Personality

Personality Theory and
Assessment
Book authors:
R.H. Ettinger
Chapter 14
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Sigmund Feud and
Psychoanalysis
 Psychoanalysis
– Freud’s term for his theory of personality and his
therapy for treating psychological disorders
 The conscious, the preconscious, and the
unconscious
– Freud believed that there are three levels of
awareness in consciousness: the conscious, the
preconscious, and the unconscious
– Conscious
 The thoughts, feelings, sensations, or memories of which a
person is aware at any given moment
Copyright © 2007 Horizon Textgook Publishing All rights reserved
Sigmund Feud and
Psychoanalysis
 The conscious, the preconscious, and the
unconscious (continued)
– Preconscious
 The thoughts, feelings, and memories that a person is not
consciously aware of at the moment but that may be
brought to consciousness
– Unconscious
 For Freud, the primary motivating force of behavior,
containing repressed memories as well as instincts and
wishes that have never been conscious

Sigmund Feud and
Psychoanalysis
 The id, the ego, and the superego
– Feud proposed three systems of personality
 Id
– The unconscious system of the personality, which
contains the life and death instincts and operates on
the pleasure principle
 Ego
– In Freudian theory, the rational, largely conscious
system of personality, which operates according to the
reality principle
 Superego
– The moral system of the personality, which consists of
the conscience and the ego ideal
Sigmund Feud and
Psychoanalysis

Sigmund Feud and
Psychoanalysis
 Defense Mechanisms
– An unconscious, irrational means used by the ego
to defend against anxiety; involves self-deception
and the distortion of reality
– Repression
 Involuntarily removing an unpleasant memory or barring
disturbing sexual and aggressive impulses from
consciousness
 Several studies have shown that people do indeed try to
repress unpleasant thoughts

Sigmund Feud and
Psychoanalysis
 Defense Mechanisms (continued)
– Projection
 Attributing one’s own undesirable thoughts, impulses,
traits, or behaviors to others
 Allows people to avoid acknowledging unacceptable traits
and thereby to maintain self-esteem, but it seriously
distorts their perception of the external world
– Denial
 Refusing to acknowledge consciously the existence of
danger or a threatening condition

Sigmund Feud and
Psychoanalysis
– Rationalization
 Supplying a logical, rational, socially acceptable reason
rather than the real reason or an action
 When people rationalize, they make excuses for, or justify,
failures and mistakes
– Regression
 Reverting to a behavior characteristic of an earlier stage of
development
– Reaction formation
 Denying an unacceptable impulse, often a sexual or
aggressive one, by giving strong conscious expression to
its opposite

Sigmund Feud and
Psychoanalysis
– Displacement
 Substituting a less threatening object for the original object
of an impulse
– Sublimation
 Rechanneling sexual or aggressive energy into pursuits
that society considers acceptable or admirable

Sigmund Feud and
Psychoanalysis
 The psychosexual stages of development
– Psychosexual stages
 A series of stages through which the sexual instinct
develops
– Fixation
 Arrested development at a psychosexual stage occurring
because of excessive gratification or frustration at that
stage

Neo-Freudians
 Carl Jung
– Did not consider the sexual instinct to be the main
factor in personality; nor did he believe that the
personality is almost completely formed in early
childhood
– Conceived of the personality as consisting of three
parts: the ego, the personal unconscious, and the
collective unconscious
– Personal unconscious
 In Jung’s theory, the layer of the unconscious containing all
of the thoughts and experiences that are accessible to the
conscious, as well as repressed memories and impulses
Neo-Freudians
 Carl Jung (continued)

– Collective unconscious
 In Jung’s theory, the most inaccessible layer of the
unconscious, which contains the universal experiences of
humankind transmitted to each individual
– Archetypes
 Existing in the collective unconscious, and inherited
tendency to respond in particular ways to universal human
situations

Neo-Freudians
 Alfred Adler
– Emphasized the unity of the personality rather than
the separate warring components of id, ego, and
superego
– Maintained that the drive to overcome feelings of
inferiority acquired in childhood motivates most of
our behavior
– Claimed that people develop a “style of life” at an
early age-a unique way in which the child and later
the adult will go about the struggle to achieve
superiority
Neo-Freudians
 Karen Horney
– Did not accept Freud’s division of personality into id,
ego, and superego, and she flatly rejected his
psychosexual stages and the concepts of the
Oedipus complex and the penis envy
– Believed that personality could continue to develop
and change throughout life
– Argued forcefully against Freud’s notion that a
woman’s desire to have a child and a man are
nothing more than a conversion of the unfulfilled
wish for a penis
Neo-Freudians
 Karen Horney (continued)

– Believed that many of women’s psychological
difficulties arise from failure to live up to an idealized
version of themselves
– To be psychologically healthy women, she claimed,
and men for that matter, must learn to over come
irrational beliefs about the need for perfection

Learning Theories and
Personality
 Social-cognitive theory
– Reciprocal determinism
 Bandura’s concept that behavior, cognitive factors, and
environment all influence and are influenced by each other
– One of the cognitive factors Bandura considers
especially important is self-efficacy
– Self-efficacy
 A person’s belief in his or her ability to perform competently
in whatever is attempted

Social-Cognitive Perspective
Internal personal/ Reciprocal

cognitive factors
(liking high-risk Determinism
activities)
– the interacting
influences
Behavior
Environmental between
factors
(learning to
(bungee-jumping
personality and
bungee jump)
friends) environmental
factors

Learning Theories and
Personality
 Locus of control
– Proposed by Julian Rotter
– A concept used to explain how people account for
what happens in their lives-people with an internal
locus of control see themselves as primarily in
control of their behavior and its consequences;
those with an external locus of control perceive what
happens to be in the hands of fate, luck, or chance

Humanistic Personality Theories
Two humanistic theories

– Abraham Maslow
Found self-actualizers to be accurate in
perceiving reality-able to judge honestly and to
spot quickly the fake and the dishonest
Self-actualization
– Developing to one’s fullest potential
– Carl Rogers
Conditions of worth
– Conditions on which the positive regard of others rests

 Two humanistic theories (continued)

– Carl Rogers
 Believes our parents set up conditions of worth
 For Rogers, a major goal of psychotherapy is to enable
people to open themselves up to experiences and begin to
live according to their own values rather than according to
the values of others in order to gain positive regard
 Calls his therapy “person-centered therapy”
 Unconditional positive regard is designed to reduce threat,
eliminate conditions of worth, and bring the person back to
tune with his or her true self

 Self-esteem
– One source of variations in self-esteem arises from
comparisons of actual to desired traits
– Developmental psychologists have found that self-
esteem is fairly stable from childhood through the
late adult years
– So, the self-worth beliefs we adopt in childhood can
affect us for a lifetime

Trait Theories
UNSTABLE
 Hans and Sybil Moody
Anxious
Touchy
Restless
Eysenck use two Rigid Aggressive
Sober Excitable
primary Pessimistic Changeable
Reserved
personality Unsociable
Impulsive
Optimistic
Quiet
factors as axes melancholic choleric Active
INTROVERTED EXTRAVERTED
for describing Passive phlegmatic sanguine
Sociable
personality Careful
Thoughtful
Outgoing
Talkative
variation Peaceful Responsive
Controlled Easygoing
Reliable Lively
Even-tempered Carefree
Calm Leadership
Copyright © 2007 Horizon Textgook Publishing All rights reserved STABLE
Trait Theories
 Early trait theories

– Gordon Allport
 Claimed that each person inherits a unique set of raw
materials for given traits, which are then shaped by
experiences
– Raymond Cattell
 Referred to observable qualities of personality as surface
traits
 Found certain clusters of surface traits that appeared
together time after time
 Believed these were evidence of deeper, more general,
underlying personality factors, which he called source traits

Trait Theories
 Early trait theories (continued)

– Raymond Cattell
 Found 23 source traits in normal individuals, 16 of which he
studied in great detail
 Cattell’s Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire,
commonly called the 16 PF, yields a personality profile
 Factor models of personality
– Five-factor theory
 The most influential proponents of the five-factor theory are
list in the following chart

Trait Theories

Trait Theories
 Factor models of personality (continued)

– Costa and McCrae
 Developed the NEO Personality Inventory and, more
recently, the Revised NEO Personality Inventory which are
used to measure the Big Five dimensions of personality
 The NEO and other measures of the Big Five are currently
being used in a wide variety of personality research studies

Trait Theories
 The situation versus trait debate

– Walter Mischel
 Initiated the situation-trait debate, an on-going discussion
among psychologists about the relative importance of
factors within the situation and factors within the person
that account for behavior
 Later modified his original position and admitted that
behavior is influenced by both the person and the situation
 Views a trait as a conditional probability that a particular
action will occur in response to a particular situation

Trait Theories
 The situation versus trait debate (continued)

– McCrae and Costa
 Studied personality traits of subjects over time and found
them to be stable for periods of 3 to 30 years

Nature, Nurture, and Personality
 Twin and adoption studies

– Tellegen and others
 Found that identical twins are also quite similar on several
personality factors, regardless of whether they are raised
together or apart
– Rushton and colleagues
 Found that nurturance, empathy, and assertiveness are
substantially influenced by heredity
– Miles and Carey
 Revealed that he habitability of aggressiveness may be as
high as .50

 Twin and adoption studies (continued)

– Loehlin and others
 Assessed the personalities of 17-year-olds who had been
adopted at birth
 When the adopted children were compared to other
children in the family, the researchers found that the
shared family environment had virtually no influence on
their personalities
– Loehlin and colleagues
 Measured change in personality of adoptees over a 10-
year period and found that children tended “to change on
the average in the direction of their genetic parents’
personalities”
 Neurotransmitters and personality

– Researchers hypothesize that genes contribute to
personality through their influence on the brain’s
neurotransmitter production, transport, and reuptake
systems
– Researchers propose that people who are
emotionally unstable possess a serotonin system
that is unusually sensitive to dangers and threats
– Several DNA studies have shown direct links
between the characteristics of individuals’ serotonin-
controlling genes and emotional stability
 The shared and nonshared environment

– Shared environment
 Consists of those environmental influences that tend to
make family members similar
– Nonshared environment
 Consists of influences that operate in different ways among
children in the same family

 Personality and culture

– Hofstede
 Analyzed questionnaire responses measuring the work-
related values of more than 100,000 IBM employees in 53
countries around the world
 Factor analysis revealed four separate dimensions related
to culture and personality
 Rank-ordered the 53 countries on each of the four
dimensions
– Individualism/collectivism dimension
 The term used to signify a culture’s emphasis either on
individuals or on social relationships

 Personality and culture (continued)

– The clearest shared cultural value is a strong
identification with and attachment to the extended
family
– Another important value is simpatia, the desire for
smooth and harmonious social relationships
– Constantine Sedikides and her colleagues
 Have argued that the goal of all individuals, regardless of
cultural context, is to enhance self-esteem

Personality Assessment
 Observation, interviews, and rating scales

– Using an observational technique known as
behavioral assessment, psychologists can count
and record the frequency of particular behaviors
– Interviewers consider not only a person’s answers
to questions but the person’s tone of voice, speech,
mannerisms, gestures, and general appearance as
well
– Interviewers often use a structured interview, in
which the content of the questions and even the
manner in which they are asked are carefully
planned ahead of time
 Observation, interviews, and rating scales

(continued)
– Rating scales are useful because they provide a
standardized format, including a list of traits or
behaviors to evaluate
– A problem in evaluation is the halo effect-the
tendency of raters to be excessively influenced in
their overall evaluation of a person by one or a few
favorable or unfavorable traits

 Personality inventories
– Inventory
 A paper-and-pencil test with questions about a person’s
thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, which can be scored
according to a standard procedure
– Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
 The most extensively researched and widely used
personality test; used to screen and diagnose psychiatric
problems and disorders
 Published in 1943 by McKinley and Hathaway and
originally intended to identify tendencies toward various
types of psychiatric disorders
 Because the original MMPI had become outdated, the
MMPI-2 was published in 1989
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory
Clinically
Hypochondriasis 1 significant
(concern with body symptoms) range
Depression 2
(pessimism, hopelessness) After
Hysteria 3 treatment
(uses symptoms to solve problems) (no scores
Before
in the clinically
Psychopathic deviancy 4 significant range
treatment
(disregard for social standards) (anxious,
Masculinity/femininity 5 depressed,
(interests like those of other sex) and
6 displaying
Paranoia deviant
(delusions, suspiciousness)
behaviors)
Psychasthenia 7
(anxious, guilt feelings)
Schizophrenia
8
(withdrawn, bizarre thoughts)
Hypomania
9
(overactive, excited, impulsive)
10
Social introversion
(shy, inhibited)
0 30 40 50 60 70 80
T-score
 Personality inventories (continued)

– Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(continued)
 The MMPI-2 is reliable, easy to administer and score, and
inexpensive to use
 Does not reveal differences among normal personalities
very well
– California Psychological Inventory (CPI)
 A highly regarded personality test used to assess the
normal personality
 Is valuable for predicting behavior, and it has been “praised
for its technical competency, careful development, cross-
validation and follow-up, use of sizable samples and
separate sex norms”
 Personality inventories (continued)

– Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
 An inventory for classifying personality types based on
Jung’s theory of personality
 Projective tests
– A personality test in which people respond to
inkblots, drawing of ambiguous human situations,
incomplete sentences, and the like, by projecting
their own inner thoughts, feelings, fears, conflicts
onto the test materials

 Projective tests (continued)

– Rorschach Inkblot Method
 A projective test composed of 10 inkblots to which a test
taker responds; used to reveal unconscious functioning
and the presence of psychiatric disorders
 One of the oldest and most popular projective tests
 Developed by Hermann Rorchach
 Can be used to describe personality, make differential
diagnoses, plan and evaluate treatment, and predict
behavior

Assessing the Unconscious- Rorschach
What might this

be?

 Projective tests (continued)

– Exner
 Developed the Comprehensive System-a more reliable
system for scoring the Rorschach
 Provides some normative data so that the responses of a
person taking the test can be compared to those of others
with known personality characteristics
– Thematic Apperception Test
 A projective test consisting of drawings of ambiguous
human situations, which the test taker describes; through
to reveal inner feeling, conflicts, and motives, which are
projected onto the test materials
 Developed by Henry Murray and his colleagues in 1935

Assessing the Unconscious- TAT
Sample
Thematic
Apperception
Test Card

Personality

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 Carl Jung (continued)

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 Karen Horney (continued)

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Internal personal/ Reciprocal

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Two humanistic theories

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 Two humanistic theories (continued)

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 Early trait theories

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 Early trait theories (continued)

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 Factor models of personality (continued)

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 The situation versus trait debate

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 The situation versus trait debate (continued)

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 Twin and adoption studies

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 Twin and adoption studies (continued)

 Neurotransmitters and personality

 The shared and nonshared environment

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 Personality and culture

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 Personality and culture (continued)

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 Observation, interviews, and rating scales

 Observation, interviews, and rating scales

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 Personality inventories (continued)

 Personality inventories (continued)

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 Projective tests (continued)

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What might this

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 Projective tests (continued)

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