Personality
Humanistic, Trait, Testing
Humanistic Perspective
By the 1950s and 60s psychology moves away from
Freud’s negativity and the mechanistic psychology of
the behaviorists.
Abraham Maslow
(1908-1970)
Carl Rogers
(1902-1987)
Self-Actualizing Person
Abraham Maslow proposed that we as individuals are
motivated by a hierarchy of needs. Beginning with
physiological needs, we try to reach the state of selfactualization—fulfilling our potential.
Self Actualized people are self aware, self
accepting, open and spontaneous, creative,
loving and caring, and not paralyzed by
other’s opinions.
“acquired enough courage to be unpopular, to
be unashamed about being openly virtuous”
College students most likely to become selfactualized were “privately affectionate to
those of their elders who deserve it.” and
“secretly uneasy about the cruelty, meanness
and mob spirit so often found in young
people.”
Maslow estimated only 1% of the population reaches
this level
 The top of the motivational hierarchy. This makes it
the weakest of all needs and the most easily
impeded.
 “This inner nature is not strong and overpowering and
unmistakable like the instincts of animals. It is weak
and delicate and subtle and easily overcome by habit,
cultural pressure, and wrong attitudes toward it.”
 Jonah Complex – must be willing to sacrifice safety
for personal growth. A fear of success.
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◦ We Run away from responsibilities, freedom,
 Does society influence this?
 How does childhood influence this?
Self Actualization
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Pablo Casals
Albert Einstein
Ralph Waldo Emerson
William James
Thomas Jefferson
Eleanor Roosevelt
Albert Schweitzer
Examples of SA People
Original work has been interpreted
multiple times, stemming away from his
original ideas.
 Some will state Maslow’s list of people is
biased as he focused on what he thought
represented the best of humans.
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◦ Only those that had opportunity for success in
that setting, European, and men
Assessment of Maslow
Carl Rogers
Goal of every organism is to fulfill the
capabilities of our genetic blueprint –
actualizing tendency
 Human beings form images of themselves –
called self concepts (genuine, innate desires)
 Drive to fulfill self-concepts – self actualizing
tendency
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Struggled to understand the unhappiness of
the people he encountered in therapy.
The founder of personal growth and
determination framework, which later leads
to Positive and Motivational psychology.
Believed that we all have a potential for a
fulfilling life if we remove the obstacles that
keep us from reaching it.
Opposite of Freud’s world, which highlights
our negative tendencies and compromises
between impulses.
Carl Rogers
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Did you write the same thing for each
prompt?
From a humanistic perspective, a fully
functioning, self-actualized person finds the
perceived self as completely congruent with
the ideal self.
Rogers suggests that if our self-concept is
negative, that is, if we fall far short of our
ideal self, we feel dissatisfied and unhappy. It
follows that parents, teachers, and friends
should help others know, accept, and be true
to themselves
Perceived Self vs. Ideal Self
Assessing the Self
In an effort to assess personality, Rogers asked
people to describe themselves as they would like
to be (ideal) and as they actually are (real). If the
two descriptions were close the individual if a
fully functioning person
All of our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in an answer
to the question, “Who am I?” refers to Self-Concept.
Humanistic view asserts the fundamental
goodness of people and their constant
striving toward higher levels of
functioning
 Does not dwell on past occurrences, but
rather focuses on the present and future
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Humanistic Personality Theories
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People who are central to our lives condition
us to move away from our genuine feelings, to
earn their love by pursuing those goals they
value, even if those do not reflect our deepest
wishes.
Called Conditional positive reward (of worth)
◦ Acceptance and love contingent on certain behaviors
and fulfilling certain conditions.
Need to strive for unconditional positive
reward
◦ Full acceptance and love of another regardless of our
behavior
 Genuineness
 Accepting
 Empathy
How to become fully functioning?
Early Childhood Matters
1. Who is your most significant other at
this time?
 2. Do you have unconditional positive
regard (UPR) for this person? Explain.
 3. Does this person have UPR for you?
Explain.
 4. Are there conditions of worth in your
relationship? If so, what are they?
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Answer in your unit guide.
Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective
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Humanistic psychology has a pervasive impact on
counseling, education, child-rearing, and management.
Concepts in humanistic psychology are vague and
subjective and lack scientific basis.
Some view these theories as overly optimistic and that
they ignore the nature of human evil
Some argue that humanistic view lead to selfindulgence, narcissism and self-centeredness – Western
view of hyper-individualism
Trait perspective
The Trait Perspective: Not Why but What
An individual’s unique makeup of durable dispositions
and consistent ways of behaving (traits) constitutes his
or her personality.
Examples of Traits
Honest
Dependable
Moody
Impulsive
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Founder of trait theory)
Allport rejects the idea that the unconscious is
central as well as dismissing the negativity of
psychodynamic theory.
◦ “Are you that little boy.” Freud
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Goal was to define personality in terms of
identifiable behavior patterns
Description and classification
Allport & Odbert (1936), identified 18,000 words
representing traits.
Cut this down to 200 – still too much
Allport believed if you want to know something
about someone, you just ask them.
Gordon Allport
Each person has a unique capacity to
adapt to the environment
 Defined traits as mental structures that
cause behavior to be similar across
different situations
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◦ Outgoing in the mall or in class
Allport Continued
Exploring Traits
Factor analysis is a
statistical approach
used to describe and
relate personality
traits.
Cattell used this
approach to develop a
16 Personality Factor
(16PF) inventory.
Raymond Cattell
(1905-1998)
Factor Analysis
Cattell found that large groups of traits could
be reduced down to 16 core personality traits
based on statistical correlations.
Superficial
traits
Boisterous
Impatient
Irritable
Excitement
Basic
trait
Impulsive
Personality Dimensions
Hans and Sybil Eysenck suggested that personality
could be reduced down to three polar dimensions,
extraversion-introversion emotional stability-instability,
and pychoticism
The Big Five Factors
Today’s trait researchers believe that Eysencks’
personality dimensions are too narrow and
Cattell’s 16PF too large. So, a middle range (five
factors) of traits does a better job of assessment.
Openness/Culture
Conscientiousness
Extroversion/Introversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism/ Emotional Stability
Endpoints
Questions about the Big Five
1. How stable are these traits?
Quite stable in adulthood.
However, they change over
development.
2. How heritable are they?
Fifty percent or so for each
trait.
3. How about other cultures?
These traits are common across
cultures.
4. Can they predict other
personal attributes?
Yes. Conscientious people are
morning type and extraverted
are evening type.
Evaluating the Trait Perspective
The Person-Situation Controversy
Walter Mischel (2004) points out that traits may be
enduring, but the resulting behavior in various
situations is different. Therefore, traits are not
good predictors of behavior.
* Level of aggression is different based on
environmental context
* She does A when X, but B when Y
The Person-Situation Controversy
Trait theorists argue that behaviors from a
situation may be different, but average behavior
remains the same. Therefore, traits matter.