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Chapter 12 Personality: Theory, Research, and Assessment Defining Personality: Consistency and Distinctiveness Personality Traits Dispositions and dimensions The five-factor Model Extraversion Neuroticism Openness to experience Agreeableness Conscientiousness Figure 12.1 The five-factor model of personality. Trait models attempt to analyze personality into its basic dimensions. McCrae and Costa (1985, 1987) maintain that personality can be described adequately with the five higher-order traits identified here. Psychodynamic Perspectives Freud’s psychoanalytic theory Structure of personality Id - Pleasure principle Ego - Reality principle Superego - Morality Levels of awareness Conscious Unconscious Preconscious Conflict Sex and Aggression Anxiety Defense Mechanisms Figure 12.2 Freud’s model of personality structure. Freud theorized that people have three levels of awareness: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The enormous size of the unconscious is often dramatized by comparing it to the portion of an iceberg that lies beneath the water’s surface. Freud also divided personality structure into three components—id, ego, and superego—which operate according to different principles and exhibit different modes of thinking. In Freud’s model, the id is entirely unconscious, but the ego and superego operate at all three levels of awareness. Figure 12.3 Freud’s model of personality dynamics. According to Freud, unconscious conflicts between the id, ego, and superego sometimes lead to anxiety. This discomfort may lead to the use of defense mechanisms, which may temporarily relieve anxiety. Figure 12.4 Arousal in response to depiction of male homosexual activity. This graph shows the progression of participants’ sexual arousal over time, as measured by a penile strain gauge, in response to a video depicting male homosexual activity. The homophobic men in the Adams et al. (1996) study did not rate the video as arousing, but the physiological measure showed that they experienced substantial sexual arousal. (Adapted from Adams et al., 1996) Freud on Development: Psychosexual Stages Sexual = physical pleasure Psychosexual stages Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital Fixation = Excessive gratification or frustration Overemphasis on psychosexual needs during fixated stage Other Psychodynamic Theorists Carl Jung Analytical Psychology Personal and collective unconscious Archetypes Introversion/Extroversion Alfred Adler Individual Psychology Striving for superiority Compensation Inferiority complex/overcompensation Birth order Figure 12.5 Jung’s vision of the collective unconscious. Much like Freud, Jung theorized that each person has conscious and unconscious levels of awareness. However, he also proposed that the entire human race shares a collective unconscious, which exists in the deepest reaches of everyone’s awareness. He saw the collective unconscious as a storehouse of hidden ancestral memories, called archetypes. Jung believed that important cultural symbols emerge from these universal archetypes. Thus, he argued that remarkable resemblances among symbols from disparate cultures such as the mandalas shown here are evidence of the existence of the collective unconscious. Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives Pros Insights regarding The unconscious The role of internal conflict The importance of early childhood experiences Cons Poor testability Inadequate empirical base Sexist views Behavioral Perspectives Skinner’s views Conditioning Bandura’s views Social leaning theory Cognitive processes and reciprocal determinism Observational learning Models Self-efficacy Mischel’s views The person-situation controversy Figure 12.6 A behavioral view of personality. Staunch behaviorists devote little attention to the structure of personality because it is unobservable, but they implicitly view personality as an individual’s collection of response tendencies. A possible hierarchy of response tendencies for a specific stimulus situation is shown here. Figure 12.7 Personality development and operant conditioning. According to Skinner, people’s characteristic response tendencies are shaped by reinforcers and other consequences that follow behavior. Thus, if your joking at a party leads to attention and compliments, your tendency to be witty and humorous will be strengthened. Figure 12.8 Bandura’s reciprocal determinism. Bandura rejects Skinner’s highly deterministic view that freedom is an illusion and argues that internal mental events, external environmental contingencies, and overt behavior all influence one another. Evaluating Behavioral Perspectives Pros Based on rigorous research Insights into effects of learning and environmental factors Cons Overdependence on animal research Fragmented view of personality Dehumanizing views Humanistic Perspectives Carl Rogers Person Centered Theory Self-concept Conditional/unconditional positive regard Incongruence and anxiety Abraham Maslow Self-actualization theory Hierarchy of needs The healthy personality Figure 12.9 Rogers’s view of personality structure. In Rogers’s model, the self-concept is the only important structural construct. However, Rogers acknowledged that one’s self-concept may not be consistent with the realities of one’s actual experience—a condition called incongruence. Figure 12.10 Rogers’s view of personality development and dynamics. Rogers’s theory of development posits that conditional love leads to a need to distort experiences, which fosters an incongruent self-concept. Incongruence makes one prone to recurrent anxiety, which triggers defensive behavior, which fuels more incongruence. Figure 12.11 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow, human needs are arranged in a hierarchy, and people must satisfy their basic needs before they can satisfy higher needs. In the diagram, higher levels in the pyramid represent progressively less basic needs. Individuals progress upward in the hierarchy when lower needs are satisfied reasonably well, but they may regress back to lower levels if basic needs are no longer satisfied. Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives Pros Emphasizing subjective experience Study of the healthy personality Cons Lack of research base Difficult to test empirically Possibly overly optimistic about human nature Biological Perspectives Eysenk’s theory 3 higher order traits Extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism Determined by genes Twin studies Novelty seeking and genetics The evolutionary approach Traits conducive to reproductive fitness Figure 12.13 Eysenck’s model of personality structure. Eysenck described personality structure as a hierarchy of traits. In this scheme, a few higher-order traits, such as extraversion, determine a host of lower-order traits, which determine a person’s habitual responses. Figure 12.14 Twin studies of personality. Loehlin (1992) has summarized the results of twin studies that have examined the Big Five personality traits. The N under each trait indicates the number of twin studies that have examined that trait. The chart plots the average correlations obtained for identical and fraternal twins in these studies. As you can see, identical twins have shown greater resemblance in personality than fraternal twins have, suggesting that personality is partly inherited. Figure 12.15 Heritability and environmental variance for the Big Five traits. Based on the twin study data of Riemann et al. (1997), Plomin and Caspi (1999) estimated the heritability of each of the Big Five traits. The data also allowed them to estimate the amount of variance on each trait attributable to shared environment and nonshared environment. As you can see, the heritability estimates hovered in the vicinity of 40%, with two exceeding 50%. As in other studies, the influence of shared environment was very modest. (Based on Plomin and Caspi, 1999) Figure 12.17 Self-monitoring and dating. Snyder and Simpson (1984) found that college students who were high in self-monitoring had dated more people in the preceding 12 months than had students low in self-monitoring. Apparently, high self-monitors commit themselves to romantic relationships less readily than low self-monitors do. Evaluating Biological Perspectives Pros Convincing evidence for genetic influence Cons Conceptual problems with heritability estimates Artificial carving apart of nature and nurture No comprehensive biological theory Contemporary Empirical Approaches to Personality Traits Marvin Zuckerman Sensation Seeking Mark Snyder Self-monitoring Markus and Kitayama Independence vs. interdependence and culture Figure 12.18 Culture and conceptions of self. According to Markus and Kitayama (1991), Western cultures foster an independent view of the self as a unique individual who is separate from others, as diagrammed on the left. In contrast, Asian cultures encourage an interdependent view of the self as part of an interconnected social matrix, as diagrammed on the right. The interdependent view leads people to define themselves in terms of their social relationships (for instance, as someone’s daughter, employee, colleague, or neighbor). Figure 12.20 MMPI profiles. Scores on the 10 clinical scales of the MMPI are often plotted as shown here to create a profile for a client. The normal range for scores on each subscale is 50 to 65. People with disorders frequently exhibit elevated scores on several clinical scales rather than just one.