Why study personality?
Driven by important questions:
 What is the impact of personality an psychopathology on one’s ability to stand trial or ability to form mens rea?
 Are there psychological factors that can undermine one’s ability to parent their child?
 Which applicant will make the best manager or CEO?
 Which student has the best chance of succeeding in school?
 Why do some people repeat mistakes while others seem to learn from them?
 Why are we often unaware of our own prejudices and biases?

Differentiating science and pseudoscience
 Opinion vs. science (i.e., How do we know if something is accurate?)
 Internet means information is proliferating, but it not vetted
 How do you evaluate a source found on the internet?
 Science = the accumulation of knowledge (peer review)
 Some common perceptions that lead us to believe that 1) More red lights when your late?
2) Vaccines cause autism? 3) Torturing suspects is the best approach to gain information?
 Consider a scientific study of what your social media (e.g., Facebook page,
Snapchat, the Vine, etc.) says about your personality
 Number of posts/updates about yourself, nature of pictures, & narcissism
 Theory?
 Method of investigation?
 Data and theory-driven proof?

Methods for accumulating knowledge in the science of personality
Knowledge is accrued in the area of personality psychology in a variety of ways, but not all are equally rigorous
5 common methods:
1. Introspection – one person is both subject and researcher
2. Case study – in depth analysis of a small number of individuals
3. *Survey - broad, cross-sectional analysis of a large number of individuals
4. Longitudinal survey – surveys administered at different points in time
5. Statistical methods – not tied to any theory, data driven;
6. Experiment–manipulation of variables/random assignment
Levels of understanding: Description, Explanation, Prediction, Control (6)
In order for science to progress we also need theories & assessments

 To establish sound methods
 “Anybody in science, if there are enough anybodies, can find the answer – it’s an
Easter egg hunt. That isn’t the idea. The idea is: Can you ask the question in such a way as to facilitate the answer?”
 Gerald Edelman

 To provide a rationale for research (i.e., why the study is being conducted) vs. a series of random experiments
 Organizing complex information/phenomena
 Allow for different experiments to be considered in conjunction (how the findings of various studies relate to one another)
 * Allow for
& specific predictions (strong inference). Theories must be falsifiable (do not rely on post hoc explanations)

“There once was an entomologist who found a bug he couldn’t classify – so he stepped on it.”
- Ernest R. Hilgard
 Assessment & classification are used to better understanding a construct

 A wide variety of tests are used to assess personality
(questionnaires completed by the target or others who know them, behavioral observations, interviews, biological measures, etc.)
 Properties of a test
 There are sources of error in every test (social desirability bias, acquiescence bias, assuming additive effects, etc.) minimized with standardization
 Standard error of measure – error associated with a test
 Reliability (consistency) – over time, between raters, across similar forms, and within the measure itself
 Construct validity (demonstrated through criterion, convergent
& discriminant validity)
 Specific tests will be discussed in each section

Note taking 101
 If you just wrote the above heading down (or this statement), then you are writing too much.
 Take notes on concepts, and experiments (general method, findings, and critique)
 Do not write down my questions
 Fill in notes with lecture and/or text material (if you just copied the last slide, you will struggle on the exams)
 Did you define discriminant and convergent validity?)
 What have you written so far in your notes?

Psychology is replete with terminology. Here are some that didn’t make it.
 Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
 Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of later getting sex.
 Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.
 Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
 Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an a--hole.
 Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
*******************************
 Personality: a stable pattern (over time and across situations) of affect, cognitions and behavior.
 Differentiating traits from states

 On a blank piece of paper, write a pseudonym and the last 4 digits of your ID
 After looking at the picture provided on the overhead, please write a story that:
 Indicates what is happening in the picture
 Describes the thoughts and feelings of the character(s)
 Describes what led up to the events depicted
 Describes what is the most likely outcome

What motivates this type of behavior?
- Why not liars, thieves, the proud, gossips, the lazy, etc.

 Determinism - driven by energy (libido) of a sexual and aggressive nature
 Explain all behavior using these two basic motives?
 Conflict – within (id and superego), and between the individual and society
 Unconscious - aspects of ourselves that are unknown
 Conscious awareness
 Preconscious (cognitive unconscious)

Theoretical structures
 Id – pleasure principle, initial focus of libido, primary process thinking, no contact with reality (completely unconscious)
 Superego – last of these three structures to develop, internalized morality, no contact with reality (completely unconscious)
 Given the characteristics of the above two structures, how can they be satisfied?
 Ego – reality principle, secondary process thinking, exists at the unconscious, preconscious, and conscious levels, employs defense mechanisms to mediate between the id and superego and reality

 A large number of studies to address the issue “Is there an unconscious”
 Two key questions:
 Can behavior be influenced without awareness?
 Can information outside awareness influence behavior and can it do so to a greater degree than information within our awareness?

6
5
5
0
5
Can you remember these numbers after a 500ms exposure?
8
2
0
1
3
4
3
9
7
6
9
7
6
8
2
1
0
9
8
4

Recall of visual or auditory information
 Short-term memory (also known as “working memory”) can hold a limited amount of information, but only if it is rehearsed.
 Otherwise, most of the information we are exposed to stays in the sensory register
 Unlimited capacity, but very short duration
 Approximately 2-3 seconds for both iconic
(visual) and echoic (auditory) memory
 about 5 numbers can be recalled from the 25
 Therefore, most info. is lost (this is adaptive)

What if you are asked to recall a specific number after seeing the list? (500ms expos.)
6
5
5
0
5
8
2
0
1
3
4
3
9
7
6
9
7
6
8
2
1
0
9
8
4

- Recall the number where the “X” appears
X

Summary of visual recall experiment
 All of the information is in your sensory register so you can recall any one of the
25 numbers within 2-3 seconds.
 e.g., X = 6
 A simple memory experiment demonstrates we are not fully aware of all information in memory.
 But does this info influence our behavior?

 80 college students (40 males & 40 female) recruited from introductory psychology class
 all participants took part in a computerized task in which they had to indicate whether pairs of words presented several seconds apart were associated (yes/no response with RT recorded)
 Between the presentation of the two words, a picture was flashed briefly on the screen and in half of the trials the picture was related to the words while for the remaining trials the picture was unrelated e.g.,
Related: “duck”
Unrelated: “duck”
Picture of birds
Picture of cars
“Sparrow”
“Sparrow”

 All pictures were masked (50ms) or legible (500ms)
 Reaction times (RTs) for correct responses were used to quantify speed of judgments
 Results indicate that RTs were faster for related pictures vs. unrelated pictures
 RTs were faster for masked (unconscious) vs. legible
(conscious) pictures - Why?
 The priming effect for the pictures only exists if the prime occurs within a short period of time (approx. 3s) of the first word, and the second word occurs immediately after
 Could salience of stimulus increase effect duration?
Some clinical data on long term unconscious effects…

Childhood experiences and adult functioning
 Can childhood trauma serve as the stimulus that later influences adult behavior?
 Theory for Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID, formerly
MPD) – child is physically or sexually traumatized and they depersonalize the event and develop other identities to protect themselves (an unconscious event).
 This example would (in theory) involve a long term effect of the unconscious
 Clinical data (retrospective accounts) indicate that 96% have been sexually or physically abused (repressed)
 Research?

 Prospective research suggests that the incidence of DID is 1-4% for those children having been abused (no greater than that observed in the general pop.). Why?
 Memories are inaccurate (more so as time passes and info. is imputed from other experiences) & the method of recovery can enhance the inaccuracies (e.g., witness a car wreck; attack of a professor)
 Iatrogenic effect vs. longitudinal studies
 Loftus – research shows that recovered memories are very inaccurate; especially details, but also their occurrence

 Denial – repression of material into the unconscious (it is the most basic defense and is at the heart of all other defenses)
 Projection – attribute to others what is denied in the self
 Reaction formation – expressing the opposite feeling of what is being experienced
 Displacement – expression towards a safer object
 Intellectualization - rationalizing so as to minimize the affective experience
 Sublimation – higher level of defense whereby one redirects anxiety towards something productive
 Research on the defenses?

Testing psychoanalytic theory: Evidence for the defenses? (Adams, Wright, & Lohr, 1996)
 Much research focuses on defense against libidinal wishes (sex and/or aggression).
 Using the Index of Homophobia (a standardized measure), they identified male students who scored either high (n=35) or low (n=29)
 All reported a history of exclusive heterosexual arousal
 Exposed everyone to 4m erotic videos depicting heterosexual, male homosexual and lesbian interactions (counterbalanced for order effects)
 Arousal measured via a self report questionnaire
& plythysmograph (blood volume)

Adams, Wright, & Lohr, ’96 - continued
 Both groups of males were aroused by heterosexual and lesbian erotic videos (both physiological and self-report)
 Neither group self-reported arousal to homosexual male video
 There was, however, a physiological response to the male homosexual video but only for homophobic males
 The two groups of men did not differ on a standardized measure of aggressiveness
 Individuals could be unaware (denial?) and/or expressing the opposite feelings (reaction formation?)

Adams, Wright, & Lohr, ’96 - continued 2
 Confounds in the study?
 Unknown if this generalizes to females?
 Small N, college students only, limited range of ages, all Caucasians from the U.S.A., etc.
 Missing any control groups?
 Strengths: both physiological and selfreport measures; manipulated variables

 A confound with other types of arousal such as anxiety? See “misattribution of arousal” effect
 Dutton & Aron, 1974: Female RA, male Ss
 2 bridges over the Capilano River, in BC, Canada
 230ft drop, unstable rope, with low hand supports
 10ft drop, stable, with high wood hand rails
 Ss completed questionnaire, wrote a story about a female (graded for sexual content), & given phone # of RA
 Note: Ss were NOT randomly assigned to bridge conditions (Why? Consequence of this?)

Psychosexual stages of development
(“erogenous zones”)
 1. Oral – “I want”; experience the world through the mouth by biting, licking, tasting (most sensitive)
 oral aggressive vs. oral dependent (timing of the weaning)
 2. Anal – “I control”; experience/learn to control
 anal expulsive vs anal retentive (extreme approaches re: control)
 3. Phallic – Gender identity; incestuous feelings that eventually result in identification with same sex parent
 Heterosexual vs. “homosexual impulse” (see complexes)
 4. Latency – sublimation of development to activities
 5. Genital – mature adult relationships (ideally the superego is fully developed, and this leads one to pursue appropriate relationships)

Character and anal eroticism
 Orderly – clean (why?), conscientious, trustworthy
 Parsimony – avarice (greed) – why connect it with money?
 Obstinacy – defiance, rage, vengefulness

Males
 desire mommy & see daddy as competition/threat
 Experience castration anxiety
 identify with daddy to resolve the complex
Females
 desire mommy, but switch to daddy due to “penis envy”
 How can this complex be resolved?
 Research?

Testing psychoanalytic theory: Can subliminal message activate internal conflicts?
Subliminal Psychodynamic Activation (SPA)
 Research to examine the Oedipus complex
 Assumes: subliminal information activates Oedipal conflicts
 Subliminal = stimuli detected less than 50% of the time
 Given the results of the previous research on the unconscious, it is clear that subliminal information exists
 Can it influence our behavior over extended periods of time?
 Advertisers seem to think so…
(overheads & slide)

SPA research – Silverman et al., 1978
 SPA research attempts to activate the Oedipal conflict in males (e.g., competition between fathers and sons)
 Theory: All adult competition is interpreted as reflecting a re-experience of this event
 Recruited 90 male college students
 All threw darts to get a baseline score
 Then they were randomly assigned to view one of three messages using a tachistoscope (flashes messages)
 “Beating daddy is wrong”
 “Beating daddy is OK”
 “People are walking”

Silverman et al., 1978 – continued
 All participants then threw darts a second time
(advantage of having all throw darts twice?)
Condition Pre
SCORE
Post Difference
“walking” 439.0
“ok” 443.3
“wrong” 443.7
442.3
533.3
349.0
+ 3.3
+90.0
-94.7
 No effect for conditions Mommy and I are one and
Daddy and I are one
 Problems with the research? Confounds?

Does the Silverman study support Freud’s theory?
 Not directly.
 It does demonstrate that the subliminal message improved performance, but this does not demonstrate the role of the Oedipus complex (nor that it exists)
 e.g., the messages themselves may differ in their affective tone
(pleasant vs. unpleasant vs. neutral) and that alone may have influenced performance (e.g., research on sports and colors)
 Other research using the phrase “Mommy and I are one.”
 Same limitations as above
 e.g., patients diagnosed with schizophrenia who are assigned to this condition are more likely to show some remission of symptoms; also in females with eating disorders

 No body of research has (or ever will) prove or disprove all of Freud’s theories (too complex to test)
 All behaviors can be explained by referring to either conscious motivation or unconscious (undetected) motivation
 Science requires that a theory be falsifiable (Popper)
 However, specific aspects of Freud’s theories can and have been tested, and the findings indicate that some of his work merits consideration.
 Freud’s views are still espoused by approximately 4% of modern day psychologists
 His theories sparked a variety of responses

Two attitudes:
1) Introversion – express libido towards inner experiences (collective unconscious)
2) Extraversion - express libido towards external experiences
Four functions: sensing, intuiting, feeling, thinking
 Results in 8 “types”
 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
 Express our personality in conscious daily experience and in the collective unconscious

Carl Jung – structures of consciousness
 Ego - conscious awareness
 Personal Unconscious - small portion of the unconscious
 Collective Unconscious - shared unconscious represented in recurrent themes (dreams, art, literature, etc.)
 Archetypes – powerful emotional symbols that reoccur in life (e.g., anima/animus, hero/demon, mother/wise old man, etc.

Why do we dream?
Jung’s views on dreaming:
 Creative outlet (principle of equivalence)
 Release of unconscious conflicts
 Paranormal experiences accounted for through dreams?
Modern day views on why we dream:
 Cognitive consolidation (creation of or strengthening of neural pathways)
 Random neural activity of the brain that is reinterpreted (after the fact) to be more cohesive
 A purely restorative function (REM sleep)

Psychodynamic Interpretation of Dreams
Most commonly occurring dream themes for college students:
 falling, being chased, sex, and a being late
Psychodynamic interpretations:
 Manifest (Jung) vs. Latent (Freud) content
 running = escape wish (someone/something)
 climbing = attempts to achieve something
 falling = insecurity
 body parts = fixations (e.g., teeth = aggress)
 persons of same sex and demo is you

Significance of Dream Content
 Most dreaming occurs during REM sleep
 Bizarre dreams are more likely to occur during REM dreaming
 Jung believed that dreaming reflected our ability to connect with the collective unconscious.
 This would be reflected in traits like creativity.

Research on dreaming and creativity
 Klueger (1977) collected 2-week dream diaries from 40 college students. Subjects also completed a standardized measure of creativity (questionnaire)
 Judges, blind to the creativity scores of the subjects, scored each dream report for its archetypal content
 The frequency of archetypal images in dreams was shown to correlate positively with scores on the measure of creativity
 Confounds?
 No control for the dreamers tendency to embellish their dream content (creative people are more likely to provide a creative recall of their dream) – when controlled, the relation no longer exists
 How can we explain other paranormal experiences as they relate to dreams? e.g., reports of precognition?
 Do such outcomes occur at rate greater than chance?

Paranormal experiences from dreams?
 Numerous studies have tested for the presence of ESP in dreaming with mixed results (i.e., a small number of researchers have concluded that there are significant findings, but these are not replicated by others)
 Blackmore (1995) evaluated the psychic abilities of a well-known
English psychic (Chris Robinson) who claims to have precognitive dreams.
 An object was placed in a box in the subject’s home for a week.
The subject recorded his dreams and then guessed which object from a list was in the box based on the dreams
 Hit rate was 2 out of 12 (approx. 17%). Because there were 6 options to choose from, this did not differ significantly from the
“hit” rate expected by chance (1 in 6 = 17%).
 Numerous other studies have likewise failed to show a significant effect in controlled experimental settings.

 Social interest - gemeinschaftsgefuhl
 transcending our own needs to identify with the needs and concerns of others
 fundamental need to interact with others
 Used trait terms from humoral theory
 Compensatory strivings to offset “organ inferiority” (a perceived rather than a real weakness)
 Emphasized perception of reality (recall bias obscures the direction of causality from childhood events to present)
 Emphasis on conscious awareness, but still highlights the importance of childhood
 Key is sibling relationships (vs. parental)
 First borns as more likely to achieve (see research on intelligence, success, etc.), more likely to be conservative & authoritarian.

Born to Rebel: Birth order (Sullaway, 1996)
 Can historical events be determined by intra-familial relationships?
 Thesis: Older children (1st borns) are likely to more closely identify with parents and adopt a conservative approach while latter borns will rebel
 Examine historical events to conform this pattern (N = 6,000)

 Analysis of astronauts (a highly creative and dangerous job or does it represent a conservative model?)
 Analysis of King Henry’s wives (assumes that being sexual unavailable is a risky strategy and would result in being beheaded; 2 outspoken later borns were beheaded; Boleyn
& Howard)
 Behead King Louis? (standing with the King meant opposing the people of France and could cost one their life – risky choice); 893 members of the National Convention that ruled
France during the French Revolution
 The supreme court of the U.S. (liberal decisions in the
1970s vs. conservative decisions in the 1980s)

 What variables may confound the effects of birth order
(i.e., Why might Adler’s or Sulloway’s theories not apply to you?)
 Difficulties defining which action is “risky”
 age between siblings
 gender of child and his/her siblings (1st born male vs.
1st born female)
 cultural variations
 changes in the family structure (more prominent today)
 * SES and the number of children in a family
 * B.O. can’t be manipulated (NOT CAUSAL)!

Karen Horney: Feminist perspective
 Everyone experiences basic anxiety as an infant and deals with it in one of three ways
 moving against (aggression)
 moving towards (affiliation or dependency)
 moving away (isolation)
 Continue to deal with anxiety in the same way as adults
 Women differ from men in how they deal with anxiety
 Other fundamental differences between male and female personality is determined by societal pressures
 Anatomical factors were emphasized by Freud whereas Horney reinterpreted penis envy as “repressed womanhood” (an early social psychological model). What does the penis represent?
 Modern day examples; glass ceiling, presidency, etc.

Projective tests (techniques)
 TAT, Rorschach, word association, free association, and dream analysis.
 TAT was developed by Murray in 1938
 Follows from other projective tests such as the word association task (Jung) and the Rorschach Ink Blot test,
& all are commonly used in clinical settings
 Assumption that vague stimuli will require you to add material in order to complete the task (e.g., write a story)
 This process will require that you draw from your own personal experiences, biases, etc.
 Projection is also assumed to occur because the context is safer (appears less self-relevant), thus the client should be less defensive

 All projective tests assume that you are employing the defense mechanism of projection
 Identify the main character in each story (write down who the person is identifying with – usually the most detail or 1 st person)
 Identify the needs/wants of the main character (e.g., achievement, affiliation, power, recognition)
 Identify environmental press, (e.g., pos or neg things affecting the main character) such as demands from others, responsibilities, stressors, surprises, etc.
 Look for congruence between the 2 stories
 Implications for optimism? socialization? etc.

 Projective tests allow for a broader range of responses (e.g., as opposed to a T/F format)
 Impossible to anticipate the variety of responses
 Subtle (qualitative) differences between responses are difficult to detect and quantify
 Typically results in lower reliability (consistency)
 test-retest and inter-rater
 Lower reliability limits validity
 Tests vs. Techniques?
 Tests require standardized administration, scoring, and interpretation (reliability and validity)

 Freud essentially characterized people as barbarians whereas other psychologists
(e.g., Rogers) emphasized that our nature is good.
 What is your take?
 How could we test this?
 Exam 1