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Psychology:
From Inquiry to Understanding 2/e
Scott O. Lilienfeld
Steven Jay Lynn
Laura Namy
Nancy J. Woolf
Prepared by Caleb W. Lack
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Chapter Fourteen
Personality:
Who We Are
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Lecture Preview
• Personality
• Psychoanalytic theory
• Behavioral and social learning theories
• Humanistic models
• Trait models
• Personality assessment
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Personality
• Relatively enduring predispositions that
influence our behavior across many situations
• These traits account in part for consistencies
in our behavior across time and situations
• Nomothetic vs. idiographic approaches to
studying personality
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Causes of Personality
• Behavior-genetic methods attempt to
disentangle the effects of
– Genetic factors
– Shared environmental factors
– Nonshared environmental factors
• Use twin and adoption studies to do this
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Causes of personality
• Numerous personality traits are influences by
genetics – but all much below a 1.0 correlation
– Demonstrates nonshared environmental influence
• Turns out that shared environment plays little
to no role in adult personality
– Supported by twin and adoption studies
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Birth Order
• Most research has failed to find link between
personality and order of birth
• One possible exception is acceptance of
radical scientific ideas
– Later borns were more accepting
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A Note of Caution
• Remember, genes code for proteins, not
specific behaviors
• Genes have indirect influence on traits, while
the environment influences how these are
displayed in our lives
• Twin studies vs. molecular genetic studies
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Sigmund Freud
Viennese neurologist
who developed first
comprehensive theory
of personality
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Psychoanalytic Theory
•
Developed by Sigmund Freud, rests on three
primary assumptions
1. Psychic determinism
2. Symbolic meaning
3. Unconscious motivation
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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Structure of Personality
• Freud thought that the psyche consisted of
three components
– Id – basic instincts, operates on pleasure principle
– Ego – principal decision maker
– Superego – sense of morality
• Conflict between these cause distress
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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Psychoanalytic Theory
• Freud thought that our dreams reflected this
unconscious struggle
• Said all dreams reflected wish fulfillments but
that some were in disguise
• Contrary to pop psych, did not say that all
symbols mean the same to everyone
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Anxiety and Defense Mechanisms
• The ego will try to minimize anxiety via
defense mechanisms
• Although essential for psychological health,
Freud thought over reliance on one or two
could cause problems
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Defense Mechanism Examples
• Repression – motivated forgetting of
emotionally threatening memories or impulses
• Denial – motivated forgetting of distressing
experiences
• Projection – unconscious attribution of our
negative qualities onto others
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Stages of Psychosexual Development
• Freud believed that we pass through stages,
each of which is focused on an erogenous zone
• Insisted that sexuality begins in infancy
• Individuals who get fixated on a stage and have
difficulty moving on
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STAGE
APPROXIMATE AGE
PRIMARY SOURCE OF SEXUAL PLEASURE
Oral
Birth to 12-18 months
Sucking and drinking
Anal
18 months to 3 years
Alleviating tension by expelling feces
Phallic
3 to 6 years
Genitals (penis or clitoris)
Latency
6 to 12 years
Dormant sexual stage
Genital
12 years and beyond
Renewed sexual impulses; emergence of
mature romantic relationships
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Evaluated Scientifically
• Very influential in thinking about personality,
but there are major criticisms
– Unfalsifiable
– Failed predictions
– Questionable conception of unconscious
– Unrepresentative samples
– Emphasis on shared environment
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Neo-Freudians
• Differ from Freud’s theories in two key ways
– Less emphasis on sexuality, more on social drives
– More optimistic about personal growth
• Adler’s style of life and inferiority complex
• Jung’s collective unconscious and archetypes
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Behavioral Approaches
• Believe that differences in our personalities
stem largely from our learning histories
• Personalities are bundles of habits acquired by
classical and operant conditioning
• View personality as under the control of
genetic factors and contingencies
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Social Learning Theories
• Saw learning as important, but believe
thinking to play a crucial role as well
• Emphasize reciprocal determinism rather
than Skinnerian determinism
• Focus on observational learning and
individuals’ locus of control
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Evaluated Scientifically
• Placed psychology on firmer scientific footing
• However…
– Radical behaviorists’ ignoring of cognition is not
supported by research
– Social learning’s emphasis on shared environment
is non supported
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Carl Rogers
• Rejected notion of
determinism and embraced
free will
• Proposed self-actualization
as core motive in personality
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Roger’s Model
•
Three major components of personality:
1. The organism (innate, genetic blueprint)
2. The self (set of beliefs about who we are)
3. Conditions of worth (expectations we place
on ourselves – can result in incongruence)
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Self-Actualization
• Maslow said that these people tend to be
creative, spontaneous, and accepting of
themselves and others
• Can come off as difficult to work with or aloof
• Prone to peak experiences
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Evaluated Scientifically
• Comparative psychology challenges Rogers’
claim that our nature is entirely positive
• His and Maslow’s research was fraught with
methodological difficulties
• Many non-falsifiable assumptions
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Trait Models
• Interested primarily in describing and
understanding the structure of personality
• Used factor analysis to reduce diversity of
personality descriptors to underlying traits
• Five traits have repeatedly appeared in such
studies
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Big Five Model
• Uncovered using a lexical approach
•
•
•
•
•
Openness to Experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
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Big Five and Behavior
• Predict many important real-world behaviors
– Job performance and grades in school
– Physical health and life span
• Relatively similar traits seen across cultures,
but different prevalence rates
– Individualist vs collectivistic societies
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Tendencies vs Adaptations
• Basic tendencies are underlying personality
traits; characteristic adaptations are their
behavioral manifestations
• Same trait can manifest in very different ways
– Sensation seeking in firefighters and criminals
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Can Personality Change?
• Some variability prior to age 30, but little
thereafter
• Some evidence for changing of personality
psychopharmacologically, but should we?
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Evaluated Scientifically
• Mischel’s argument concerning behavioral
inconsistency
• Response was that traits are predictors of
aggregate, not isolated behaviors
• Primarily describe individual differences rather
than what causes them
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Personality Assessment
• Plagued by number of dubious methods
– Phrenology (head shape)
– Physiognomy (facial characteristics)
– Sheldon’s body types
• All lacked two key criteria – reliability and
validity
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Structured Personality Tests
• Paper-and-pencil tests consisting of questions
you respond to in one of a few fixed ways
• The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI) is most researched test
– 567 true-false questions
– 10 basic scales
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MMPI
• Developed using empirical method of test
construction, so it has low face validity
• Contains three validity scales designed to
detect various types of distorted responses
– L (Lie) detects impression management
– F (Frequency) detects malingering
– K (Correction) measures defensive responding
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Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
MMPI Evaluated Scientifically
• Most scales are both reliable as well as valid
for differentiating among mental disorders
• Problematic in several ways
– Redundant scales
– Not used for formal diagnosis
– Scales can be misused
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Rational/Theoretical Method
• Requires test developers to begin with a clearcut conceptualization of a trait and then write
items to assess that conceptualization
• Some have strong reliability and validity (NEO
PI-R) but others do not (Myers-Briggs)
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Projective Tests
• Ask examinees to interpret or make sense of
ambiguous stimuli
• Based on projective hypothesis
– When interpreting ambiguous stimuli, people
project aspects of their personality onto them
• Controversial, because reliability and validity
are in dispute
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Rorschach Inkblot Test
• Consists of ten symmetrical inkblots, five in
black-and-white and five containing color
• Examiners ask respondents to look at each
inkblot and say what it resembles
• This supposedly tells you about personality
traits of the respondent
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Rorschach Evaluated Scientifically
• Unknown test-retest and problematic
interrater reliability scores
• Little evidence that it detects features of
mental disorders
• Lack of incremental validity
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Thematic Apperception Test
• Requires subject to construct
a story based on pictures
• Little evidence for adequate
reliability or validity for most
applications
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Other Projective Tests
• Human figure drawings require you to draw a
person(s) in any way you wish
• Graphology – analysis of handwriting – is
another projective test
• Neither has scientific support for its use and
claims
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Pitfalls in Personality Assessment
• The PT Barnum effect and the tendency to
accept high base rate descriptors as accurate
– Astrology and tarot readings
• Overall, personality assessment can be useful,
but only if using valid, reliable instruments
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