Personality
 A person’s characteristic
pattern of thinking,
feeling, and acting.
 Brings continuity to an
individual’s behavior in
different situations at
different times.
Sigmund Freud
 Father of personality
development.
 Psychoanalysis – Freud’s
system of treatment for
mental disorders.
 Psychoanalytic Theory –
Freud’s theory of
personality.
Freud’s Theory
 Most of the mind is
hidden.
 Unconscious Mind – The
largest part of our mind.
A reservoir of mostly
unacceptable thoughts,
wishes, feelings, and
memories.
Freud’s Theory
 Believed the unacceptable
passions and thoughts we
suppress in the
unconscious mind
influence our personalities
and behaviors.
 Show themselves in the
work we choose, the beliefs
we hold, or daily habits, our
troubling symptoms.
Freud’s Theory
 Psychic Determinism – Freud’s assumption that all our
mental and behavioral responses are caused by
unconscious traumas, desires, or conflicts.
Freud’s Theory
 Also viewed jokes and
dreams as expressions of
repressed sexual and
aggressive tendencies.
 Freudian Slips!
 Libido – The Freudian
concept of psychic energy
that drives individuals to
experience sensual
pleasure.
Freud’s Personality Structure
 ID – Contains a
reservoir of
unconscious psychic
energy that strives to
satisfy basic sexual and
aggressive drives.
 Operates on the
pleasure principle,
demanding immediate
gratification.
Freud’s Personality Structure
 Ego – The largely
conscious, “executive”
part of personality that
mediates among the
demands of the id,
superego, and reality.
 Operates as the reality
principle, satisfying the
id’s desires in ways that
will realistically bring
pleasure rather than pain.
Freud’s Personality Structure
 Superego – The part of
the personality that
represents internalized
ideals and provides
standards for judgment
(the conscience) and for
future aspirations.
Freud’s Personality Development
 Psychosexual Stages – The childhood stages of
development during which the Id’s pleasure seeking
energies focus on distinct erogenous zones.
The Psychosexual Stages
 Oral (0-18 months) – Please centers on the mouth –
sucking, biting, chewing.
 Anal (18-36 months) – Pleasure focuses on bowel and
bladder elimination – coping with demands for
control.
 Phallic (3-6 yrs.) – Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping
with incestuous sexual feelings.
 Oedipus Complex
 Latency (6 to puberty) – Dormant sexual feelings.
 Genital (Puberty on) – Maturation of sexual feelings.
Psychosexual Stages
 Oedipus Complex – According to Freud, a largely
unconscious process whereby boys displace an erotic
attraction toward their mother to females of their own
age and, at the same time, identify with their fathers.
Psychosexual Stages
 Identification – The mental process by which an
individual tries to become like another person,
especially the same-sex parent.
Defense Mechanisms
 Ego Defense Mechanisms – Largely unconscious
mental strategies employed to reduce the experience
of conflict or anxiety.
 Have anxiety because of conflict b/t the ID and
Superego, or our desires and what society views as
acceptable.
 The ego uses defense mechanisms to unconsciously
defend itself against anxiety.
Examples of Defense Mechanisms
 Repression – banishes
anxiety-arousing wishes
from the consciousness.
 Repressed urges such as
improper sexual desires
often manifest
themselves in dreams.
Examples of Defense Mechanisms
 Regression – Allows us to
retreat to an earlier, more
infantile stage of
development.
 Faced with the anxious
first days of school, a
child may regress to the
oral comfort of thumb
sucking.
 College students
homesick.
Examples of Defense Mechanisms
 Reaction Formation –
The ego unconsciously
switches unacceptable
impulses into their
opposites.
 People may express
feelings that are the
opposite of their anxietyarousing unconscious
feelings.
Examples of Defense Mechanisms
 Projection – Disguises threatening impulses by
attributing them to others.
 “He doesn’t trust me.” = “I don’t trust him, I don’t trust
myself.”
Examples of Defense Mechanisms
 Rationalization – Unconsciously generate self-
justifying explanations to hide from ourselves the real
reasons for our actions.
 “All work and no play makes Jack (or Jill) a dull person.”
Examples of Defense Mechanisms
 Displacement – Diverts sexual or aggressive impulses
toward an object or person that is psychologically
more acceptable than the one that aroused the
feelings.
 Children who fear expressing anger against their parents
may displace it by kicking the family pet.
Examples of Defense Mechanisms
 Denial – Protects the person from real events that are
painful to accept, either by rejecting a fact or it
seriousness.
 Dying patients may deny the gravity of their illness.
 Parents may deny their child’s misconduct.
 Spouses may deny evidence of their partner’s affairs.
Psychodynamic Theory
 Projective Tests
 Projective tests – Personality assessment instruments,
such as the Rorschach and TAT, which are based on
Freud’s ego defense mechanism of projection.
Psychodynamic Theory
 Projective Tests
 Rorschach Inkblot Technique – A projective test
requiring subjects to describe what they see in a series of
ten inkblots.
Psychodynamic Theory
 Projective Tests
 Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) – A projective test
requiring subjects to make up stories that explain
ambiguous pictures.
Neo-Freudians
 Neo-Freudians – Literally “new Freudians”; refers to
theorists who broke with Freud but whose theories
retain a psycho-dynamic aspect, especially a focus on
motivation as the source of energy for the personality
Carl Jung: Extending the
Unconscious
 Personal Unconscious – Jung’s term for that portion of
the unconscious corresponding roughly to the
Freudian ID.
 Collective Unconscious – Jung’s addition to the
unconscious, involving a reservoir for instinctive
“memories,” including the archetypes, which exist in
all people.
Carl Jung: Extending the
Unconscious
 Archetypes – The ancient memory images in the
collective unconscious.
 Appear and reappear in art, literature, and folktales
around the world.
Carl Jung: Personality Types
 Introverts – Quiet, shy, peaceful, calm.
 Extroverts – Sociable, outgoing, talkative, lively.
Karen Horney: A Feminist in the
Psychoanalytic Theory
 Basic Anxiety – An emotion, proposed by Horney, that
gives a sense of uncertainty and loneliness in a hostile
world and can lead to maladjustment.
 Neurotic Needs – Signs of neurosis in Horney’s theory,
these 10 needs are normal desires carried to a neurotic
extreme.
Alfred Adler: An early split from
Psychoanalysis
 Inferiority Complex – A feeling of inferiority that is
largely unconscious, with its roots in childhood.
 Compensation – Making up for one’s real or imagined
deficiencies.
Humanistic Theories: Gordon
Allport
 Gordon Allport and the Beginnings of Humanistic
Psychology:
 Traits – Stable personality characteristics that are
presumed to exist within the individual and guide his or
her thought and actions under various conditions.
Humanistic Theories: Gordon
Allport
 Gordon Allport and the Beginning of Humanistic
Psychology:
 Central Traits – According to trait theory, traits that
form the basis of personality.
 Secondary Traits – In trait theory, preferences and
attitudes.
 Cardinal Traits – Personality components that define
people’s lives; Very few individuals have cardinal traits.
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of
Needs
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of
Needs
 Developed this theory based on the study of successful
people who achieved the highest levels: Abe Lincoln,
Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt.
 Found they were:
 Self aware and self accepting.
 Open and spontaneous
 Loving and caring
 Not paralyzed by other’s opinions
 Interests were problem centered
 Enjoyed a few deep relationships rather than many superficial ones
 Most had been moved by spiritual or peak experiences
 Schuster is so coool!
Carl Rogers’
 Person-Centered Perspective – Said that personality
growth requires three conditions: genuineness,
acceptance, and empathy.
 Genuineness – Open with feelings, transparent, and
self-disclosing.
 Accepting –

Unconditional Positive Regard – An attitude of total
acceptance toward another person.
 Empathic – Sharing and mirroring our feelings and
reflecting our meanings.
Carl Rogers’s Fully Functioning
Person
 Fully Functioning Person – Term for a healthy, self-
actualizing individual, who has a self-concept that is
both positive and congruent with reality.
 Phenomenal Field – Our psychological reality,
composed of one’s perceptions and feelings.
Positive Psychology
 Positive Psychology – A recent movement within
psychology, focusing on desirable aspects of human
functioning, as opposed to an emphasis on
psychopathology.
Social-Cognitive Theories
 Bandura’s Theory
 Observational Learning
 Reciprocal Determinism – The process in which
cognitions, behavior, and the environment mutually
influence each other.
 Bandura said these influence our personality.
Social Cognitive Theories
 Julian Rotter’s Theory
 Locus of Control – An individual’s sense of where his or
her life influences originate.
Personality and Temperament
 Humors – According the ancient Greeks, four body
fluids – blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile –
that control personality by their relative abundance.
Personality and Temperament
 Temperament – The basic and pervasive personality
dispositions that are apparent in early childhood and
that establish the tempo and mood of the individual’s
behaviors.
Personality as a Composite of Traits
 Five-Factor Personality – A trait perspective suggesting
that personality is composed of five fundamental
personality dimensions:
 Openness to experience
 Conscientiousness
 Extraversion
 Agreeableness
 Neuroticism
Assessing Personality Traits
 MMPI-2 – A widely used personality assessment
instrument that gives scores on ten important clinical
traits.
Assessing Personality Traits
 Reliability – An attribute of a psychological test that
gives consistent results.
 Validity – An attribute of a psychological test that
actually measures what it is being used to measure.
Personality as a Composite of Traits
 Type – Refers to especially important dimensions or
clusters of traits that are not only central to a person’s
personality but are found with essentially the same
pattern in many people.
Implicit Personality Theories
 Implicit Personality Theories – Assumptions about
personality that are held by people (especially
nonpsychologists) to simplify the task of
understanding others.
Implicit Personality Theories
 Fundamental Attribution Error – The assumption that
another person’s behavior, especially clumsy,
inappropriate, or otherwise undesirable behavior, is
the result of a flaw in the personality, rather than in
the situation.
Other Personality Terms
 Neuroticism – Suscpetibility to neurotic problems.
 Extraversion – A personality descriptor indicating the
“outgoing” nature of some individuals.
 Introversion – A personality descriptor indicating the
quiet and reserved nature of some individuals.
 Eclectic – Either switching theories to explain
situations or building one’s own theory of personality
from pieces borrowed from many perspectives.