, reasoning
creatures.
• In any case, for the early Skinner, everything we do is the result of a
mechanical association of events with their consequences.
• For example, if you plan to go over to a friend’s house tonight but then later
in the day you decide to find a different with whom to go get something to
eat, this was not a voluntary decision on your part, according to Skinner.
• Instead, you added up the number of pleasant experiences you have had with
friend number one and those you have had with friend number two, and you
chose the second friend because you had more positive experiences with that
person.
• While you think you had a choice, you really didn’t. In the months to come,
the number of positive experiences with different people might change so
that you will choose friend number three.
• Thus, all our behaviors are the result of a series of reinforcements. Those who
make clothing know that there are certain parts of the shirt that take more of
a beating than others.
• If you haven’t bought something really cheap, the manufacturer will have
used extra stitches or material to reinforce these parts – make them stronger.
A similar thing happens to humans, according to Skinner’s system.
• Each time you laugh or share with friend A versus friend B, you reinforce the
odds that you’ll want to see friend A again. The same thing applies
throughout all personality development:
• If studying is reinforced by good grades, you will study more often; if
skipping school offers more reinforcement than it creates guilt, you will
continue to skip school.
Albert Bandura
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Believed that Skinner’s system is flawed because it doesn’t give a person enough
credit for being a thinking creature.
He does not deny that we learn a great number of things just by straight
association.
Ex. If you’re bitten by a dog, a cat, a raccoon, and a snake when you are growing
up, there’s no question that your personality will include a clear-cut fear of
animals.
On the other hand, we learn many things by using our ability to think, analyze, and
interpret.
Bandura feels that much of our personality comes from observing others and
modeling ourselves after them.
This process can be very complex, rather than just mechanical: if you observe an
alcoholic uncle in the family who is very friendly and outgoing and an aunt who is
a teetotaler but nasty and aggressive, your feelings for or against alcohol are going
to be very complex – something Skinner’s system doesn’t allow for.
Bandura still is behavioristic though, because he believes learning is a process of
association, but the organism interprets and chooses between associations rather
than just “counting” them and responding automatically to the one that for the
moment has the most positive reinforcements. In other words, the organism
performs an internal analysis.
Humanistic Theories
• As you might have guessed, some people soon objected to
what they saw as a rather depressing picture of us either as
a bubbling id trying to express itself or as a robot.
• These people considered Freud’s unconscious filled with id
impulses unacceptable and the behaviorist’s failure to
acknowledge the importance of personal experience
unworkable.
• In reaction to these theories, some psychologists
developed humanism, which emphasizes the whole person
with his or her positive potential and which accepts the
person as an individual human with all kinds of good
qualities.
• So the focus is on human qualities, which explains how the
name of this theory came about.
Carl Rogers
• The leading humanist, Carl Rogers was a minister for a while, but he
had trouble with the idea that people re sinful and bad. Instead, he
believed that we are all basically good.
• The biggest problem we have, he said, is living up to what he called
the ideal self.
• The ideal self is as close to perfection as one can get. We come into
the world ready to become this ideal self, but at times we fall by the
wayside while trying to get there. We are like a flower in our
potential.
• If the environment is halfway decent, we will grow into a human
who can be proud and internally beautiful. This can be
accomplished by almost anyone who has the acceptance and
warmth of love from parents in the early stages, from friends in the
next stage, and from an intimate, personal relationship with
someone as an adult.
• When we have united what we should be with what we are, we
have become what he called a fully functioning individual.
Abraham Maslow
• He saw the human as having deep needs for beauty, goodness,
justice, and a feeling of completeness – all the hopeful and positive
things about human beings.
• Each of us has inherited something unique, and if the environment
will cooperate a little, we have the opportunity to become great.
Maslow does not mean “great” in the sense of “famous” but in
terms of actualizing (bringing to life) our personal skills.
• Thus, the fulfilled person is self-actualized. We can accomplish this
despite personal problems.
• For instance, he saw Abraham Lincoln as self-actualized, even
though the man suffered endless bouts of deep depression. A truly
self-actualized person would be a student who comes from a
terrible environment but who propels himself or herself to a level of
outstanding achievement.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Basically…
In a way, humanism is a balance between
psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Humanists
acknowledge that the environment is important,
but they insist that inner forces are important as
well. In their view, the inner forces (if given a
chance to be expressed) would push us to be
our best.
Examining Personality Traits
• The more or less permanent characteristics each of us
has are sometimes called personality traits.
• A great deal has been learned from research with
twins. Since identical, or monozygous twins have
exactly the same heredity (they come from the same
fertilized egg in the mother), they can be compared
with fraternal, or dizygotic twins (who do not have as
much heredity in common since they come from
different fertilized eggs) or with just brothers and
sisters (least amount of common heredity).
• If the same trait shows up in the identical twins, but
not in the other pairs, then the odds are very good that
it is an inherited trait.
The “Big Five” Personality Factors
Trait Dimension
Emotional Stability
Extraversion/Neurotic
Openness
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Description
Calm versus anxious
Secure versus insecure
Self-satisfied versus self-pitying
Sociable versus retiring
Fun-loving versus sober
Affectionate versus reserved
Imaginative versus practical
Preference for variety versus
preference for routine Independent
versus conforming
Creative versus close minded,
spontaneous
Soft-hearted versus ruthless
Trusting versus suspicious
Helpful versus uncooperative
Organized versus disorganized
Careful versus careless
Disciplined versus impulsive
Responsible, organized, on time
Discover Your Personality Type Myers Briggs
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoOqQi
VzwQ&feature=related
Is personality something you’re
born with or something that you
develop in your life through
experiences and your
environment?
This is essentially the continual debate
regarding:
NATURE VS. NURTURE