Download Chapter 12 - Personality

CHAPTER 12 - PERSONALITY
I. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSONALITY
personality is a person’s long term pattern of
thinking, emotions, and behavior
 blend of talents, values, hopes, loves, hates, and
habits that makes each of us as a unique person
 Personality is also distinct from temperament sensitivity, irritability, distractibility, typical mood

A. TRAITS
Personality traits– stable qualities that a person
shows in most situations; inferred from behavior
 once identified, they can be used to predict future
behavior

B. TYPES (STEREOTYPES)
personality type refers to people who have several
traits in common:
 Carl Jung categorized personalities into two types
 1. Introverts – shy, egocentric person whose
attention is focused inward
 2. Extroverts – bold, outgoing person whose
attention is focused outward
 way of labeling people who have several key traits in
common.

C. SELF-CONCEPT
provide another way of understanding personality
 consists of all your ideas, perceptions, and feeling
about who you are; the mental picture you have of
your own personality
 created from daily experiences; slowly revised as we
have new experiences; tends to guide what we pay
attention to, remember, and think about.

D. SELF-ESTEEM
1. High
 2. Low

E. PERSONALITY THEORIES-A SYSTEM OF
CONCEPTS, ASSUMPTIONS, IDEAS, AND PRINCIPLES
PROPOSED TO EXPLAIN PERSONALITY
1. Trait theories attempt to learn what traits make
up personality and how they relate to actual
behavior
 2. Psychodynamic theories focus on the inner
workings of personality, especially internal conflicts
and struggles
 3. Humanistic theories stress private, subjective
experience and personal growth.

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4. Behaviorist and social learning theories place
importance on the external environment and on the
effects of conditioning and learning. Social learning
theories attribute differences in personality to
socialization, expectations and mental processes
II. THE TRAIT APPROACH-CURRENTLY THE
DOMINANT METHOD FOR STUDYING PERSONALITY
theorists try to describe personality with a number
of key traits try to analyze, classify, and interrelate
traits; think of them as biological predispositions
 A. Predicting Behavior
 knowing how you rate on this single dimension
allows us to predict how you will behave in a variety
of settings

B. CLASSIFYING TRAITS
Common Traits – tell us how people from a
particular nation or culture are similar, or which
traits a culture emphasizes
 Individual Traits define a person’s unique personal
qualities
 Cardinal Traits – so basic that all of a person’s
activities can be traced to the trait.

1. CENTRAL TRAITS – BASIC BUILDING
BLOCKS OF PERSONALITY
just six traits would provide a good description of
personality: dominant, sociable, honest, cheerful,
intelligent, optimistic
 a. Secondary Traits – less consistent, relatively
superficial aspects of a person

2. SOURCE TRAITS
surface traits-these often appeared together
in groups; these were so closely related they
seemed to represent a single trait
 source traits; they are the core of each
individual’s personality

3. CATTELL IDENTIFIED 16 SOURCE TRAITS; ALL 16
ARE NEEDED TO FULLY DESCRIBE A PERSONALITY
trait profile -draws a picture/graph of
individual personalities to compare them
 C. The Big Five
 the five-factor model is a system that identifies the
five most basic dimensions of personality

1. FIVE KEY DIMENSIONS
Extroversion
 Agreeableness
 Conscientiousness
 Neuroticism
 Openness to experience
 predict how people will act in various circumstances
 traits interact with situations to determine how we
will act

III. PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY

believe that many of our actions are based on
hidden, or unconscious, needs, thoughts or
emotions.
A. THE STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY
1. The Id is made up of innate biological instincts
and urges.
 operates on the pleasure principle
 acts as a well of energy for the entire psyche.
 This energy is called libido and flows from life
instincts.
 thanatos - death instinct- produces
aggressive and destructive urges

2. THE EGO –THE EXECUTIVE -DIRECTS
ENERGIES SUPPLIED BY THE ID.

guided by the reality principle – It is a system
of thinking, planning, problem solving, and
deciding. It is in conscious control of the
personality.
3. THE SUPEREGO ACTS AS A JUDGE OR CENSOR
FOR THE THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS OF THE EGO.
This is your conscience.
 the ego ideal reflects all behavior one’s
parents approved of or rewarded.
 acts as an internalized parent to bring behavior
under control.

B. DYNAMICS OF PERSONALITY
all of these are conflicting mental processes –
internal struggles
 you feel anxiety when your ego is threatened or
overwhelmed.
 impulses from the id cause neurotic anxiety
when the ego can barely keep them under
control.
 threats of punishment from the superego cause
moral anxiety
 many resort to ego-defense mechanisms to
lessen internal conflicts – these deny distort
or block our sources of threat and anxiety.

1. LEVEL OF AWARENESS
Freud believed that our behavior often expresses
unconscious (hidden) forces
 the unconscious holds repressed memories
and emotions, plus the instinctual drives of
the id
 the conscious level includes everything you
are aware of at a given moment
 the preconscious contains material that can
be easily brought to awareness

C. PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
Freud theorized that the core of personality is
formed before the age 6 in a series of
psychosexual stages.
 at each stage, a different part of the body becomes
an erogenous zone (capable of producing
pleasure)
 a fixation is an unresolved conflict or
emotional hang-up caused by
overindulgence or by frustration.

1. Oral Stage – during the first year of life, most of
an infant’s pleasure comes from stimulation of the
mouth
 a fixation in this stage produces an oral
dependant personality - are gullible, passive
and need lots of attention
 2. Anal Stage – Between the ages of 1-3, the child’s
attention shifts to the process of elimination.
 an anal retentive (holding in) personality is
obstinate, stingy, orderly, and compulsively
clean.
 anal expulsive (letting go) personalities are
disorderly, destructive, cruel, or messy

3. Phallic Stage – these fixations develop between
ages 3-6; increased sexual interest causes the child
to be physically attracted to the parent of the
opposite sex.
 Oedipus conflict (males) – the boy feels a
rivalry with his father for the affection of his
mother
 girls experience the Electra conflict – the girl
loves her father and competes with her
mother
 4. Latency – from age 6 to puberty – a period of
quiet time during which psychosexual development
is dormant.


5. Genital Stage – at puberty an upswing in sexual
energies activates all the unresolved conflicts of
earlier years.
D. Neo-freudians- those who stayed close to the
core of Freud’s thinking; accepted the broad
features but revised parts of it
 1. Alfred Adler – we are social creatures governed
by social urges, not biological instincts.
 the main driving force in personality is a striving
for superiority – a struggle to overcome
imperfections, an upward drive for
competence, completion, and mastery of
shortcomings
 this creates a person’s style of life; is formed
by age 5 and is revealed by the earliest
memory that can be recalled

2. KAREN HORNEY
a core of basic anxiety occurs when people feel
isolated and helpless in a hostile world; rooted in
childhood.
 emotional health reflects a balance in moving
toward, away from, and against others.

3. CARL JUNG
a persona (mask) exists between the ego and the
outside world.
 the persona is the public self presented to
others; we adopt particular roles or hide our
deeper feelings.

IV. HUMANISTIC THEORY
focuses on human experience, problems, potentials,
and ideals.
 the core of humanism is a positive image of humans
as creative beings capable of free will
 emphasize the immediate subjective experienceprivate perceptions of reality -there are as
many real worlds as there are people

A. MASLOW AND SELF-ACTUALIZATION -REFERRED
TO THE PROCESS OF FULLY DEVELOPING PERSONAL
POTENTIALS AS SELF-ACTUALIZATION

a continuous search for personal fulfillment
1. CHARACTERISTICS OF SELF-ACTUALIZERS:
a. Efficient perceptions of reality
 b. Comfortable acceptance of self, others, nature
 c. Spontaneity
 d. Task centering
 e. Autonomy
 f. Continued freshness of appreciation
 g. Fellowship with humanity
 h. Profound interpersonal relationships
 i. Comfort with solitude
 j. Nonhostile sense of humor
 k. Peak experiences

B. CARL ROGERS’ SELF THEORY

the fully functioning person lives in harmony with
his or her deepest feelings and impulses; open to
experience and trust their inner urges and
intuitions
1. PERSONALITY STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS

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Rogers emphasizes -self – a flexible and changing
perception of personal identity
Information or feelings inconsistent with the selfimage as said to be incongruent –incongruence
being authentic is vital for healthy functioning; we
need to feel that our behavior accurately expresses
who we are
it is essential to have congruence between the selfimage and the -ideal self-the person you would
most like to be
our ideal self is only one of a number of -possible
selves-persons we could become or are afraid
of becoming
C. HUMANISTIC VIEW OF DEVELOPMENT
the development of a self-image depends greatly on
information from the environment
 positive and negative evaluations by others cause
children to develop internal standards of
evaluations called conditions of worth
 learning to evaluate some experience or feelings as
“good” and others as “bad” is directly related to a
later capacity for self-esteem, positive selfevaluation or -positive self-regard

V. LEARNING THEORIES
Behavioral personality theories emphasize
that personality is no more or less than a
collection of learned behavior patterns.
 personality is acquired through classical and
operant conditioning, observational learning,
reinforcement, extinction, generalization, and
discrimination

A. HOW SITUATIONS AFFECT BEHAVIOR
what is predictable about personality is that we
respond in consistent ways to certain types of
situations
 Personality = Behavior

-HABITS (LEARNED BEHAVIOR PATTERNS) MAKE UP
THE STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY. THEY ARE
GOVERNED BY FOUR ELEMENTS OF LEARNING:
drive – any stimulus strong enough to goad
a person into action (hunger, pain, lust,
frustration)
 cues-signals from the environment that
guide responses
 responses-actions-so that they are most
likely to bring about reward

SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
1. affected by situation, expectancy, and
reinforcement value
 situation – how a person interprets or defines the
situation
 expectancy – anticipation that a response will lead
to a reinforcement
 expected reinforcement may be more important
than actual past reinforcement
 reinforcement value – we attach different values to
various activities or rewards

2. Self-Efficacy – the capacity for producing a
desired result- one of the most important
expectancies we develop
 3. Self-Reinforcement- refers to praising or
rewarding yourself for having made a particular
response (completing an assignment)
 self praise and self-blame become an important
part of personality – closely related to self-esteem

BEHAVIORIST VIEW
childhood is a time of urgent drives, powerful
rewards and punishments, frustration and social
reinforcement
 1. During childhood there are 4 Critical
Situations that are capable of leaving a
lasting imprint on personality: feeding,
toilet training, sex training, learning to
express anger or aggression

-WHEN PARENTS ACCEPT THEIR CHILDREN AND GIVE
THEM AFFECTION, THE CHILDREN BECOME SOCIABLE,
2.POSITIVE
PERSONALITY
AND GENDER
, AND EMOTIONALLY STABLE…HIGH ESTEEM
identification and imitation contribute greatly to
personality development and to sex training
 Identification leads to imitation, a desire to act like
the admired person

VI. NATURE AND NURTURE
temperament – the raw material from which our
personalities are formed – the biological
predispositions to be sensitive, irritable,
distractible.
 starts to stabilize around age 3 continues to harden
through age 50
 behavioral genetics-the study of inherited
behavioral traits
 intelligence, some mental disorders, temperament,
and other complex qualities are influenced by
heredity

1. STUDYING TWINS

medical and psychological tests reveal that reunited
twins are very much alike, even when they are
reared apart; despite the wide difference in
childhood environment
2. SUMMARY

studies of twins make it clear that heredity has a
sizable effect on each of us; reasonable to conclude
that heredity is responsible for 25 to 50 percent of
the variation in many personality traits