Psychoanalytic
Approach

 Freud developed this approach – essentially an all
encompassing personality theory
 Has many problems as a theory, and is not really
empirically based, but has had a profound effect on
psychology and science
Personality

 Characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, behavior
that define an individual’s interactions
Assumptions

 Psychic Determinism – behavior has a cause
 - cause is found in the mind (psyche)
 Innate drives/unconscious processes motivate
behavior and thought
 Clinical Observations (case studies)
Freud’s Work

 Hysteria – physical symptoms
 no physical cause
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Hypnosis
Recalling emotionally charged experiences
Free Association – speak freely
 Repression of experiences manifested themselves physically
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Id ~ source of all basic drives

No distinction is made between a wish & its fulfillment.
Ego ~ provides sense of self – reality principle

~ balance between Id, Superego & outside world
Recognize demands of outside world,
rational thought,
conscious awareness
Superego ~ moral constraints

~ conflicted w/ Id
 **Conflict is always present in personality**
Dreams

2 levels of operation:
 Manifest Content – conscious / literal meaning
 Latent Content – symbolic meaning of manifest
content
Believed that dreams occur as a part of a wish
fulfillment drive
Psychosexual Stages of
Development

 Oral: birth to 15 months
 Gratification through the mouth
 Oral fixations
 Anal: 15 months – 3 years
 Gratification through digestion and elimination
 Ego begins to develop
 Anal retentive vs. Self-Indulgent
 Phallic: 3 – 5 years
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Increased interest in genitals
Oedipal conflict develops
Repression of conflict and Identification with parent
Development of Superego
 Latency: 5 years – puberty
 Drives appear inactive
 Genital – puberty – adulthood
 Adult sexuality
Defense Mechanisms

 Repression – blocking id impulses and/or bad
memories

Bob cannot remember terrible car accident
 Displacement – redirection of drive (feeling) from
one object to a substitute object

Bob yells at daughter because he is angry with
boss
contd

 Regression – reverting to earlier stages under stress

Bob sucks his thumb when he is stressed
 Rationalization – offering acceptable reason in place
of true reason

Bob spanks son to teach him to act nice
contd

 Sublimation – drive redirected towards a socially
desirable activity

Bob runs instead of yelling at wife
 Compensation – striving to make up for an
unconscious impulse

Bob enters Mr. Universe because he feels inferior
contd

 Denial – not accepting the truth

Bob keeps pictures of ex-girlfriend after breaking up
 Projection – Shifting your feelings to another person

Bob thinks his teacher hates him because he hates his
teacher
 Reaction formation – ego makes unacceptable impulses
look like opposites

**Mother loves child because she really hates her
Neo-Freudians

 Carl Jung – Collective Unconscious
 All humans are connected through the unconscious
mind. It is how we share common “archetypes.”
 Harry Stack Sullivan
 Emphasized the importance of relationships to the
development of personality.
 Alfred Adler
 Inferiority and Superiority complexes
Behaviorist Approach

 Emphasizes the role of environmental factors in
determining behavior.
 Learning shapes behavior.
 Social behaviors are learned through operant
conditioning.
 Emotional traits are accounted for through classical
conditioning
 A deterministic perspective, but has an
environmental focus.
 Addresses problems with cross-situational
consistency.
Cognitive Approach

 Focuses on how behavior is influenced by individual
processing
 Social Cognitive Theory – what was Social Learning
Theory?
 Reciprocal Determinism – external and internal factors
interact with each other
 Personal Construct Theory
 Individual determined dimensions of thinking about the
world.
 We all use these dimensions to predict, understand, and act
Contd.

 Self-schemas – cognitive representation of who we are
 Our sense of self plays a major role in determining behavior.
 Helps to theoretically explain cultural differences in behavior
 Agency (think self-efficacy) – cognitive perspective is not
deterministic
 More research based than other perspective, though many
concepts, like self-schemas or personal constructs are
vague.
Humanism

 Developed in the 1960s in response to deterministic
views on personality
 Carl Rogers and the “actualizing tendency”
 Self-concept – we try to act in accord with sense of self
 Searching for our “ideal self;” fulfillment is the goal
 Psychologists should encourage unconditional
positive regard
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Contd.

 Overlaps with cognitive psychology in the focus on
the self and perception and non-determinism, but
overall theory focuses on greater goals than
thoughts.
 Important in emphasizing the role of the individual
experience in psychology.
 Critiques question empirical basis for work and
problems in explaining those with psychological
disorders.
 Culturally based theory?
Self and the Brain

 Prefrontal Cortex and the self – Phineas Gage
 But thinking about the self can take multiple forms
(hopes v. obligations) – and different brain areas are
active for each.
Defining Traits

 Allport  Cattell  Eysenck – cutting the trait list
 Introverted - - - - Extraverted (extraversion)
 Unstable - - - - - Stable (neuroticism)
 Conscientiousness
 The Big 5 Traits
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Openness to Experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Measuring Personality

 Personality Inventories might ask an individual to
assess themselves on a scale, or ask them to answer
trait defining questions that could be easily
answered.
 MMPI – criterion keyed method
 Compare responses across groups that are externally
assessed as distinct
 Q-sort – research scores personality by having
individual rate self, comparing each trait with other
traits (instead of with self)
Personality Traits and Genes

 Minnesota study suggested that identical twins
raised apart scored as similar as twins raised
together on personality traits
 Genotype-environment correlation
 Reactive Interaction – two people in the same
environment can react quite differently
 Evocative Interaction – how one’s personality evokes
a response from others
 Proactive Interaction – how one’s personality
influences the environment he/she chooses
Interesting Findings

 Personality of identical twins raised apart or together
stays close over the course of their life, whereas
personality of fraternal twins seems to diverge over
time.
 Genotype-environment interaction
 After genetic similarities are cancelled out, two kids
of the same family are no more alike than two
randomly chose kids
 evocative, reactive, and proactive interactions