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Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
Chapter 12
Personality
Slides prepared by
Randall E. Osborne, Texas State University-San Marcos
Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.1
Personality: What It Is and How It
Is Measured
Personality defined
Personality is defined as: the enduring or
lasting patterns of behavior and thought
(across time and situation).
In this chapter we will discuss the following personality
theories:
1. Trait theory (Cattell, Allport)
2. Sigmund Freud: Psychodynamic theory
The Neo-Freudians:
3. Carl Jung: Analytical psychology
4. Alfred Adler: Individual psychology
5. Karen Horney: Feminine psychology
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Personality
6.
Behavioral theory: B.F. Skinner and
operant conditioning
7. The Humanistic theory:
a. Abraham Maslow: Hierarchy of needs
b. Carl Rogers: Person-centered therapy
8. Cognitive: Albert Bandura’s Social learning
theory
9. Biological theories of personality
Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.2
The Trait Approach: Identifying
Patterns of Behavior
Personality
Trait theory uses two different methods of
research:
-
Idiographic approach: defines traits by studying
individuals in depth and focuses on the
distinctive qualities of their personalities (Gordon
Allport)
-
Nomothetic approach: studies groups of
people in the attempt to identify personality traits
that tend to appear in clusters. This approach
uses the statistical technique called factor
analysis (Raymond Cattell)
Personality
Allport described three different types of traits:
- 1. Cardinal traits: Traits that are so much a part of
who the person is, you can define the person by the
trait (e.g. – Honest Abe Lincoln)
- 2. Central traits: Major characteristics of our
personality such as: sensitivity, honesty, and
generosity. These traits are quite generalized and
enduring, and it is these traits that form the building
blocks of our personality. Allport found that most
people could be characterized by a fairly small number
of central traits (usually five to ten).
- 3. Secondary traits: less generalized and far less
enduring traits that affect our behaviors in specific
circumstances. Examples include our dress style
preferences.
Personality
Raymond Cattell also began his work by identifying certain
obvious personality traits, such as integrity, friendliness, and
tidiness (1950, 1965, 1973, 1982). He called these dimensions
of personality surface traits.
- Cattell then obtained extensive data about surface traits from a
large number of people (nomothetic approach).
- Statistical analysis of these data revealed that certain surface
traits seemed to occur in clusters or groups. Cattell theorized
that these clusters indicated a single underlying trait.
- Cattell derived a list of 16 primary or source traits that he
considered to be at the center or core of personality. He listed
each of these traits as a pair of polar opposites (16PF).
Personality
12.2 Personality—The Trait
Approach
-
-
A person’s special
qualities?
Gordon Allport (1937)
—personality can be
understood as a
combination of traits
Are the personalities of
the two owners of the
closets to the right
different?
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Personality
Trait theory.
Hans Eysenck (1906-1997). Disagreed with
Allport and Cattell. He believed that there
are only two major dimensions to
personality:
1. Intraversion-Extraversion
2. Neuroticism-Stability
12.2 The Big Five Dimensions of
Personality
-
-
Many factor analyses
reveal the same
“major” factors that
seem to classify the
personalities of most
people
The Big Five
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Personality
Problems with trait theory:
-
Circular reasoning: Which comes
first the behavior, or the trait?
-
Lack of situational consistency
(Mischel)
-
No explanation for what causes
these many different traits to occur
-
Lack of agreement on the number
and type of traits
12.2 Traits as Biological Building
Blocks
-
Brain changes do
sometimes bring on
personality changes—
Phineas Gage
-
Traits do seem to have a
heritability component
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Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.3
The Psychodynamic Approach:
Forces That Lie Beneath
Awareness
Personality
When a student asked him what the significance of his
cigar was, Freud replied “sometimes a cigar is just a
cigar”.
Personality
-
Sigmund Freud MD (neurologist)
-
Psychodynamic Theory
-
Vienna, Austria (1856-1939).
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Techniques used: hypnosis, catharsis, dreamanalysis, free-association, parapraxes
-
Freudian slips or parapraxes – everything we do
and say, even by accident, has hidden meaning
-
Believed in the importance of the “unconscious”
mind
Personality
-
“unconscious” forces are animalistic
sexual/aggressive drives that motivate most of
human behavior
-
These “unconscious” drives operate without
conscious awareness. This is because our
unconscious desires are too difficult or too painful
to face directly
-
Freud referred to these unconscious motives
collectively as the “id”
-
Freud believed there is a reason behind
everything we do
12.3 Psychodynamic Approach—
Structure of Personality
Three independent, interacting, and often
conflicting systems
- Id—present at birth
-
• pleasure principle
-
Ego—acquired through contact with reality
• reality principle
-
Superego—learned from caregivers
• morality principle
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Personality
The three major forces of the psyche are the:
1. Id = unconscious = pleasure principle
-
-
Primary process thinking: wish fulfillment
Thanatos – aggressive /Eros - sexual
I want it now! Instant gratification
Are we an id driven society?
Part of the iceberg that is submerged underwater
Personality
2. Ego = conscious = reality principle
- What are the real-world consequences of my actions?
- secondary process thinking: reality testing
- part of the iceberg that is above water and aware of reality
Personality
3. Superego = preconscious = morality principle
-
What is the proper way to behave? Mom/Dad/Society
Ego-ideal: shoulds
Conscience: should nots
Part of the iceberg that is just under the water but can sometimes surface
Personality
Personality
-
How would the id, ego, and superego
respond to the following dilemma?
Should you go out with your
friends to a great party, or
should you stay home and
study for your psychology
exam tomorrow?
Personality
Which horse is the Id? Superego?
Personality
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages.
According to Freud, as we age, different parts of
the body are used to fuel the id with pleasure
(libido = energy source).
1.
2.
Birth – 1 ½ years: Oral stage
gratification is gained by oral stimulation
(Breastfeeding).
1 ½ - 3 years old: Anal stage
pleasure is gained by being able to
control feces. (Potty-training)
Personality
3.
3 – 6 years old: Phallic stage: awakening of sexuality
a. Oedipus complex for boys: when a male child wants to kill
his father so he can have sex with his mother. (from the Greek
tragedy “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocoles)
- Freud believed boys would eventually overcome this conflict
by identifying and bonding with the father.
b. Electra complex for girls: girls are jealous of their father
because they don’t have a penis, and they really want one
(from Greek myth of “Electra” who plotted with her brother
“Orestes” to kill their mother “Clytemnestra”).
- Freud believed that the only possible way for a girl to
overcome this conflict would be to become pregnant with a
male child
Personality
4. 6-12 years old: Latency stage
pleasure is gained through same-sex
peer friendships
5. 12+ years old: Genital stage:
pleasure is gained through sexual
intercourse with non-relatives
Personality
Fixation. Freud believed that you can get stuck or fixated at
a stage if you were either under or over stimulated during
this stage. According to Freud, personality traits are
attached to these types of individuals.
A few examples:
- Oral fixation: nail biters, gum chewers, smokers, etc. Overly
optimistic, dependent, and passive.
- Anal retentive: Excessive need for order,
control and neatness. (modern day OCD)
- Anal expulsive: emotionally volatile, unstable,
spiteful and vindictive
-
Personality
Defense Mechanisms:
1. Protect the ego from anxiety due to
the unconscious starting to break through
to the conscious
2. Deny or distort reality
3. Operate unconsciously
4. Cause people who are using them to
be absolutely convinced of the
correctness of their viewpoint.
5. can be healthy IF used in moderation.
6. Were originally developed by Anna
Freud (she never married).
12.3 Psychodynamic Approach—
Personality Development
-
-
-
Psychosexual
stages of
development
Personality formed
by age 6 through
crucial experiences
Fixation
Oedipus conflict
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Personality
Defense Mechanisms.
-
Denial: blocking external events from awareness.
If a situation is too much to handle, the person refuses
to experience it. Examples: the failure to recognize the
death of a loved one, or students who fail to find out
their test grades!  [ you know who you are]
Personality
-
Repression: not being able to recall a threatening situation, person,
or event. Example: someone almost drowns as a child, but can't
remember the event even when people try to remind him -- but he
does have a fear of open water! [many fears and phobias]
-
Projection: the tendency to see your own unacceptable desires in
other people. Examples: A faithful husband finds himself terribly
attracted to the lady next door. Rather than acknowledge his own
feelings, he becomes increasingly jealous of his wife, constantly
worried about her faithfulness.
Personality
-
Displacement: the redirection of an impulse onto
a safer substitute target. For example, someone
who hates his or her mother may repress that
hatred and direct it instead towards women in
general.
Personality
-
Reaction formation: what Anna Freud called "believing the
opposite“. Changing an unacceptable impulse into its opposite.
Example: “I hate Mom” becomes “I really love Mom a lot!!!”. The
individual will often go above and beyond in their expression of love
in order to alleviate feelings of guilt and anxiety.
-
Regression: a movement back in psychological time when one is
faced with stress. When we are troubled or frightened, our behaviors
often become more childish or primitive. A child may begin to suck
their thumb again or wet the bed.
Personality
-
Rationalization: the cognitive distortion of "the facts" to make an
impulse more acceptable. We do it often enough on a fairly conscious
level when we provide ourselves with excuses. Many of us are quite
prepared to believe our lies.
-
Sublimation: the transforming of an unacceptable impulse, whether
it be sex, anger, or fear, into a socially acceptable and productive
form. So someone with a great deal of hostility may become a hunter,
a butcher, a football player, or a mercenary. For Freud, all positive
creative activities were sublimations mostly of the sex drive.
Personality
Limitations of Freud’s theory:
-
Untestable: How can you objectively measure the
“unconscious”? Does not follow the scientific
method.
- Almost all of his case studies were upper-class
Austrian women: sample bias?
-
Viewed women as inferior
-
Did not allow for prediction of future behaviors
-
Placed too much emphasis on early childhood
experiences in shaping personality
Personality
Neo-Freudians: students of Freud who
eventually started their own school of thought
due to major disagreements with some of
Freud’s ideas.
Carl Jung: 1875-1961. (pronounced – Young).
- Analytical psychology
Born in Switzerland, trained as a psychiatrist
- Believed Freud placed too much emphasis on
sexuality as a motive for behavior
-
Personality
Jung’s Analytical Psychology broke the unconscious down
further into 2 parts:
collective unconscious: a kind of universal memory bank that
contains all the ancestral memories, images, symbols, and
ideas that humankind has accumulated throughout time
- Jung used the term collective to stress that the content of this
part of the unconscious mind is the same for all humans – it is
genetic.
-
He placed particular emphasis on one key component of the
collective unconscious called archetypes, which consist of
powerful, emotionally charged, universal images or concepts
that are inherited or passed down from generation to
generation
Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.4
The Humanistic-Existential
Approach: Personality as Choice
12.4 Humanistic-Existential
Approach
Healthy choices
- Self-actualizing tendency
-
Hierarchy of needs (chapter 10)
- Peak experiences
-
-
Conditions for growth
• unconditional positive regard (Rogers)
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12.4 Personality as Existence
-
Rollo May & Victor Frankl—looked at
specific aspects of human existence
• awareness of our own existence
• ability to make choices
-
Finding meaning in life
• existential dread (if I can think about life, I realize
I will die!)
• mortality salience (worldview defense)
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Schacter
Gilbert
PSYCHOLOGY
Wegner
12.5
The Social Cognitive Approach:
Personalities in Situations
12.4 Personalities in Situations
-
Social cognitive approach
• social psychology
• cognitive psychology
• learning theory
-
Situations cause behavior, too!
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Personality
Alfred Adler: Individual psychology.
1870-1937 (Vienna, Austria): MD
(opthamologist).
“Behind everyone who behaves as if he were
superior to others, we can suspect a feeling of
inferiority which calls for very special efforts of
concealment. It is as if a man feared that he
was too small and walked on his toes to make
himself seem taller.“ - Alfred Adler
Personality
-
-
Adler came to believe in the importance of “feelings of
inferiority” in motivating human behavior
To be a human being," he wrote, "means to feel oneself
inferior." Adler believed that inferiority feelings are the source
of all human striving. All individual progress, growth and
development result from the attempt to compensate for one's
inferiorities.
Style of life = an individuals unique pattern of “striving for
superiority” to overcome feelings of inferiority
Inferiority complex - When an inability to overcome inferiority
feelings heightens and intensifies them.
Personality
-
How many of you have ever felt unattractive? like you
don't belong somewhere? Not strong or fit enough? Not
smart enough? Not good enough in some way? Does the
media today fuel these feelings?
-
According to Adler, everyone is trying to overcome
something that is preventing them from becoming what
they want to become. What are you trying to overcome?
Personality
-
Biographical information: “Adler was the 2nd of 6 children.
He couldn't walk until he was 4 years old due to rickets.
He also suffered from pneumonia and was hit by a car at
age 5. His older brother Sigmund often teased and
tormented him. Adler recalls ‘feeling small, unattractive,
and rejected, like he was in constant competition with his
older brother”.
-
Many believe that Adler’s childhood experiences had a
major influence on his theory
Birth Order
-
Adler believed that birth order was one of the
major childhood social influences from which the
individual creates a “style of life”. What do you
think? Does being the oldest make things
harder? easier? How about the youngest?
Middle child?
-
Frank Sulloway is a prominent modern day
scholar at Berkley who also believes in the
importance of birth order on human development.
Personality
Adler disagreed with Freud about:
- the emphasis on sexuality
- the importance of the unconscious
- “a stream of consciousness” – Adler believed that all
three parts of the psyche are constantly interacting & do
NOT act alone.
- While Adler believed our childhood experiences were
important, he also believed in what he called “teleology”
or being motivated towards future goals.
- Alder felt Freud placed too much emphasis on the past.
Some consider Adler the forefather of humanism.
Personality
Behavioral theory.
- Burrhus Frederic Skinner [1904-1990]
- Operant conditioning
- Focused on the overt or observable behavior
- the consequences that follow a behavior were seen as critical
determinants of future behavior
- A behavior followed by a reinforcing stimulus results in an
increased probability of that behavior occurring in the future
[reinforcement].
- A behavior no longer followed by the reinforcing stimulus results
in a decreased probability of that behavior occurring in the future
[extinction].
- Skinner did much of his research with animals such as pigeons
and rats
Personality
Humanistic psychology.
-
focused on uniquely human issues such as:
the self, health, hope, love, creativity, nature,
and individuality.
-
Believed in innate goodness – born good
-
Derived somewhat from existentialism: a
strong belief in free-will and conscious
rational decision-making
-
Arose in reaction to behaviorism and
psychodynamic theory
Personality
Two major figures in humanistic psychology
were:
1.
Abraham Maslow
2.
Carl Rogers
and
We will first look at the core beliefs of
Maslow.
Personality
Carl Rogers. 1902-1987
- Carl Rogers was born January 8, 1902 in Oak
Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, the fourth of
six children. His father was a successful civil
engineer and his mother was a housewife and
devout Christian.
- In 1942, he wrote his first book, Counseling and
Psychotherapy.
- 1945, he was invited to set up a counseling
center at the University of Chicago. It was while
working there that in 1951 he published his major
work, Client-Centered Therapy, wherein he
outlined his basic theory.
Personality
-
View of people as basically good
-
The “actualizing tendency” is the basic
force of life – we are always trying to better
ourselves in some way
-
True self: who you are today
-
Ideal self: who you want to become
-
Self-actualization is the process of
becoming your ideal self
Personality
Unconditional positive regard: a feeling of total
love and acceptance – like that of a child for a
parent, or a pet to its owner. No matter what you
say or do, you will be loved and accepted.
- Rogers believed if a child received unconditional
positive regard, he/she would be able to selfactualize and become his/her ideal self
- If self-actualization is blocked, mental illness
would ensue
-
Personality
-
-
Conditions of worth: if…then contingencies.
I will love and accept you if…;Rogers believed this is another
pathway to mental illness
The individual who is raised with “conditions of worth” will not
actualize into their ideal self.
The individual who is raised with conditions of worth will
actualize into another persons’ vision of their ideal self.
How much of what you say and do is based on conditions of
worth?
What must parents do to avoid using “conditions of worth”
when raising their children? Society at large?
Personality
Social-Cognitive Theory.
-
Albert Bandura (1925-present)
-
Albert Bandura was born December 4, 1925, in the
small town of Mundare in northern Alberta, Canada.
-
In 1953, he started teaching at Stanford
University. While there, he collaborated with his first
graduate student, Richard Walters, resulting in their
first book, Adolescent Aggression, in 1959.
-
Emphasis on the cognitive or thoughts [covert]
Personality
Types of Personality Measures.
Two categories:
1.
Objective – paper and pencil self-report tests. These
measures are clear to all what a specific response
means.
Examples:
a.
MMPI-2: Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.
Over 500 item test that is used to detect mental illness.
b.
CPI: California Personality Inventory. Self-report
measure that is used to detect normal and successful
patterns of behavior.
12.1 Personality—How It Is
Measured
-
Personality inventories
Self-report
Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory
Easy to administer
• response style
• validity?
61
12.1 Personality—How It Is
Measured
-
Projective techniques
• Rorschach Inkblot Test
• Thematic Apperception
Test (TAT)
-
Problems?
• always an interpretation
• reliable in predicting
behavior?
• valid in predicting
behavior?
62
Personality
Measures of Personality.
-
reliability: consistency or stability of a
measure over time.
-
Validity: accuracy or truth of a measure. Is
it measuring what it is supposed to?
-
You must have high levels of reliability in
order to have validity.
Thematic Apperception Test
65