Personality
The Theory
 Conscious: Current awareness
 Preconscious: “Beneath the surface,”
but easily retrieved
 Unconscious: Thoughts, memories
“deep below the surface,” with great
influence – thoughts/feelings you aren’t
aware of
• Thus, human behavior largely based on
“instincts” or drives
o Sex (Eros – the “life force”)
o Aggression (Thanatos – the “death force”)
• How do we access the unconscious?
o Freudian slips
o Dreams & “wish fulfillment” (remember
manifest vs. latent content!)
o “Repressed” memories
Personality
Personality
The Components
 The Id:
• Present at birth, completely unconscious
• Basic urges: eat, sleep, sex, defecate
• Focused on primary process thinking: primitive,
illogical, irrational – impulsive
• Based on the pleasure principle: all needs must
be satisfied immediately; unsatisfied
needs lead to anxiety
• What if your Id is dominant?
Personality
The Components
 The Superego:
• The “moral watchdog”
• Not present at birth; Freud theorized it
“emerges” from the ego around 3-5 years
of age
• Social standards of “right & wrong” –
internalization of social norms
• Compares behavior against “ego ideal,” the
standard of excellence
• “Overactive” superego may lead to excessive
guilt
The Components
Personality
 The Ego:
• Controls thinking & reasoning
• Operates at all levels of awareness
• Secondary Process Thinking: rational, realistic, can incorporate
long-range planning (contrast w/ Id)
• Governed by reality principle: still desires gratification of Id, but
based in social reality, mediate between Id & “real world”
• With only Id & Ego, one would be unsocial & selfish
Personality
Psychosexual Stages
 Assumes “driving force” behind
personality development is
resolution of task/challenge at
each stage, rooted in
unconscious thoughts/instincts
 Unsuccessful = fixation, “stuck”
• Excessive gratification or
frustration
• Leads to overemphasis on
needs of that period
Stage 1: The Oral Stage (Birth-18 mos.)
 Source of satisfaction: mouth
 During an age of complete
dependence
 Challenge: weaning – rejection?
Need for gratification?
 Fixation: lack of confidence,
obsessive eating, smoking,
sarcasm, passive dependence
etc.
Personality
Stage 2: The Anal Stage (18 mos.-3 yrs)
 Source of satisfaction: anus
 Challenge: toilet training
(society’s 1st effort to regulate
our bodily urges); focus is on
control
 Fixation: obsession w/ neatness
(anal retentive) or messy &
disorganized (anal expulsive);
hostility towards women,
anxiety about sex
Personality
Stage 3: The Phallic Stage (3-5 yrs)
 Source of satisfaction: genitals –
attachment to parent of
opposite sex, jealous of same
sex
 Oedipal Complex (boys)
Personality
The Phallic Stage (cont)
 Electra Complex & Penis Envy!
(girls)
 Fixation: improper
identification,
homosexuality
Personality
Personality
Latency Period (5-13 yrs)
 Suppression of sexual instincts
 A “natural” homosexual
period, prefer company of
same sex
Stage 4: The Genital Stage (13-19 yrs)
 Maturation of sexual desires,
relationships
Evaluating Freud
 Unconscious can influence
behaviors, early childhood can
influence adult personality,
BUT:
• Lacks scientific evidence
• Male-centered
• Penis envy, castration anxiety
etc. seem quite a
stretch…
Exploring the Unconscious
Psychosexual Stages
 Erogenous zones
 Oedipus complex
• A boy’s sexual desires
toward his mother &
feelings of jealousy and
hatred for the rival father.
 Electra
complex
• Vice Versa
 Identification
• Child copes and represses such feelings and begins to
identify with rival parent.
 Fixation
• A strong conflict within a stage that would lock a
person in that stage.
Personality
Freud & Defense Mechanisms
What are they?
 Coping methods; unconscious defense against unpleasant emotions
 Purpose is to avoid anxiety; uncomfortable thoughts & feelings in
one’s unconscious create anxiety (e.g., impulses from Id threaten to
get out of control) & defense mechanisms help protect your conscious
mind by reducing/avoiding it
• Overactive Id: can I control myself?
• Overactive Superego: overabundance of guilt
Personality
The Same Unacceptable Impulse Can Lead to
Different Defense Mechanisms
Sample Unacceptable Impulse: Negativity
Defense
Mechanism
Application
Sublimation
Being a move or restaurant clinic
Reaction
Formation
Expressing optimism & finding positives to any
situation
Projection
Being sensitive to or critical of negativity in
others
Rationalization
Believing the world is in a dismal state, so
negativity is “justified”
Regression
Doing sloppy work or whining
Denial
Not accepting one’s negativity
Freud & Defense Mechanisms
Personality
Repression (#1!)
• Anxiety-evoking thoughts, memories pushed into unconscious
• Sexual desires, childhood trauma, etc.
• “Motivated forgetting”
Denial
• Refusal to acknowledge
painful, anxietyproducing info
Personality
Freud & Defense Mechanisms
Projection
• Attributing one’s own unacceptable impulses, qualities unto another
Rationalization
• Creating acceptable, logical reasons for things that otherwise would
produce anxiety, would not be acceptable
o “I failed the MCAT, but I never really wanted to be a doctor anyway.”
o “Everyone thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.”
o “It depends what your definition of sex is.”
Displacement
• Redirect undesirable motives from original source to another
Personality
Freud & Defense Mechanisms
Identification
• Dealing with anxiety by taking on the characteristics of another
o Mid-life crisis as trying to take on the characteristics of a younger
man
Regression
• Reverting to childlike behaviors & defenses in response to threatening
situations
Intellectualization
• Avoiding the uncomfortable emotional aspects of a painful experience
by focusing on abstract ideas
o Dealing with a cancer diagnosis by researching the illness
extensively & becoming an “expert” rather than dealing
with the emotional impact
Personality
Freud & Defense Mechanisms
Reaction Formation
• Refusing to acknowledge or deal with uncomfortable or anxiety
producing thoughts by displaying the opposite desires/behaviors
• Often marked by persistent behaviors
o Homophobia in response to one’s own homosexual desires
Sublimation
• Most adaptive of the defense mechanisms
• Convert unacceptable/uncomfortable desires or thoughts; allows an
outlet for anxiety through acceptable behaviors
o Watch boxing to sublimate desire for aggression
o Suck on lollipops to sublimate desire for a cigarette
Personality
Defense Mechanisms in Real Life
1. After spending time with his mistress, a man picks up some flowers for
his wife because he feels like she doesn’t love him anymore.
Projection?
2. A minister preaches about the evils of homosexuality, when he is gay
himself
Reaction Formation?
3. A woman says that she is no longer mourning the death of her child, but
feels anxious every time she sees a small boy.
Repression?
 Neo-Freudians
are followers of Freud, but
typically disagreed with him in at least
one way or another
 Neo-Freudians
veered away from Freud
• Placed more importance on conscious mind’s
role in interpreting experience and in coping
with environment
• Doubted that sex and aggression were all
consuming motives
 Tended to emphasize loftier motives and social
interactions
 Jung
disagreed with Freud in two major
points
1. Had more positive view of human nature
 Try to develop potential while trying to handle their
instinctual urges
Neo-Freudians
Personality
Carl Jung & Analytical Psychology
• Coined terms “intraversion” & “extraversion”
•Personal Unconscious: similar to Freud’s idea
of the unconscious
• Collective Unconscious: shared instincts,
urges, memories, & behaviors,
inherited from past generations, &
common to everyone
o Archetype: “thought forms,” collective
memories based on ancestral
experiences (birth, death, power, evil,
hero, mother)
o Persona: “mask” used to deal w/ outside
world, “fake” personality
Broke w/ Freud over
emphasis on sexuality
 Archetype
themes throughout
many cultures stay the same
• Example:
 Jack and the Beanstalk is similar to David
And Goliath)
 PLOT?
 Batman? Superman?
 Such
stories are common due to
reoccurrence in history and stored
in unconscious.
 Sense of self is an archetype
 Use our personal and collective unconscious
to shape our personality
 Felt
the driving force of
personalities is the desire to
Overcome feelings of inferiority
• Examples:
 Napoleon
 Glenn Cunningham
 Coined
complex
the term inferiority
• A pattern of avoiding feelings of
inadequacy rather than trying to
overcome their source
• Starts in childhood because one
Cannot take care of themselves
 Also
believed the way parents treat their
child influences the styles of life they
choose
• Over pampering leads to self-centeredness
• Neglect leads to angry, hostile person
 Ideally
children should learn courage
and self-reliance from father and
generosity and feelings for others from
their mother
 She
was a follower of Freud but
disagreed with Freud in many ways
• Stressed the importance of basic anxiety which
leads to helplessness
• Feelings of hostility towards parents due to
anxiety and helplessness.
• Believed that if a child was raised in a
loving environment, child would avoid
parent-child conflict.
• Countered Freud’s assumption
of “penis envy”
Neo-Freudians
Karen Horney
• Saw anxiety as the true motivating force; how
one reacts to real or imagined dangers
or threats
• Saw personality as built around fighting
rejection
o Social/environment issues critical,
especially childhood relationships
o Believed we all need affection, love
Personality
 To
study personality there must be a
pathway to the unconscious
• Projective tests- personality test that provides
ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger
projection of one’s inner dynamics, like a
psychological X-Ray.
 Thematic
Apperception Test (TAT)people express their feelings &
interests through the stories they
make up about certain scenes.
Testing Personality
Projective Test Example
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): 20 picture cards of
human figures in ambiguous situations
 Viewed one-by-one, “tell a story”
 Who does the respondent identify with? What are
the “themes” of the story?
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
 Rorschach
Inkblot Test- most widely used
projective test, a set of 10 inkblots,
designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks
to identify people’s inner feelings by
analyzing their interpretations of the
blots
• Scoring has improved: computer aided tool has
been designed to improve agreement among
raters and enhance the test’s validity
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
Projective Test Example
Rorschach Inkblot Test: best known & for a long time
most frequently used (less today)
 “What do you see?” – open ended
 Patterns unique in form, color shading
 Does respondent use “mirror image”? Color? White
space? Focus on certain “subjects”?
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
Testing Personality
 Freud
was right about one thing: we
indeed have limited access to all that
goes on in our minds
• However Anthony Greenwald believes it is time
to abandon Freud’s idea of the unconscious
 View unconscious as information processing that
occurs without awareness
 We fly on auto-pilot more than we know
 During
1960s, Humanistic perspective
began to develop
• Goes against Freud and Skinner
 Freud Unconscious
 Skinner behaviorism and learning
• Humanistic psychologists focused on the ways
“healthy” people strive for self-determination
and self-realization
 Pioneers
• Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
 Offered a third force perspective that emphasized
human potential
 Maslow’s
Self-Actualizing Person
• Motivated by a hierarchy of needs
• Once our self-esteem is met we ultimately seek
self-actualization and self-transcendence
• Decided that each of these people were self-
aware and self-accepting, secure in who they
were
 Their interests were problem centered rather than
self-centered
 During his study on colleges students, he speculated
that those likely to become self-actualizing adults
were
 Compassionate towards elders & disturbed by cruelty and
meanness .
 Had courage to be unpopular & unashamed
 Carl
Rogers’ Person Centered Perspective
• Believed that people are basically good and are
endowed with self-actualizing tendencies
• Growth-promoting environment required three
conditions
 Genuineness, acceptance, and empathy
• People nurture growth by being genuine
 Being open with their own feelings and being
transparent
• People nurture growth by being accepting
 Unconditional positive regard: according to Rogers,
an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
• People nurture growth by empathy
 Sharing and mirroring our feelings and reflecting our
meanings
 “Rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy.
Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most
potent forces for change I know.”
 These
three factors are the nutrients that
enable people to grow.
 Central
feature of personality is one’s
self-concept
• Self-concept: all our thoughts and feelings about
ourselves, in answer to the question ”Who am I?”
• “…help others to know, accept, and be true to
themselves.”
Criticisms of Humanism
• Concepts are vague
and subjective
• Can lead to selfindulgence,
selfishness, and
erosion of morals
• Fails to appreciate
the human capacity
for evil.
Albert
Bandura
 Proposed
by Bandura
• Social-Cognitive views behavior as influenced
by the interaction between people’s traits
(including their thinking) and their social
context
 Viewing nature and nurture as working together
 SOCIAL: Believed
we learn many of our
behaviors either through conditioning or
by observing others and modeling our
behaviors after theirs
 COGNITIVE: Also emphasizes the
importance of mental processes
 What we think about our situation plays a factor as
well
 Bandura
views the person-environment
interaction as reciprocal determinism
• The interacting influences of behaviors, internal
cognition, and environment
 Calls these “interlocking determinates of each other”
 Example: Children’s TV-viewing habits (past behavior)
influences their viewing preferences (internal factor), which
influences how TV (environmental factor) affects their
current behavior.
 Personal
control: the extent to which
people perceive control over their
environment rather than feeling helpless
• 2 ways to study the effect of personal control
 Correlate people’s feelings of control with their
behaviors and achievements
 Experiment by raising or lowering peoples sense of
control and noting the effects
 Internal
vs. External Locus of Control
• I: You control your fate.
• E: Outside forces control your fate.
 Depleting
and strengthening self control
• Self-control: the ability to control impulses and
delay gratification
 Predicts good adjustment, better grades, and social
success according to June Tangney
 Self-control requires attention and energy
• People who feel helpless and oppressed
often perceive control as external
• Learned helplessness: Helpless behavior
following repeated experiences that
seemed to have no control.
 In an experiment on learned helplessness, Seligman
found that animals that were unable to change their
situation for long periods of times seemed unable or
unwilling to change when the possibility was opened to
them.
Outcomes of Personal Control
Learned Helplessness
Uncontrollable
bad events
Perceived
lack of control
Important Issue
• Nursing Homes
• Prisons
•Colleges
Generalized
helpless behavior
• Good measure of how helpless or
effective you feel
• Optimism health: outlive pessimists or
live with fewer illnesses
 Dating couples have conflicts, optimists and
their partners see it as engaging
constructively
 Excessive Optimism = not a good thing!
The Trait Perspective
Belief that personality is defined by specific
characteristics, or traits… (Genetic emphasis)
 Trait: a characteristic of personality
(combination of traits = personality)
 Viewed as stable and motivates behavior in
keeping with the trait (lazy, friendly, etc.)
 Nature! “You are who you are!”
 Gordon Allport (1919) pioneer: defined
personality in terms of specific traits /
identifiable behavior patterns
Personality Inventory
 A self-report questionnaire (true-false or agreedisagree items)
 designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and
behaviors
 used to assess personality by identifying specific traits
 Objectively graded / assessed
 Used by most all personality theorists
 Factor analysis:
statistical procedure used to identify
clusters of questions (Example: strong correlations between
social, friendly, talkative = Extraversion as basic personality
trait
Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory
► Myers-Briggs
 Most popular inventory in corporate sector
 89 of 100 largest corporations : 2.5 million/year
 Colleges: Career placement office
Eyesenck Personality Questionnaire
► Hans
Eyesenck: two primary personality factors as
axes for describing personality variation
Moody
Anxious
Rigid
Sober
Pessimistic
Reserved
Unsociable
Quiet
UNSTABLE
Touchy
Restless
Aggressive
Excitable
Changeable
Impulsive
Optimistic
Active
melancholic choleric
INTROVERTED
EXTRAVERTED
phlegmatic sanguine
Passive
Sociable
Careful
Outgoing
Thoughtful
Talkative
Peaceful
Responsive
Controlled
Easygoing
Reliable
Lively
Carefree
Even-tempered
Leadership
Calm
STABLE
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
► MMPI:
Used to assess abnormal personality /
emotional disorders
Clinically
significant
range
Hypochondriasis 1
(concern with body symptoms)
Depression2
(pessimism, hopelessness)
After
treatment
(no scores
in the clinically
significant range)
Hysteria 3
(uses symptoms to solve problems)
Psychopathic deviancy 4
(disregard for social standards)
Before
treatment
(anxious,
depressed,
and
displaying
deviant
behaviors)
Masculinity/femininity 5
(interests like those of other sex)
Paranoia 6
(delusions, suspiciousness)
Psychasthenia 7
(anxious, guilt feelings)
Schizophrenia 8
(withdrawn, bizarre thoughts)
Hypomania 9
(overactive, excited, impulsive)
Social introversion 10
(shy, inhibited)
0
30
40
50
60
T-score
70
80
Testing Personality
Examples of Objective Personality Tests:
 MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory):
far & away most widely used
• 567 items: true/false/cannot say
• Checks for consistency – geared toward assessing
validity (e.g. lying, defensiveness, too many “cannot
say”)
• Used to diagnose personality disorders
 16PF (187 items – Cattell’s “16 Factors”)
 NEO (built around the “Big 5”
 Edwards Personal Preference Schedule
 Miller Motivation Schedule (single trait)
Testing Personality
Projective Tests
Unlimited number of response to ambiguous stimuli: respondent
projects his/her characteristic concerns, conflicts, & desires on to the
stimulus, allowing the examiner to draw conclusions about the
respondent’s personality
Advantages:
 Less tension than a “test” situation
 True purpose unclear, less “faking”
 May uncover unconscious thoughts, feelings
Disadvantages:
 Very subjective, unstandardized; scoring may differ from one
examiner to another
 Need highly trained examiner
The Big Five (Personality traits)
Personality
First-Borns:
Last-Born:
 Have to grow up fast
 Confident, perfectionist, selfreliant
 Comfortable w/ adults
 Crave attention, peopleoriented
 May feel they’re not taken
seriously
 Tend to be impatient,
temperamental, yet
carefree
Middle-Child:
 Little recognition, respect
 May feel they don’t “belong”
 Most balanced; family
“mediator”
 Prone to peer pressure, most
vulnerable
Only-Children:
 Much like first-born (reliable,
etc.)
 May have trouble relating to
peers, have to adapt to
an adult’s world
Self-Serving Bias
• A readiness to
perceive oneself
favorable.
•People accept more
responsibility for
successes than
failures.
•Appears to be adaptive as it wards off
extreme depression.
Does culture play a part in our
personality (according to humanistic
psychologists)?
• Individualism: giving priority to one’s own goals
over group goals. Defining your identity in terms
of yourself.
– More privacy, more accepting of different lifestyles,
people feel free to switch jobs, churches, and homes.
• Collectivism: giving priority to the goals of a
group and defining your identity as part of that
group.
– Less divorce, homicide, stress-related disease, and
loneliness