Chapter 15 - Personality
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Monday, Mar 12 – 575 - 579
Tuesday, Mar 13 – 579 - 580
Wednesday, Mar 14 – 581 - 586
Thursday, Mar 15 - 587 - 590
Friday, Mar 16 - 591 - 600
Monday, Mar 19 – essay
• Tuesday, Mar 20 - Staff Meeting - 600 – 607
• Wednesday, Mar 21 - 607 – 617
• Thursday, Mar 22 – Parent Teacher Conferences
• Friday, Mar 23 – Quiz/Study Guide/Cards
• Monday, Mar 26 - Desk Mat due
Personality (575)
Personality -- your characteristic
pattern of thinking, feeling and
acting
Historical Perspectives on Personality (575)
Two historically significant
perspectives established the field of
personality psychology:
1.
2.
psychoanalytic perspective
humanistic perspective
Psychoanalytic Perspective (576)
• Freud - (1856 - 1939)
• originally a doctor
specializing in nervous
disorders
• had patients with physical
problems that had no
neurological cause - ie. a
patient had lost all feeling
in his hand yet there is no
sensory nerve that could
numb an entire hand and
no other body part
Psychoanalytic Perspective (576)
• Freud thought that maybe
the patient's problems
were psychological rather
than neurological
• this led Freud to discover
the unconscious
• initially through hypnosis
but later by free
association
Psychoanalysis (576)
• Freud's theory is called
psychoanalysis - it uses
the tool of free association
• Free association - patient
relaxes and says the 1st
thing that comes to mind this allows the therapist to
trace back to the patient's
past and retrieve and
release painful
unconscious memories
(often from childhood)
Exploring the Unconscious (576)
Conscious
Preconscious
Unconscious
we are aware
of these
thoughts
unconscious thoughts
we temporarily store
here where we can
retrieve them into
conscious awareness
we are unaware
of these
thoughts
some ego
some superego
all id
some ego
some superego
Repression (577)
•
Repression - blocking
unacceptable thoughts
from our conscious.
• Repressed ideas surface in
disguised forms.
• Ex - Freudian slips manifest v. latent dream
content.
Freud’s Personality Structure (577)
Our personality arises
from a conflict between
• our aggressive, pleasure
seeking biological
impulses and
• the internalized social
restraints against them
• Freud explains this with
id, ego and super ego
ID/EGO/SUPEREGO (578)
ID
EGO
SUPEREGO
unconscious
Partly conscious
Our conscience
Basic drives to
survive,
reproduce,
aggress
Seeks to satisfy id
and superego in a
realistic, long-term
way. Executive
function.
Reality principle
Emerges at 4 or
5. What we
ought to do.
Pleasure
principle
Perfection/Ideal
Personality Development (578)
• Freud says that personality forms during our
first few years of life. Unresolved
childhood conflicts affect us later in life.
• Freud says we go through stages (called
Psychosexual Stages) where ID's pleasures
focus on different areas of the body known
as erogenous zones.
Psychosexual Stages
Stage
• Oral (0-18)
• Anal (18-36)
• Phallic (3-6)
Focus/Erogenous Zone
mouth - biting/chewing
bowel/bladder control
genitals/unconscious incestuous
sexual feelings
• Latency (6-puberty) dormant sexual feelings
• Genital (puberty on) maturing sexual interests
Oedipus/Electra Complex (579)
• During the phallic stage children seek pleasure in
their genital areas and develop unconscious sexual
desires for their different sex parent and jealousy
for their same sexed parent.
• Identification - Children cope with this complex
by identifying with the "rival" parent. So, little
Johnny becomes just like daddy!!!! Freud said
that through identification children's superegos
gain strength and the child develops a gender
identity.
Fixations (579)
• Freud said that adult
maladaptive behavior
results from conflicts
unresolved in a
psychosexual stage.
• Ex. if deprived or
overindulged in oral stage
you may have an oral
fixation as an adult.
• Ex. if toilet trained too
early/late you may now be
anal retentive (neat/control
freak) or anal expulsive
(messy/disorganized)
Defense Mechanisms (579)
• Sometimes EGO fears loosing the war between ID and
SUPEREGO and this leads to anxiety
• The EGO uses Defense Mechanisms to protect itself from
anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.
Defense Mechanism: Repression (580)
• banishing anxietyarousing thoughts from
consciousness.
• Repression underlies all
of the defense
mechanisms because each
DM disguises threatening
impulses and keeps them
from our consciousness.
• Repressed ideas
sometimes slip out in slips
of the tongue or dreams.
Defense Mechanism: Regression (580)
Regression - retreating
to earlier, more
comfortable stage (thumb sucking after
your first day of grade
one)
Defense Mechanism:
Reaction Formation (580)
Reaction Formation - ego unconsciously
switches unacceptable impulses to their
opposites I express the opposite of what is in my
unconscious. (ex. bravado hides feelings of
inadequacy)
Defense Mechanism:
Rationalization (580)
Rationalization - we
unconsciously make
self justifying
explanations to hide
from the real reasons
for our
actions. (ex. "everyb
ody cheats on their
taxes" as opposed to "I
am a thief")
Defense Mechanism: Projection (580)
Projection - threatening impulses are
attributed to others (ex. "she is a
gossip" as opposed to "I spread stories
about people")
Defense Mechanism: Displacement (580)
Displacement - diverting sex/aggression to a
more acceptable target (ex. I'm mad at my
friend so I yell at my mom)
Defense Mechanism: Sublimation (580)
Sublimation - finding socially acceptable outlets for
unacceptable urges - (ex. play football if I am aggressive)
Assessing the Unconscious (581)
• Freud believed that our unconscious influenced
our personality --- therefore ---- his theory focused
on getting into the patient's unconscious
• Freud used free association and dream analysis to
reveal the unconscious
• Psychoanalysts don't agree with using objective
tests (ie questionaires) to assess personality
because they say that these tests just tap the
conscious. ---- instead they use Projective Tests
Projective Tests (581)
1.
2.
Rorschach Test - ambiguous ink blots
TAT - Thematic Apperception Test by
Henry Murray - a patient's story that
they make up about an ambiguous picture
This is a fun on-line Rorschach test site:
http://theinkblot.com/testresults.htm
Problems with Rorschach’s Test (582)
• low reliability
(consistency of result)
• low validity (predicting
what it is supposed to)
• no universally accepted
system for scoring and
interpreting the test
• not successful in
predicting behavior
• not successful in
discriminating between
groups
Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective
Freud's Early Descendants and Dissenters
(582)
•
•
•
•
Neo-Freudians were the
psychologists who first
accepted Freud's ideas
such as:
id, ego, superego
importance of unconscious
shaping of personality in
childhood
anxiety and defense
mechanisms
Neo-Freudians did not
accept:
• they say the conscious
is more important
• they doubted that sex
and aggression were
the only drives - they
placed more emphasis
on other motives and
on social interaction
Neo-Freudians (582)
• Adler - we are driven to conquer childhood feelings of
inferiority
• Horney - A child’s sense of helplessness triggers our desire
for love and security. Horney disagreed with Freud’s
assumptions that women had weak superegos and suffer
penis envy.
• Jung - Our unconscious is more than repressed thoughts
and feelings. We also have a collective unconscious
derived from our species’ universal experiences.
• Psychodynamic Theorists - Do not agree that sex is the
basis of our personality. Do agree that our mental life is
unconscious, that childhood shapes our personalities and
we struggle with inner conflicts among our wishes, fears
and values
Freud's Ideas in the Light of
Modern Research (583)
• today theorists see personality development as
life-long - not fixed in childhood
• today we doubt that an infant's neural networks are
developed enough to sustain the emotional trauma
that Freud thought possible
• some say Freud overestimated parental influence
and underestimated peer influence on personality
development
• Today we also challenge Freud's interpretation of
dreams, slips of the tongue and defense
mechanism concepts.
Freud's Ideas in the Light of
Modern Research (583)
• we question Freud's idea that conscience and
gender identity form as the child resolves the
Oedipus complex at 5 or 6. we now think that we
form our gender identity earlier than this and that
we can do this even without a same-sex parent
present.
• Freud did not accept that his patients could have
been sexually abused as children - instead he
interpreted their "stories" as unresolved childhood
sexual conflict. Today we know that child sex
abuse does occur.
Is Repression a Myth? (584)
• Repression has been used to explain hypnotic
phenomena, psychological disorders and
lost/recovered memories
• Researchers dispute repression and argue that IF it
happens, it would only be in relation to terrible
trauma.
• Evidence against repression:
- children remember their parents' murders
- people remember concentration camps
Is Repression a Myth? (584)
• Hippocampus - We do know that extreme,
prolonged stress (child abuse) might disrupt
memory by damaging the hippocampus.
• But, high stress also enhances memory and
negative emotional events are therefore
often remembered well (often too well).
Freud's Ideas as Scientific Theory (585)
• Critics say Freud's theory is not scientific because
it has few objective observations and offers few
hypotheses to verify or reject
• Critics say his theory offered only after-the-fact
explanations of characteristics (ie smoking) but
failed to predict such characteristics
• Critics of the critics say that Freud never claimed
to be predictive - he always focused on what we
learn by looking back
• Freud supporters credit Freud for popularizing the
unconscious, the irrational, defense mechanisms,
sexuality and the tension between biological and
social impulses
The Humanistic Perspective (587)
• focus on how healthy
people strive for selfdetermination and selfrealization
• emphasize human
potential
• see the world through the
person's eyes (not the
researcher's eyes)
• Maslow and Rogers
Abraham Maslow (587)
Abraham Maslow (587)
• developed his hierarchy of needs theory by studying
healthy individuals to find common traits
• Studied people who had achieved great things - Lincoln,
Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt
• Found that successful people had common traits:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
self-aware and self-accepting
open and spontaneous
loving and caring and compassionate
not paralyzed by others' opinions
problem-centred rather than self-centred
had a few deep relationships rather than many superficial
found their calling
outgrown mixed feelings regarding their parents
courage to be unpopular
Carl Rogers’
Person-Centred Perspective (587)
Rogers said people are
born "good" with selfactualizing abilities that
will bloom as long as the
people in their
environment are:
1. Genuine - open with feelings,
dropping facades, disclosing
things about themselves, honest
2. Accepting - show us
unconditional positive regards value us even if we have faults allow us to drop our pretenses
3. Empathetic - share and mirror
our feelings
Carl Rogers’
Person-Centred Perspective (587)
Rogers believed the
core of personality is
the self-concept.
People with positive
self concepts act and
see the world
positively.
Write down 5 words to describe
yourself.
Now write down 5 words that
you would like to describe you
in 10 years.
Assessing the Self (588)
• Rogers had clients
describe their actual self
and their ideal self. If the
2 are similar you have a
good self-concept.
•
Rogers asks "am I living
in a way which is deeply
satisfying to me and which
truly expresses me?"
Self-Esteem?
Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective (588)
Critics of humanists say:
• it is vague and subjective
• its emphasis on the
individual reinforces
Western cultural values.
• too based on Maslow's
own personal heroes
• too individualistic - can
lead to self-indulgence,
selfishness and an erosion
of moral restraints
• fails to appreciate our
human capacity for evil.
Criticism of Humanism
• Even Rogers admitted
that there is evil - but he said evil is a result
of toxic cultural
influences.
• Note - Humanist Rollo
May says that WE are
the toxic culture or the
good culture
Contemporary Research on
Personality (590)
• Today's personality theorists are most interested in
the basic dimensions of personality and
- their impact on behavior
- the biological roots of these dimensions
- the interaction of people and environments
- self-esteem, self-serving bias and cultural
influences
The Trait Perspective (591)
• Trait researchers search for identifiable patterns of
behavior or conscious motives that describe basic
dimensions of personality.
• Are there stable and enduring traits that underlie
our actions? If so, can we devise valid and
reliable tests of them for use in personality
assessment?
The Trait Perspective
Gordon Alport (591)
• had a bizarre interview with Freud in 1919
• then went on to describe personality in terms of
fundamental traits - characteristic behaviors and
conscious motives
• he defined personality in terms of identifiable
behavior patterns - he wanted more to describe
rather than explain these.
Personality Types (591)
Personality
theorists describe
and classify
personalities by
defining broad
personality
"types"
Personality
The ancient Greeks classified
people according to four
types depending on one's
bodily "humors" (or
fluids)
• melancholic (depressed)
• sanguine (cheerful)
• phlegmatic (unemotional)
• choleric (irritable)
The Trait Perspective
William Sheldon (1954) (591)
Classified people by body
type:
1. endomorphs - Santa relaxed and jolly
2. mesomorphs - superman bold and active
3. ectomorph - Ichabod
Crane - high strung/
solitary
Carl Jung’s Personality Types (591)
• are used by Myers Briggs in their 126 question
Type Indicator.
• A personality is made up of a combination of four
factors:
1.
feeling v. thinking
2.
sensing v. intuitive
3.
extrovert v. introvert
4.
judging v. perceiving
• Q - does labeling people lead to self-fulfilling
prophecies?
Exploring Traits
Eysenck’s Theory (592)
• Some say personality types are
too broad. People have several
traits.
• Factor Analysis - identifies
clusters of traits that reflect a
basic dimension (ie
extroversion)
• Hans Eysenck and Sybil
Eysenck say we can reduce our
normal individual variations to
2 or 3 genetically influenced
dimensions including:
- extraversion/introversion
- emotionally stable/unstable
Biological Influences
on Personality (592)
• Extroverts seek stimulation because their normal
brain arousal is low. The extrovert's frontal lobe
activity in inhibition is less active than in
introverts.
• Genes determine our temperament whereas
parents influence values and beliefs.
Assessing Traits (593)
• These assessments profile a person's behavior patterns
(rather than disclose their hidden personality dynamics as a
projective test does).
• The test can be for a specific trait - or can be a personality
inventory which assesses several traits and behaviors.
Personality Tests
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI) (593)
• is a personality inventory developed by Starke
Hathaway in 1960
• assesses abnormal personality tendencies
• test items were empirically derived - test a large
pool of items and then select those items on which
particular diagnostic groups differed. How it
worked was Hathaway gave questions to
"disordered" and "normal" people and kept the
questions where the disordered answers were
different from the normal group.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI) (593)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The selected items were then grouped into 10 clinical
scales:
hypochondriasis
depression
hysteria
psychopathic deviancy
masculine/feminine interests
paranoia
psychasthenia (anxious, guilt)
schizophrenia
hypomania (overactive, excited, impulsive)
social introversion
Personality Inventories (594)
• are objectively scored
• not necessarily valid- I
might take an MMPI and
give socially approved
answers because I am
applying for a job - my
"lie" score will be high but
my other MMPI results
will also be off
• David Funder says that
when self and peer tests
disagree on your traits, the
peer test is usually more
accurate.
The “Big Five” Personality Factors (595)
More current personality tests focus on 5 traits:
• emotional stability
• extraverson/introversion
• openness
• agreeableness
• conscientiousness
These tests claim that these 5 traits are the best assessment
of personality. They say these traits are: fairly stable,
about 50% heritable, apply cross culture, are good
predictors of other personality traits
Fortunes Tellers (596)
• the constellations have shifted
since the astrologers formulated
their predictions
• yet do we perceive astrological
correlations?
• palm readers use techniques:
– stock spiels (you are anxious
about something)
– general favorable descriptions
that most people agree describe
them
– the Barnum effect
– read your clothing, nonverbal
gestures and reactions to what
they are saying to you
Evaluating the Trait Perspective
Person-Situation Controversy (598)
• Are personality traits stable or do they change
with time and situation?
• We look for genuine personality traits that persist
over time and across situations.
• We also look for consistent behaviors from one
situation to the next - behaviors are not as
consistent as traits.
• Mischel says personality tests only mildly predict
behavior
• but Epstein says that our average acts (ie
outgoingness) is more predictable and stable.
Evaluating the Trait Perspective (599)
Consistency of Expressive Style
• Our traits can be revealed very quickly - first
impressions
• Ambady and Rosenthal showed 10 second clips of
a teacher's lecture and had viewer rate teacher's
confidence, activeness, warmth, etc ----------These ratings predicted amazingly well the
teacher's average student ratings at the end of the
semester. So, one person's first impression
predicted other people's lasting impressions of the
teacher.
Social Cognitive Perspective (600)
• Albert Bandura (1986)
proposed this perspective
which emphasizes the
interaction of persons and
their situations.
• We learn our behaviors
though conditioning or by
observation
(modeling). How we
think about our situations
also affects our behavior.
•
Clip on this theory
http://www.psychotube.net/learnin
g-psychology/banduras-socialcognitive-theory/
Social Cognitive Perspective
Personal Control (601)
• Social Cognitive psychologists say that how we
interact with our environment depends on how we
sense our personal control.
• Psychologists study the effect of personal control
2 ways:
– Correlation ---- correlate people's feeling of control
with their behaviors and achievements.
– Experiment ----- change people's feelings of control and
note the effects.
Social Cognitive Theory
Personal Control
Locus of Control (602)
External Locus of
Control
• Think that chance and
outside forces control my
fate outside forces as
control
Internal Locus of Control
• Think that I control my
own fate
• Healthier
• More independent
• Less depressed
• Delay gratification
• Cope better with stress
Martin Seligman
Learned Helplessness (602)
• Martin Seligman strapped dogs in harnesses and
shocked them. Initially the dog tried to escape the
shock. Later, harness is removed. The dog does
not try to escape the shock ---- it has developed
learned helplessness.
• Learned Helplessness = passive
resignation
= feeling helpless = external
locus
• uncontrollable bad events --- perceived lack of
control --- generalized helpless behavior
Martin Seligman Positive
Psychology (604)
• The new scientific study of optimal human
functioning.
• Focuses on discovering and promoting strengths
and virtues that enable individuals and
communities to thrive.
• Three pillars:
1.
positive subjective well being
2.
positive character (virtues)
3.
positive groups/communities
A Fabulous Website
PsychoTube
• 23 minute TED talk by Martin Seligman’
http://www.psychotube.net/positivepsychology/martin-seligman-on-positivepsychology/
You will now think this is
hillarious!
Optimism (603)
• Optimists feel more in control
• Jump ahead to page 698 --- Attribution
Styles
We can attribute negative behavior (speeding
through a school zone) of others to:
1.Situational attribution (it is an emergency)
2 Dispositional attribution (he is a jerk)
Illusory Optimism (603)
• Although optimism is good - we also need realism
and some anxiety to motivate us.
• Remember the Over-confidence phenomenon
• Illusory Optimism - causes us to fail to take
sensible precautions.
• Be wary of incompetent over-confidents!!!!!
Evaluating the
Social Cognitive Perspective (606)
• critics say too much emphasis on the
situation and not enough on an individual's
traits
• not enough focus on personality and
emotion
Exploring the Self (607)
• The "self" is one of the western psychology's most
vigorously researched topics.
• Self-focused perspective ---- we presume others
are noticing and evaluating us ---- also called the
spotlight effect
• Possible Selves - motivate us by laying out
specific goals and giving us the energy to work
towards them ---- the successful self
• Self-focus - we remember information better if
we encode it in terms of ourselves.
Self Esteem (608)
• how we feel about ourselves
• high esteem --- less pressured to conform/to do
drugs ----- more persistent at difficult tasks --less likely to imagine rejection
• QQQQQ - does self-esteem follow or precede
doing well?
• Ybarra (1999) temporarily deflate self-image (tell
them they failed a test) ---- they will be more
likely to disparage others and/or express
prejudices
• Love/Loathe your neighbour as yourself.
Culture and Self Esteem (609)
• Groups who are stigmatized and
discriminated against and are of lower
status do not suffer low self-esteem
because:
1. they value the things at which they excel
2. they attribute their problems to prejudice
3. they compare themselves to their own
group
On a scale of 1 to 10 rate your
physical attractiveness
Self-Serving Bias (609)
• a readiness to perceive ourselves as favourable
• we readily take credit for our successes (but not
necessarily our failures)
• we see ourselves as better than average
• our memories are self-enhancing
• we seek out self-enhancing information
• the self-serving bias is ADAPTIVE
Culture and the Self (611)
• Individualism - priority to one's own goals --defining identity in terms of personal attributes
•
Collectivism - priority to group goals ---
defining your identity through identification with a
group
• How do you complete the sentence "I am
__________"
The Modern Unconscious Mind (614)
• New view of the unconscious ---- an information
processing that occurs without our awareness
• Lewicki flashed 6’s around a computer screen
based on a very complicated pattern - the subjects
who watched the screen better predicted where the
6 would next appear - their unconscious minds
seemed to detect the pattern (when the 6 was
random the subjects who watched the screen did
no better at predicting the next 6 than did the
subjects who didn't watch)
The Modern Unconscious Mind (614)
Now we say the unconscious is involved with:
• our schemas
• priming
• split brain phenomenon
• parallel processing
• implicit memory
• emotions
• self concept
• stereotypes
Freud Today (616)
• We defend ourselves against anxiety through
"terror management theory" --- faith in our
worldview and the pursuit of self-esteem protect
us against our fear of death
• Defense mechanisms ------ projection is now false
consensus effect - the tendency to overestimate the
extent to which others share our beliefs and
behaviors
• We now say that our defense mechanisms are
ways to preserve our self concepts