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Personality
Ch. 11
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What is personality?
An individual’s unique collection of
consistent behavioral traits
– CONSISTENCY: characteristics that
people display over time and in a variety of
situations
– DISTINCTIVENESS: characteristics that
distinguish individuals from each other
Personality Traits
Relatively consistent characteristics exhibited
in different situations
– Typical adjectives use:
• Honest
• Dependable
• Moody
•Impulsive
•Anxious
•Friendly
Allport (1961) identified 4500 words used to
describe personality traits
Cartell (1990) reduced that number to 16
basic dimensions of personality
Five-Factor Model
McCrae & Costa (1999) believe that
personality can be described with just
FIVE traits
WHY so simple?
– They believe the five traits capture all the
meaningful individual differences at the
broadest level
“The Big Five”
The Five traits that describe all aspects
of human personality:
O: Openness
C: Conscientiousness
E: Extraversion
A: Agreeableness
N: Neuroticism
Psychodynamic Perspective
Sigmund Freud’s theory
Explains personality, motivation, and
psychological disorders by focusing on:
– Early childhood experiences
– Unconscious motives & conflicts
(Sexual & Aggressive motives)
Structure of Personality
Id
– Primitive, instinctive component of personality
– Operates according to the Pleasure Principle
– “I want it all now!”
• Wants immediate gratification
– Engages in Primary-Process Thinking
• Primitive, illogical, irrational, & fantasy oriented
Superego
– Moral component of personality
– Enforces societal standards about right
and wrong
• Meeting standards ------ pride
• Failing standards -------- guilt
Ego
– Deals with the real world
– Decision-making component of personality
– Operates according to the Reality Principle
• Tries to find a way to please id and society
when possible
– Need to compromise to get what you want
– Engages in Secondary-Process Thinking
• Rational, realistic, & oriented toward solving
problems
Ego must serve 3 harsh masters:
– Pleasure seeking id
– Moralistic superego
– Realistic aspects of the environment
Levels of Awareness
Conscious: fully aware
Preconscious: just below the surface of
awareness
Unconscious: no awareness, but yet still
guiding our behavior
– P. 331 fig. 11.2 Iceberg analogy
Defense Mechanisms
Anxiety: discomfort caused by conflicts
between id and superego
Defense Mechanisms: unconscious
means by which a person tries to
prevent unacceptable id-based thoughts
or urges from reaching consciousness
– Protect us from anxiety & guilt
Specific Defense Mechanisms
Repression
– Most basic & widely used
– Painful
thoughts/impulses/memo
ries are prevented from
entering consciousness
Regression
– Reverting to immature
behavior
Sublimation
– Threatening impulses are
transformed into socially
acceptable activities
Projection
– Threatening thoughts are
projected onto others
Denial
– Threatening thoughts are
denied outright
Rationalization
– Creating explanations to
justify threatening
thoughts/actions
Reaction Formation
– Acting the opposite
of how you really
feel
Displacement
– Diverting emotional
feelings (ie. anger)
from their original
source to a substitute
target
p. 332 table 11.1
Expanding the
Psychodynamic Perspective
Carl Jung & Alfred Adler disagreed with
Freud’s theory because they thought it
focused too much on sexuality.
Jung
Analytical Psychology
Emphasized unconscious determinants of
personality (2 layers)
– Personal Unconscious: repressed or forgotten
(same as Freud’s repression)
– Collective Unconscious: storehouse of memory
traces inherited from our ancestral past
• Archetypes: universal symbols shared by all cultures
Adler
Thought Freud went overboard by
centering on sexual conflicts
Stressed social context of personality
development (birth order)
Behavioral Perspective
The study of observable behavior
and its influence on personality
Skinner
External environment molds behavior
– Determinism-behavior is fully determined by
environmental stimuli
• Operant conditioning
– Asserts people show a stable response tendency
that is acquired through experiences
• Telling jokes @ parties (fig. 12.5 p. 338)
Bandura
Social Learning Theory: personality is shaped
through learning
– Observational Learning: learning that occurs when
influenced by the observation of others
– Influential models for children and adults:
•
•
•
•
•
Respect
Attractive/powerful
Similarity
Same-sex role models
Behavior that leads to positive outcome
– Self-efficacy: how we view our ability
influences the challenges we choose
based on the outcome we expect
• Subjective
• Specific to task
• Confidence = high self-efficacy
Mischel
Focused on situational factors that
govern an individual’s behavior
– Argued that there is less consistency than
originally assumed
– Focused on situational determinants and
personality variables
– Thus, people behave differently in different
situations!
Humanistic
Perspective
Emphasis on unique human
qualities
– Freedom
– Potential for personal growth
Rogers
Person-centered theory: emphasizes the
subjective point of view
– Self-concept: perceptions/beliefs about one’s own
nature, unique qualities and typical behavior
– Incongruence: gap between self-concept and
reality
• High incongruence creates anxiety
– Congruence: meshing between self-concept and
reality
– Fig. 11.7 p. 341
– According to Rogers, most people tend
to distort experiences to some extent to
promote a relatively favorable selfconcept
Maslow
Hierarchy of Needs
– Fig. 11.9 p. 343
– Systematic arrangement of needs according to
priority
– Basic needs must be met 1st
Healthy personalities strive for continual
personal growth (self-actualizing)
– Innate drive
– Fig. 11.10 p. 343
Biological Perspective
Personality is determined to a
large extent by a person’s genes
Eysenck
Heredity is in part linked through
classical conditioning
He argued that some people can be
more readily conditioned because of
differences in their physiological
functioning
– Extraversion-introversion
• Introverts tend to have high physiological
arousal which makes them more easily
conditioned
• Easily conditioned individuals tend to acquire
inhibitions more easily than others
• Inhibitions make these people more bashful,
tentative and uneasy in social situations
Twin and family environment studies
– Twins tend to be more similar
– Results suggest genetic factors influence
personality much like a genetic blueprint
– Even if raised apart, identical twins are more
similar than fraternal twins raised together (4058%)
– A surprising finding…shared family environments
appear to have little impact on personality
• This contradicts theory on socialization
Evolutionary Perspective
Relatively new theory
– David Buss
– Late ‘90s
Assert that personality has a biological basis
because natural selection has favored certain
traits over the course of human history.
The “Big Five” stand out across cultures
because those traits are adaptive