Theories of Personality

Chapter 13
Measuring Personality
 Genetic influences on personality
 Environmental influences on personality
 Cultural influences on personality
 Psychodynamic influences on personality
 The inner experience
Defining Personality and Traits.
 Personality
 Distinctive and relatively stable pattern of
behaviours, thoughts, motives, and emotions that
characterizes an individual throughout life.
 Trait
 A characteristic of an individual, describing a
habitual way of behaving, thinking, and feeling.
 Projective Tests
 Projective tests
 Based on the assumption that the test taker will
transfer (“project”) unconscious conflicts and
motives onto an ambiguous stimulus.
 Examples include the Thematic Apperception
Test and the Rorschach
Thematic Apperception Test
 Person is asked to tell a
story about the “hero” in
the picture
 Another projective test
 Based on Murray’s
personality theory
 People are distinguished
by the needs that
motivate their behaviour
 The Rorschach Inkblot Test
 Ambiguous stimuli
 Person is asked to
report what they see
 This type of test is
called projective
 No clear image, so
the things you see
must be “projected”
from inside yourself Sample Rorschach Card
Objective Tests
 Standardized questionnaires requiring written
responses; typically include scales on which
people rate themselves:
 ‘I am easily embarrassed’ T or F
 ‘I like to go to parties’ T or F
 More reliability and validity than projective
tests.
 Better at predicting behaviour.
 Factor analysis:
 A statistical method for analysing the
intercorrelations among various measures or
test scores; clusters of measures or scores that
are highly correlated are assumed to measure
the same underlying trait or ability (factor).
 Example: Cattel’s 16 Personality Factors (PF)
Questionnaire.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory
 Most widely used personality instrument
 Now the MMPI - 2
 Clinical & Employment settings
 Measures aspects of personality that, if
extreme, suggest a problem
 e.g., extreme suspiciousness
 Long test ‑ 567 questions
 Characteristics of the MMPI‑2
 Has several different scales (multiphasic)
 Scales thought to measure different kinds of
psychological disorders
 e.g., depression
 Scale scores indicate how you compare with
others
 Overall assessment is interpretive
 From inspecting profile of different scales
MMPI Score Profile
MMPI Validity Scales
 Four scales designed to determine whether
respondent is presenting self accurately.
 Example: L scale (‘Fake Good’) - Trying
too hard to present self in a positive light.
 “I smile at everyone I meet” (T)
 “I read every editorial every day” (T)
 MMPI Sample Items
 I usually feel that life is worthwhile and
interesting
 Depression
 Evil people are trying to influence my mind
 Paranoia
 I seem to hear things that other people can’t
hear
 Schizophrenia
“Big Five” Personality Dimensions
 Extroversion
 Neuroticism
 Agreeableness
 Conscientiousness
 Openness to experience
“Big Five” Personality Dimensions
 The Big Five have emerged as distinct,
central personality dimensions in many
countries around the world.
 Are stable over a lifetime.
 Some argue it is incomplete; other important
dimensions (e.g., religiosity) are missing
 Others (Eysenck) argue for only 3 factors.
Genetic Influences on Personality
 Heredity and temperament
 Heredity and traits
 Genetic Influences on Personality
 123 pairs of identical twins
and 127 pairs of fraternal
twins
 Measured on “Big Five”
personality dimensions
 Results suggest that
personality differences in
the population are 40 - 50%
genetically determined.
Heredity and Temperament
 Temperaments
 Physiological dispositions to respond to the
environment in certain ways.
 Present in infancy and assumed to be innate.
 Includes:
 Reactivity
 Soothability

 Positive and Negative Emotionality

 Temperaments are relatively stable over time.

 Heredity and Traits
 Heritability
 A statistical estimate of the proportion of the total
variance in some trait that is attributable to genetic
differences among individuals within a group.
 Heritability of personality traits is about 50%.
 Within a group of people, about 50% of the variation
associated with a given trait is attributable to genetic
differences among individuals in the group.
 Genetic predisposition is not genetic inevitability.
Environmental Influences on
Personality
 The power of parents
 The power of peers
 Situations and circumstances
 The Power of Parents
 The shared environment of the home has little influence on
personality.
 The nonshared environment is a more important influence.
 Few parents have a single child-rearing style that is consistent
over time and that they use with all children.
 Even when parents try to be consistent in the way they treat
their children, there may be little relation between what they do
and how their children turn out.
The Power of Peers
 Adolescent culture includes different peer
groups organized by different interests.
 Peer acceptance is so important to children
and adolescents that being bullied,
victimized or rejected by peers is far more
traumatic that punitive treatment by
parents.
Situations and Circumstances
 People routinely reveal all of the big five traits in
their everyday behaviour.
 Why are there variations in individual
expressions of traits?
 Depending on context, some behaviours are
rewarded and others are not.
 Reciprocal determinism
 In social-cognitive theories, the two way interaction
between aspects of the environment and aspects of
the individual in the shaping of personality traits.
Reciprocal
determinism
Cultural Influences on Personality
 Culture, values and traits
 Customs in context
 Aggressiveness and altruism
 Culture, Values, and Traits
 Culture
 A program of shared rules that govern the
behaviour of members of a community or
society, and
 a set of values, beliefs and attitudes shared by
most members of that community.
 Culture, Values, and Traits
 Individualist cultures
 Cultures in which the self is regarded as
autonomous, and individual goals and wishes are
prized above duty and relations with others.
 Collectivist cultures
 Cultures in which the self is regarded as embedded
in relationships, and harmony with one’s group is
prized above individual goals and wishes.
 Customs in Context
 When culture isn’t appropriately considered,
people attribute unusual behaviour to personality.
 Examples include bathing and tardiness.
 Monochronic cultures
 Time is ordered sequentially, schedules and deadlines
valued over people.
 Polychronic cultures
 Time is ordered horizontally, people valued over schedules
and deadline.
Aggressiveness
 Considerable cross-cultural evidence suggests
that male aggression results more from cultural
factors than biological ones.
 In cultures in which competition for resources
is fierce and survival is difficult, men are
“toughened up” and pushed to take risks.
Altruism
 Culture also strong influence on moral
behaviour. American children were less
likely to be altruistic when compared with
children from Kenya, India, Mexico, the
Phillipines and Okinawa.
Psychodynamic Influences on
Personality
 Defining key terms
 Freud and psychoanalysis
 Other psychodynamic approaches
Key terms
 Psychodynamic theories
 Explain behaviour and personality in terms of
unconscious energy dynamics within the
individual.
 Psychoanalysis
 A theory of personality and method of
psychotherapy developed by Sigmund Freud.
 Emphasize unconscious motives and conflicts.
 The Structure of Personality
 Id: Operates according to the
pleasure principle
 Primitive and unconscious part
of personality
 Ego: Operates according to the
reality principle
 Mediates between id and
superego
 Superego: Moral ideals and
conscience
Defense Mechanisms
 Repression
 Projection
 Displacement
 Reaction formation
 Regression
 Denial
 The Development of Personality
 Freud’s stages
 Oral
 Anal
 Phallic
 Latency period
 Genital
 Fixation occurs when stages aren’t resolved
successfully.
Other Psychodynamic Approaches
 Jungian Theory
 Collective unconscious
 The universal memories, symbols, and
experiences of humankind,
 represented in the archetypes or universal
symbolic images that appear in myths, art, stories,
and dreams.
 2 important archetypes are maleness and
femaleness which he believed existed in both
sexes.
Other Psychodynamic Approaches
 The Object-Relations School
 Emphasizes the importance of the infants first
two years of life and the baby’s formative
relationships, especially with the mother.
 Emphasized children’s needs for a
powerful mother and to be in relationships.
Evaluating Psychodynamic Theories
 Three scientific failings
 Violating the principle of falsifiability.
 Drawing universal principles from the
experiences of a few atypical patients.
 Basing theories of personality development
on retrospective accounts and the fallible
memories of patients.
The Humanistic Approach
 Abraham Maslow
 Carl Rogers
 Rollo May
 Evaluating Humanists
Abraham Maslow
 Humanist psychology
 An approach that emphasizes personal
growth, resilience, and the achievement of
human potential.
 For Maslow, personality development can
be viewed as a gradual progression toward
self-actualization - achieving one’s full
potential.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Self-Actualization

Esteem

Belongingness

Safety

Physiological
Carl Rogers
 Unconditional Positive Regard
 Love or support given to another person with
no conditions attached.
 Conditional Positive Regard
 A situation in which the acceptance and love
one receives from significant others is
contingent upon one’s behaviour.
Carl Rogers’ Personality Theory

 The needs for self-actualization and positive regard

create a potential for conflict.
Rollo May
 Shared with humanists the belief in free
will and freedom of choice but also
emphasized loneliness, anxiety and
alienation.
 Extistentialism
 Free will confers on us responsibility for our
actions.
Evaluating Humanists
 Hard to operationally define many of the
concepts.
 Have added balance to the study of personality.
 The approach has encouraged others to focus on
“positive psychology.”
 The argument that we have the power to choose
our own destiny has fostered a new appreciation
for resilience.