Personality

Overview
Part 1 Introduction to Personality Psychoanalytic Perspective Trait (or Dispositional) Perspective Part 2 Humanistic Perspective Social-cognitive Perspective Comparing Different Perspectives

Why study personality?

Personality is a central topic in psychology. Aims to understand causes of behaviour in ourselves and others by attributing unique individual characteristics.

Why study personality?

Personality asks big questions e.g.,:
Who are you? How did you become who you are? What are your unique patterns of doing, thinking, and feeling?

What is Personality?
An individuals characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.

What is Personality?
A persons general style of interacting with the world. Differences between people which are relatively consistent over time and place.

Personal-ity Mask

(latin)

Personality Applications
Personality is closely related/applied to:
Developmental psychology Clinical, forensic and neuropsychology Social psychology Vocational counselling Personnel selection

Major theoretical perspectives

Psychoanalytic Trait Humanistic Social-Cognitive Biological (not covered)

Psychodynamic Perspective

Freud (1856 - 1939)

Psychodynamic Perspective
Developed by Sigmund Freud Psychoanalysis is both:
an approach to therapy and a theory of personality

Emphasises unconscious motivation

Psychodynamic Perspective: Early Development

Freud encountered patients suffering nervous disorders whose complaints could not be explained in terms of purely physical causes. This led Freud to develop the first comprehensive theory of personality, which included the unconscious mind, psychosexual stages, and defense mechanisms.

Model of Mind
Causes of behaviour can be either conscious or unconscious Mind is like an iceberg:
Conscious (tip) Pre-conscious (just below waterline) Unconscious (bulk of iceberg below waterline)

Psychodynamic Personality Structure

Personality arises from ones efforts to resolve conflicts between 3 interacting systems of the mind: Id (Biological aggression & pleasureseeking) Ego (Rationality) Superego (Social)

Id, Ego, Superego

Id
Instinctual drives present at birth Seeks to satisfy basic biological urges Operates on the pleasure principle, unconstrained by logic or reality

Does not distinguish between reality and

fantasy

Ego
Develops ~ 6-8 months, out of the Id Operates on the reality principle Seeks to satisfy urges in a realistic way Understands reality and logic Mediates between Id and Superego

Superego
Develops ~ 5 years Represents internalised societal and parental morals, values, ideals Strives for the ideal Responsible for guilt Its sole focus is on how one ought to think and behave

Id, Ego, Superego

Personality Development

The twig of personality is bent at an early stage.

(Myers, 1998, p.423)

Personality Development
Freud identified 5 stages of personality development (psychosexual stages):
Oral Anal Phallic Latency Genital

 During these stages the Id focuses on pleasure sensitive body areas called erogenous zones.

Personality Development
 Personality reflects unresolved conflicts during the psychosexual stages.  Fixation - an attempt to achieve pleasure as an adult in ways that are equivalent to how it way achieved in earlier stages

Oral
0 to 18 months Pleasure centres on the mouth sucking, biting, chewing

Weaning can lead to fixation if not handled correctly

Unresolved conflicts can lead to oral activities in adulthood

Anal
18 to 36 months Pleasure focuses on coping with demands to control bowel & bladder elimination Toilet training can lead to anal fixation (anal-retentive or expulsive behaviours in adulthood) if not handled correctly

Phallic
3 to 6 years Pleasure is in the genitals Coping with incestuous sexual feelings (Oedipus or Electra complex can occur) Fixation can lead to excessive masculinity in males and the need for attention or domination in females

Latency
7 years to puberty Sexuality is repressed and dormant Children participate in hobbies, school and same-sex friendships

Genital
Puberty onwards Maturation of sexual interests Sexual feelings re-emerge and are oriented toward others Healthy adults find pleasure in love and work Fixated adults have their energy tied up in earlier stages

Defence Mechanisms
Failure to resolve psychological conflict amongst Id, Ego, and Superego -> anxiety -> unconscious mental processes employed by the ego to reduce anxiety (i.e., defence mechanisms)

Defence Mechanisms
Repression Regression Displacement Reaction Formation Projection Rationalisation Sublimation

Repression
Blocks anxiety-arousing

thoughts, feelings, etc. from conscious awareness Underlies other defence mechanisms

Regression

Retreats to earlier, more infantile mode of behaviour which is characteristic of an earlier stage of psychosexual development e.g., thumb-sucking on 1st day of school

Displacement
A drive towards an activity by the Id is redirected to a more acceptable activity by the Ego. e.g., shifting sexual or aggressive impulses to more acceptable objects or people, e.g., kicking the dog when angry with something else.)

Reaction Formation
Replacing an unacceptable wish with its opposite (e.g., love -> hate) e.g., A man who is overly obsessed
with pornographic material who utilises reaction formation may take on an attitude of strong criticism about the topic.

Projection
Reducing anxiety by attributing ones unacceptable impulses to someone else. e.g. Youre moody today!

Rationalisation
Intellectualising/reasoning away anxiety-producing thoughts The process of constructing a logical justification for a decision that was originally arrived at through a different mental process

Sublimation
Displacement to activities that are valued by society Sublimation is the process of transforming libido into socially useful achievements Psychoanalysts often refer to sublimation as the only truly successful defence mechanism

Psychoanalytic Assessment
Access to unconscious is via
free association, dreams, slips of the tongue
Ideal: Psychological x-Ray

Projective Tests:
Presents ambiguous stimuli and then ask person to describe or tell a story about it

Limited scientific validity, but wide use in clinical settings

Psychoanalysis
A fixation (and the need for defence mechanisms) can be resolved by bringing the original source of the psychological conflict into conscious awareness.  Free association (chain of thoughts) leads to painful, embarrassing unconscious memories surfacing. Once these memories are retrieved and released (psychoanalysis) the patient feels better.

Dream Analysis
Another psychoanalytic method to analyse the unconscious mind is through interpreting manifest and latent contents of dreams.

The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli (1791)

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Projective Tests: Criticisms

Critics argue that projective tests lack reliability and validity: 1. When evaluating the same patient, even trained raters come up with different interpretations (reliability). 2. . Projective tests may misdiagnose a normal individual as pathological (validity).

Carl Jung: Collective Unconscious

 Collective unconscious: a common reservoir of images derived from our species past.  Many cultures share certain myths and images such as the mother being a symbol of nurturance.

Carl Jung (1875-1961)

Evaluating the Psychodynamic Perspective

CRITICISMS Personality development is lifelong Overemphasis on sexual urges (We have motives other than sex and aggression) Underemphasises peer influence Sexual inhibition has decreased, but psychological disorders have not. Good scientific theory?

Evaluating the Psychodynamic Perspective

 CRITICISMS Theory rests on repression of painful experiences into the unconscious mind, but the majority of children, death camp survivors, and war veterans are unable to repress painful experiences into their unconscious mind.

Evaluating the Psychodynamic Perspective

CONTRIBUTIONS Importance of unconscious Defense mechanisms Development of psychoanalysis Enormous cultural impact

Trait (or Dispositional) Perspective

Personality is: the dynamic organisation of traits Trait: a characteristic pattern of behaviour or a disposition to feel or act
(Myers, 1998, p.431)

Traits are stable & consistent

Trait Perspective
Personality is an individuals unique constellation of durable dispositions and consistent ways of behaving (traits) e.g., Honest Dependable Moody Impulsive

Type vs. Trait

Type Labels each person as a single type Trait Identifies the degree to which several different personality characteristics occur within an individual

Assessing Personality
Personality inventories are questionnaires designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors assessing several traits at once. e.g.,  EPQ (Eysenck) 16PF (Cattell)  MMPI  NEO (Big 5)

Eysencks Supertraits
Proposed that there were two super personality traits Based on genetics and physiology: Extraversion-Introversion : baseline brain arousal level Emotional Stability-Instability : reactivity of the autonomic nervous system

Eysencks Supertraits

Personality Type

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Extraversion-Introversion (E-I) Sensing-INtuition (S-N) (style of gathering data) Thinking-Feeling (T-F) (style of making decisions) Judging-Perceiving (J-P) (outward preference for structure or flexibility)

16 Personality Factors
Using Factor Analysis, Cattell analysed relationships amongst many clusters of personality adjectives which he reduced to 16 core traits.

MMPI
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory The most widely researched and clinically used personality test. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders. Developed by empirically testing a pool of items and then selecting those that discriminated between diagnostic groups.

The Big 5 Factors

There is reasonable consensus now that: Eysencks 2 supertraits are too narrow Cattells 16PF too large. 5 factors does a better job of assessment

The Big 5 Factors

Currently the best summary of personality factors: Neuroticism (Emotional Stability) Extraversion Openness Agreeableness Conscientiousness

Questions about the Big 5

1. How stable are these traits? Quite stable in adulthood. However, they change over development. 50% or so for each trait.

2. How heritable are they?

3. How about other cultures?

These traits are common across cultures. Yes. Conscientious people are morning type and extraverted are evening type.

4. Can they predict other personal attributes?

The Person-Situation Controversy

Walter Mischel (1968, 1984, 2004) points out that traits may be enduring, but the resulting behavior in various situations is different. Therefore, traits are not good predictors of behavior.

The Person-Situation Controversy

Trait theorists argue that behaviors in different situations may be different, but average behavior remains the same. Therefore, traits matter.

Evaluating the Trait Perspective

CRITICISMS Do people really have traits that are consistent across time/situation? (person-situation controversy?) Describes personality rather than explains it CONTRIBUTIONS Objective approach to personality assessment

Humanistic Perspective
Emphasis on humans:
uniqueness, freedom & growth potential

Humanistic Perspective
By the 1960s, psychologists became discontent with Freuds negativity and the mechanistic psychology of the behaviorists.

http://www.ship.edu

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

Theoretical Developments in Modern Psychology

1st Force = Psychoanalysis (1900s-) 2nd Force = Behaviourism (1950s-) 3rd Force = Humanistic (1960s-) 4th Force = Transpersonal? Social-Cognitive (1980s-)

3rd Force Psychology

Humanistic Perspective says: Psychoanalytic too -ve & deterministic Traits too narrow & objective Behaviourism too deterministic

Humanistic Psychology ...must deal with the highest capacities of the healthy and strong person as well as the defensive maneuvres of crippled spirits.
(Maslow, 1970)

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)

Studied the healthiest individuals Humans as motivated by a hierarchy of needs That we strive for self-actualisation (although 1% are self-actualised)

Hierarchy of Needs

Why arent more people selfactualised?

Weakest of needs - easily impeded by lower level needs Jonah Complex - fear and doubt our own abilities and potentialities Cultural environment may stifle growth Childhood experiences may inhibit
personal growth

Some Traits Of Maslows Self-Actualised People Accepts self & others Originality in thinking & behavior Devoted to solving a 'mission' Independent of cultural influence Peak experiences Small number of close friends Sense of humour

Carl Rogers (1902-1987)

Human potential for growth Growth environment has: Y Genuineness - open feelings, self-disclose Y Acceptance - unconditional +ve regard Y Empathy - nonjudgemental listening Self-concept - mental picture of yourself Behaviour consistent with self-concept Actual vs. ideal self -> self-esteem

Actual Low Selfesteem Ideal

Actual

High Selfesteem

Ideal

Is the Self Personality?

Humanistic perspective: self = pivotal centre of personality Many possible selves Positive illusions Collectivist vs. Individualist culture Q: If the self is so malleable, is it really personality?

Humanistic Assessment
Self-concept questionnaires Interviews Self-esteem, congruence, etc.

Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective

CRITICISMS Concepts are vague & subjective Encourages self-absorption and oversubscribes to the Western cult of the self Unrealistically +ve view of human nature

CONTRIBUTIONS

 Pervasive impact on counseling, education, child-rearing, and management.  Optimistic view of whole person Allows for growth & change Basis of person-centred therapy

Social-Cognitive Perspective
(Cognitive Social Learning Perspective)

Combines social learning & cognition Behaviour emerges from the interplay between: person & environment

Banduras Reciprocal Determinism

Bandura believes that personality is the result of an interaction that takes place between a person and their social context. i.e., reciprocal determinism or

you choose it, & it shapes you

Albert Bandura

Bandura called the process of interacting with our environment reciprocal determinism.

Individuals & Environments

Specific ways in which individuals and environments interact
Different people choose different environments. Our personalities shape how we react to events. Our personalities shape situations. The school you attend and the music you listen to are partly based on your dispositions. Anxious people react to situations differently than calm people. How we view and treat people influences how they treat us.

Learned Helplessness
When unable to avoid repeated adverse events an animal or human learns helplessness.

Learned Helplessness
When unable to avoid repeated adverse events an animal or human learns helplessness.

Learned Helplessness

Learned Optimism
More recently, Seligman has turned his attention to positive psychology and the opposite notion of learned optimism.

Personal Control
Do you believe your life is controlled by:

A. fate, chance, government, other people, etc. B. self, goals, motives, determination, effort, etc.

A = external locus of control B = internal locus of control Self-efficacy

belief that one has the ability to perform a particular behaviour

Social-Cognitive Perspective Assessment

Past behaviour predicts future behaviour Observe behaviour in different situations Questionnaire assessment of perceived control and self-efficacy

Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective

CRITICISMS Overemphasis on situation Underemphasis on stability in traits Ignores unconscious motives

CONTRIBUTIONS Considers person, environment & behaviour Allows for behaviour to vary Can be applied therapeutically

Summary
Definition: Personality is an area of psychology which attempts to identify consistent variations in thinking, feeling and behaviour between people Related to other fields of psychology, other disciplines and to the everyday world such as career counselling

The psychoanalytic perspective

Role of unconscious Personality structure: id, ego, superego Battle between biology and social Importance of resolving personality conflicts in childhood Defense mechanisms used to prevent anxiety reaching consciousness Projective assessment techniques Massive cultural legacy Continuing clinical application Dwindling scientific interest

The trait perspective

Objective variations in behaviour Eysencks 2 main factors: extraversion and emotional stability Current best model, The Big 5 What about the influence of situations? Descriptive rather explanatory

The humanistic perspective

Reacts to psychoanalysis, trait theory & behaviourism Humans are motivated towards self-fulfillment when:
X X

basic needs are satisfied environment is genuine, accepting & empathic

Sense of self-worth is pivotal to personality Is the self = personality?

Social Cognitive Perspective

personality arises from reciprocal interaction between person & environment important personality variables are acquired via reciprocal determinism:
X X X

locus of control self-efficacy learned helplessness / learned optimism

Comparing Different Perspectives

Personality is an abstract concept, thus each approach is arguably correct Each perspective has evolved logically from an intellectual and cultural zeitgeist Advantages & disadvantages

Take-home Messages
Personality is much more complex than is described by any single perspective Different perspectives describe different aspects of personality New perspectives will evolve, e.g. through biotechnology