Lecture 10: Week 10

Theoretical Perspectives on Personality

● What is personality?
○ Individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, andacting
● Classical perspectives
○ Psychodynamic theories: Freud
○ Neo-Freudian and later psychodynamic theorists
● Humanistic theories
○ Maslow
○ Rogers
● Contemporary perspectives
○ Trait theories
○ Social-cognitive theories

Psychodynamic theories– Human behavior is dynamic interaction between conscious and

unconscious mind
● Freud: Psychoanalytic theory
○ Childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality
○ Discovery of unconscious
○ Free association
● Personality structure
○ Human personality arises from the conflict between impulse and restraint, and
efforts to resolve this basic conflict
○ Interacting systems
■ Id (pleasure principle)
■ Ego (reality principle)
■ Superego (internalized set of ideals)

The Iceberg
● The iceberg image illustrates Freud’s idea that the mind is mostly hidden beneath the
conscious surface. Note that the id is totally unconscious, but the ego and the superego
operate both consciously and unconsciously. Unlike The parts of a frozen iceberg,
however, the id,ego, and superego interact.
Personality development
● Children pass through a series of psychosexualstages
● The id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct pleasure-sensitive areas (erogenous
zones)
● Each stage presents challenges or conflicting tendencies
○ Maladaptive adult behavior results from conflicts unresolved during these stages.
At any point, conflict can lock, or fixate, a person on that stage

Freud’s psychosexual stages

Defense mechanisms - The ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously
distorting reality
● Repression
○ Underlies all other defense mechanisms,banishes anxiety-arousing impulses,
andenables other defense mechanisms
○ Is often incomplete, such that repressed urges may appear as symbols in dreams
or slips of the tongue

Neo-Freudians
● Adapted some Freudian concepts
○ Interviewing techniques and basic ideas
○ Personality structure
○ Importance of unconscious
○ Impact of childhood on personality
○ Dynamics of anxiety and defense mechanisms
● Rejected or contested other concepts
 ○ More emphasis on conscious mind in experience interpretation and environmental
coping
○ Doubt sex and aggression are all-consuming motivations
○ Emphasize more prosocial motives and social interaction

Projective Tests
● Assessing unconscious processes: Projective tests
○ Thematic Apperception Test (TAT):
■ People view ambiguous pictures and make up stories about them, which
are supposed to indicate their inner feelings and goals
■ Valid and reliable, map of implicit motives (Murray)
○ Rorschach inkblot test:
■ Seeks to identify people’s inner feelings and conflicts by analyzing their
interpretations of 10 inkblots
■ Only a few derived scores demonstrate reliability and validity; inaccurate
diagnosis

What do you see?

● In this projective test,people say what they see in a series of symmetrical inkblots. Some
who use this test are confident that the interpretation of ambiguous images will reveal
unconscious aspects of the test-taker's personality.

Evaluating Freud’s psychoanalytic perspective

● Many of Freud’s ideas are contradicted by modern research
○ After-the-fact explanations of characteristics fail to predict behaviors and traits
○ Development is not fixed in childhood
○ Parental influence is overestimated; peer influence underestimated
○ Gender identity and suppressed sexuality premises have been questioned
○ Dream research is disputed
○ Defense mechanism of sexual and aggressive impulses is not supported
○ Scientific shortcomings
● Some ideas are enduring
○ First attention given to unconscious and irrational aspects, humansexuality
○ Struggle between biological urges and social well-being

Modern research on the idea of repression

● Self-esteem may be protected by neglect of threatening information
● Repression is a rare (or nonexistent)mental response to trauma; no evidence is found in
the literature on trauma
● Extreme, prolonged stress might disrupt memory by damaging the hippocampus
 ● High stress might enhance memory

Modern unconscious mind

● Unconscious: Information that occurs without awareness
○ Schemas
○ Priming
○ Right-hemisphere activity
○ Implicit memories
○ Instantly activated emotions
○ Automatically and unconsciously influenced stereotypes and implicit prejudice
● Research support for two defense mechanisms
○ Reaction formation
○ Projection (false consensus effect)

Humanistic theories
● Emphasizes the potential for healthy personal growth
○ People strive for self-determination and self-realization

Maslow and Rogers

● Maslow’s self-actualizing person
○ Hierarchy of needs
○ Self-actualization
○ Developed his ideas by studying healthy, creative people rather than troubled
clinical cases
● Rogers’ person-centered perspective
○ Agreed with Maslow that people are basically good and have self-actualizing
tendencies
○ Advocated for creating a climate of unconditional positive regard: being genuine,
empathic, and accepting
○ Maslow believed that if basic human needs are met, people will strive to actualize
their highest potential.
○ Carl Rogers suggested that being genuine,accepting, and empathic helps others to
develop a deeper self-awareness and a more realistic and positive self-concept.

Assessing the self

● Questionnaires
○ Rogers: Asking about and comparing the ideal self and the actual self; assessing
personal growth during therapy
● Interviews and intimate conversations
● Life story approach
 ○ Do you think these are reliable methods of assessment of self?

Evaluating humanistic theories

● Contributions
○ Maslow’s and Rogers’ ideas have influenced counseling, education, child raising,
and management.
○ Laid the groundwork for positive psychology
● Criticisms
○ Vague and subjective concepts
○ Concern that the emphasis on individualism could lead to self-indulgence,
selfishness
○ Failure to realize the human capacity for evil

Contemporary Perspectives: Trait theories

● Personality is defined as stable and enduring behavior patterns;characteristic behaviors
and conscious motives
○ Describe, not explain
● Allport: Described personality in terms of identifiable, fundamental traits

Exploring traits
● Allport and Odbert
○ Counted all words that could describe people
○ Used factor analysis to identify clusters (factors) of test items that tap into basic
trait components
● Eysenck and Eysenck (Eysenck PersonalityQuestionnaire)
○ Normal individual variations reduced to two dimensions
○ Extraversion–introversion and emotional stability–instability
● Two primary personality factors(extraversion–introversion and stability–instability) are
useful as axes for describing personality variation. Varying combinations define other,
more specific traits

Introversion
● What is introversion?
○ Introverts tend to gain energy from time alone, and may find social interactions
exhausting
○ Extraverts tend to draw energy from time spent with others
○ Introverts are not “shy”
○ Introverted people are more sensitive to stimuli
● Benefits of introversion
 ○ Introverted leaders outperform extraverted leaders in some contexts, such as when
their employees voice new ideas and challenge existing norms
○ Introverts handle conflict well; they seek solitude rather than revenge

Biology and personality

● Extraverts seek stimulation because of their relatively low normal brain arousal
● The less active frontal lobe area is involved in the behavior inhibition of extraverts
● Extraverts have higher dopamine levels and dopamine-related neural activity

Assessing traits
● Minnesota Multiphasic PersonalityInventory (MMPI)
○ Developed to identify emotional disorders;assesses people’s personality traits
○ Empirically derived; scored objectively
○ Tendency to give socially desirable answers may challenge its validity
○ Can be used to identify people pretending to have a disorder

The Big Five

The Big Five Validity

● Locating an individual on these five dimensions provides a comprehensive picture of
personality.
○ stable in adulthood
○ about 40 percent heritable
 ○ descriptive of others around the world
○ able to predict our actual behaviors
● The size and thickness of brain tissue correlates with several Big Five traits, including
conscientiousness and neuroticism

Personality stability
● With age,personality traits become more stable,as reflected in the stronger correlation of
trait scores with follow-up scores 7 years later(Data from Roberts &DelVecchio, 2000\

Evaluating trait theories

● Person–situation controversy
○ Behavior is influenced by the interaction of the person's inner disposition and the
environment
○ Personality traits are stable and potent;consistency of specific behaviors among
situations is not stable
○ Social cues can influence trait behaviors
○ Averaging behaviors across many occasions reveals distinct personality traits

Social-cognitive theories
● “Behavior, internal personal factors, and environmental influences all operate as
interlocking determinants of each other.”
● Bandura: Social-cognitive perspective
○ Emphasizes trait–situation interactions
○ Many behaviors are learned through conditioning or by observing and imitating
others
Reciprocal determinism
● Individual–environment interactions
○ Different people choose different environments
○ Personalities shape how events are interpreted and reacted to
○ Personalities help create situations to which people react
○ We are both the products and the architects of our environments

The Biopsychosocial Approach To the Study of Personality

● As with other psychological phenomena, personality is fruitfully studied at multiple

levels.
● Assessing behavior in situations
○ Behavior is observed in realistic situations
○ Best predictor of future behavior is past behavior patterns in similar situations
● Evaluating social-cognitive theories
○ Situation focus may come at the expense of a person's inner traits
○ Traits can predict behavior at work, in love,and at play

Exploring the self

● William James: Principles of Psychology(1890)
● Gordon Allport: Self lost to view (1943)
● Humanistic psychology: Renewed Interest, but little research
● Today: One of most researched topics
○ Self-esteem; self-disclosure; self-schemas;self-monitoring; self-reflection
○ Possible selves; spotlight effect

Self-Esteem
● Benefits of self-esteem
○ Self-esteem
○ Self-efficacy
 ● Types of self-esteem
○ Defensive self-esteem
○ Secure self-esteem
● Effect of low self-esteem
○ Self-image threat

Self-serving bias
● Readiness to perceive ourselves favorably
● Characteristics
○ Accepting more responsibility for good deeds than for bad, and for successes
rather than for failures
○ Having a desire to maintain a positive self-view
○ Seeing oneself as better than average
■ Blindness to personal incompetence
■ Narcissism

Culture and self

● Individualist
○ Identity: Personaltraits, personalcontrol, individual achievement
● Collectivist
○ Group Identification:Sense of belonging; set of values; assurance of security
● Value contrasts between individualism and collectivism
○ Self
○ Life task
○ What matters
○ Coping method
○ Morality
○ Relationships
○ Attributing behavior
Individualist vs. Collectivist