Myers-Chapter 15: Personality
UNIT 11: PERSONALITY
What is personality?
 an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking,
feeling, and acting
five major approaches to personality…
1. psychoanalytic (childhood experiences; unconscious
2.
3.
4.
5.
motives; sexual instincts)
humanistic (conscious awareness; the self; subjective
feelings)
cognitive (interpretations of experience; organization of
reality; expectations)
trait (temperament; abilities; enduring characteristics)
learning (external environment; rewards and
punishments; observable behavior)
Two Historic Perspectives
1. psychoanalytic (Freud)
2. humanistic (Maslow and Rogers)
The Psychoanalytic Perspective
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Psychoanalysis
 Freud’s theory of personality that attributes thoughts
and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
free association
unconscious: thoughts, wishes, feelings,
memories of which we are unaware and many of
which we are ashamed of; these thoughts we
repress, but they drive many of our life
decisions
Freudian slips of the tongue…
 the president of the Austrian parliament opens a session
by thundering, “I declare this meeting closed!”
 answering his phone, a preoccupied business executive
picks up the receiver and bellows, “Come in”
 at a copying machine, a secretary counts copies: “eight,
nine, ten, jack, queen, king”
 a jogger, just finishing her run, tosses her shirt into the
toilet instead of the laundry hamper
Freud’s view…
 personality is a combination of the conflict
between aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological
impulses and internalized social restraints
id
ego
superego
ego- operates on reality
principle, seeking to
gratify the id’s impulses
in realistic ways that
bring long-term pleasure
id- operates on the pleasure
principle; contains a reservoir
of unconscious psychic energy
that strives to satisfy basic
sexual and aggressive drives
superego- part of
personality that represents
internalized ideals and
provides standards for
judgment and for future
aspirations
Psychosexual Stages
 personality develops during the first few years
 childhood stages of development during which
the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on
distinct erogenous zones (oral, anal, phallic,
latency, genital)
 Oedipus complex/Electra complex
 identification
 process by which children incorporate their
parents’ values into their developing superegos
 fixation
 lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an
earlier psychosexual stage, in which conflicts were
unresolved
Defense Mechanisms
 the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by
unconsciously distorting reality
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
repression
regression
reaction formation
projection
rationalization
displacement
*all of these happen unconsciously
repression-banishes anxiety- regression-individual faced with
arousing thoughts, feelings and anxiety retreats to a more
memories from consciousness infantile psychosexual stage,
reaction formation-ego
unconsciously switches
unacceptable impulses into
their opposites
rationalization-offers selfjustifying explanations in
place of the real, more
threatening, unconscious
reasons
where some psychic energy
remains fixated
projection-people disguise their
own threatening impulses by
attributing them to others
displacement-shifts sexual or
aggressive impulses toward a more
acceptable or less threatening object
or person
Which defense mechanism is this?
 Lisa was embarrassed when she kept forgetting her
appointment with the dentist.
 After her new baby brother came home from the
hospital, the parents discovered Cheryl had
dismembered her favorite doll.
 John has a lot of unconscious hostility toward his
father but he is very affectionate toward his father
and tells other people that he and his father have a
wonderful relationship.
 Mark slams the door to the classroom after failing the
exam.
 A student attributed his flunking out of the university
to the poor quality of teaching there.
 George feels that his younger son, Gary, is unattractive
and not very smart. He accuses his wife of picking on
Gary and favoring their other son.
 Trixie was homesick and anxious when she moved into
the dormitory and started her first year in college. She
began to sleep with her old teddy bear again because it
made her feel better.
The Neo-Freudian and
Psychodynamic Theorists
Alfred Adler (1870-1937)
Karen Horney (1885-1952)
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Alfred Adler
 agreed that childhood is important, but focused on
social, not sexual tensions
 human motivation comes from striving for
superiority
 compensation is normal, but excessive feelings of
inferiority can lead to an inferiority complex
Karen Horney
 stressed the importance of cultural and social
factors in personality development and
importance of social relationships
 basic anxiety
 “womb envy”
Carl Jung
 like Freud, he emphasized the unconscious
 two levels:
 personal unconscious (repressed or forgotten)
 collective unconscious (shared, inherited
reservoir of memory traces from our species’
history)
Today’s Psychodynamic Theory
 much of our mental life is unconscious
 we often struggle with inner conflicts
among wishes, fears and values
 childhood shapes our personalities and ways
of becoming attached
Projective Tests
leads to unconscious; provides ambiguous stimuli
designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics
 Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
 Rorschach Inkblot Test
 Sentence Completion Test
Sentence Completion Test:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
I secretly wish…
I fear…
I get angry when…
My best friend doesn’t know…
If only I could…
I wish I could forget…
It is hard for me to…
“Many aspects of Freudian theory are indeed out of
date, and they should be: Freud died in 1939, and he
has been slow to undertake further revisions.”
~Drew Westen
What do we think of the
psychoanalytic theory today?
What did Freud get right?
 we have limited access to what goes on in our minds
 we do defend ourselves against anxiety
An overall analysis…
 Freud’s theory “offers after-the-fact explanations of any
characteristic yet fails to predict such behaviors and traits”.
~Myers
 Freud’s supporters argue that some
of his ideas are lasting.
 His influence in scientific circles
is waning, but his influence in
popular culture is still strong!
The Humanistic Perspective
Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
Abraham Maslow and
Self-Actualization
 self-actualization- ultimate psychological need that
arises after basic physical and psychological needs are
met and self-esteem is achieved; the motivation to
fulfill one’s potential
Carl Rogers
 people basically good and have self-actualizing
tendencies
 self-concept- all our thoughts and feelings about
ourselves in answer to the question “Who am I?”
 a positive self-concept leads to a positive world view
 a negative self-concept causes us to feel we fall short of
our ideal self
Assessing the Self using the Humanistic Perspective
 questionnaires
 interviews/conversations
Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective
Legacy:
• people understanding the importance of self-concept/self-image
Criticism:
1. concepts are vague and subjective
2. its individualism can lead to selfishness, etc.
3. fails to recognize the reality of human capacity for evil
The Trait Perspective
Hans Eysenck (1916-1997)
Sybil Eysenck
The trait perspective tries to define personality using
terms of stable and enduring behavior patterns.
 traits- characteristic patterns of behavior or a
disposition to feel and act
 describe rather than explain behavior/traits
Hans Eysenck
 personality structure is a hierarchy of traits, derived
from three higher-order traits
extraversion
sociable
lively
active
assertive
sensationseeking
 extraversion-involves being sociable, assertive, active and lively
 neuroticism- involves being anxious, tense, moody, having low self-
esteem
 psychoticism- involves being egocentric, impulsive, cold antisocial
How do we assess personality using the
trait theory?
 personality inventories-questionnaire
covering a wide range of feelings and
behaviors; designed to measure several traits
at once
 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI)
The Big Five Factors
 conscientiousness; agreeableness; neuroticism;
openness; extraversion
 These traits seem pretty stable in adulthood and
they apply pretty well to various cultures.
The Social-Cognitive Perspective
Albert Bandura (b. 1925)
Highlights of the social-cognitive perspective…
 behavior is influenced by the interaction between
people, their thinking and their social context
 reciprocal determinism
 internal vs. external locus of control
 learned helplessness
 How do we assess behavior in the social-cognitive
perspective?
 What do critics say?
The Self Perspective
Highlights of the Self Perspective…
 the self, is an organizer of our thoughts,
feelings, and actions and is a pivotal center of
our personality
 possible selves
 spotlight effect
self-esteem
 one‘s feelings of high or low self-worth
self-serving bias
 a readiness to perceive oneself favorably