Unit 10

Personality

Personality

A person’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling and acting

2 major theories to why we develop our personalities• Freud's psychoanalytic approach

• Humanistic approach

Freud

One of the most influential and most known psychologists

Inquisitive as a youth, searched for answers to ailments with unknown causes as a doctor

Psychoanalytic approach

Free association• Patients relaxing and just saying whatever

comes into their minds, no matter how trivial or embarrassing

• Mental dominoes

• The mind is mostly hidden• Our conscious awareness is only what we can see

• There is a vast amount that we cannot see

• Like an iceberg

Psychoanalytic approach

Preconscious• Area where we can store temporarily

Repression• What we do with our thoughts and desires

that we cannot act out

• They are forcibly blocked

• We may not be consciously aware of them all the time

Psychoanalytic approach

Free associations would let some of these repressed emotions out and may answer some of the issues• Freudian slips

Dreams are also important• Manifest content – what we can remember, is

a censored expression of what we really want (the latent content)

Personality structure

Personality comes from conflicts between restraint and impulse• Controlling our aggressive, pleasure seeking

biological urges

• How can we get pleasure from these urges without feeling guilt or being punished?

Three interacting systems

Id – unconscious psychic energy that is constantly pushing us to fulfill basic drives• Reproduction, survival, and aggression

• Operates on the pleasure principle• Immediate gratification

• Newborns

• Drug abusers

Three interacting systems

Ego – executive part of the mind• Acts as a mediator

• Operates on the reality principle• How can I get what I want in a realistic way

• Contains our partly conscious perceptions, thoughts, judgments, and memories

Three interacting systems

Superego –emerges around 4 or 5• The moral compass

• Consider not only the real, but the ideal

• How should we behave?

• Strives for perfection

• In direct contrast with the id• Ego handles the battle

Personality development

Psychosexual stages• The id will focus on different areas as children

grow

• Pleasure will be derived from different erogenous zones

Psychosexual Stages

Oral – 0 to 18 mos• Mouth

• Biting, sucking, chewing

Anal - 18-36 mos• Toilet training

Phallic – 3-6 yrs• Oedipus complex

• Electra complex

Psychosexual Stages

Latency – 6 to puberty• Dormant sexual feelings

Genital – puberty onward • Maturation of sexual interests

Personality

Identification• Threatening feelings get repressed and

behavior is learned through an identification process

• Children gain many of their parents values in their superegos

Unresolved conflicts can lead to fixation• Being stuck in one pleasure seeking stage

Freud’s defense mechanisms

Tactics used to reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality• 1. Repression – banishing anxiety causing things to

the unconscious• Underlies all others

• Sometimes slips

• 2. Regression – retreating to a more child like state• Homesickness in college?

• 3. Reaction formation – taking unacceptable impulses and making them the opposite• Thinking “I hate Dad” but saying “I love Dad”

Freud’s defense mechanisms 4. Projection – disguising impulses by

assigning them to someone else• “The thief thinks everyone else is a thief”

5. Rationalization – generating explanations to hide the real cause

• Drinking to be sociable 6. Displacement – diverting attention to an

object that is more acceptable• Taking frustration out on someone other than who

you are angry at

Freud’s defense mechanisms

7. Sublimation – taking something unacceptable and using it as motivation to create something that is

• da Vinci – Mona Lisa and his mother

8. Denial – protecting someone from a painful event• Denying child’s misconduct

Neo Freudians

Id Ego and Superego Unconscious Defense mechanisms

• All accepted but…

• More importance placed on conscious mind

• Sex and aggression aren’t all consuming motivations

Adler and Horney

Childhood is important• But social, not sexual, tensions are more

important to identity formation

• Adler’s Inferiority complex

• Horney – women aren’t as weak as Freud thought, jealous of power in society

• Carl Jung – collective unconscious (evolutionary psy?)

Testing Personality

Projective tests• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• Making up stories about ambiguous pictures

• Rorschach inkblot test• Describe what you see

Evaluating Psychoanalytic Perspective

Research today contradicts much of what Freud said

Overestimates parents involvement and underestimates peer influence• Infant amnesia

Repression• We do try to neglect painful memories but it

has yet to be proven • People relive their worst memories

The modern unconscious mind Time to abandon Freud’s unconscious mind? Unconscious also involves

• Schemas that automatically control interpretations• Split brain functionality (severed corpus callosum)• Parallel processing – vision and thinking• Instant emotion

Not so spontaneous However

• False Consensus how much we think others agree with us• Terror management theory – awareness of our own

mortality• We behave differently when faced with death

Major problems with Freud

Untestable After the fact explanations

• Cant predict how others will be affected

Never really meant to do those things• Looking back cant predict things, it can help explain

• Important studies done on unconscious, sexuality, defense mechanisms

Humanistic POV

Rather than looking at individuals as “sick”, how do healthy people strive for self realization?

• Using people’s self reported feelings and experiences

Maslow

Hierarchy • Self Actualization – 2nd from the top

• Need to realize our fullest potential

• Self Transcendence – the top• Looking for meaning beyond yourself

Studied healthy, creative people• Lincoln, Jefferson, E Roosevelt

Carl Rogers

Person Centered Perspective• People are generally good

• “We are all acorns”

• We can all grow and reach fulfillment as long as we are raised with three things• Genuineness – being open with our feelings

• Acceptance – having unconditional positive regard (completely accepting another person)

• Empathy – sharing our feelings and mirroring them

Self Concept

All the thoughts and feelings we have in response to the question “Who am I?”

• If it’s a positive answer – view the world more positively

• If its negative – we fall short of where we feel we should be in our lives

Assessing the self

Questionnaires – • Rogers – describe how you actually are and how you

would like to be

• The closer these two were, the more positive outlook there was

Can you get the answers you want from a standardized test?• Many feel conversation is a better method than filling

in bubbles

Evaluating Humanistic

Maslow and Rogers have had a huge impact on education, childrearing and parenting, management

Influenced much of popular psychology• Is a positive self concept important to

happiness and success?

• Are people basically good and capable of self improvement?

Criticisms

Concepts are too vague and subjective

Too naïve? • Is there a human capacity for evil?

• Terrorism

• Nuclear War

• Every thing will work out

• Its hopeless, why bother to try

Trait Perspective

There are also stable patterns of behavior that can be used to define personality

Fundamental traits • Less concerned with explaining traits, but

rather describing them

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator• Thinking type vs feeling type

Exploring traits

We are each a complex group of multiple traits

Factor analysis• Statistics used to determine traits – answering

questions that are related, but worded differently

• Eysenck – extra/introverted emotionally stable/unstable

Exploring traits

Biology• Brain activity may shape personality

• Extraverts tend to need more brain stimulation

• Genes • Breeding animals can make them more

intra/extraverted or more passive or aggressive

• Silver Foxes

Testing Traits

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test (MMPI)• Originally developed to search for disorders,

can be used to get an idea of a personality characteristic

• Scored objectively, not subjectively

• Problems?

The Big 5

CANOE• Conscientiousness

• Careful or careless

• Agreeableness• Helpful or uncooperative

• Neuroticism• Calm or anxious

• Openness• Imaginative or practical

• Extraversion• Affectionate or reserved

The Big 5

Generally accepted by psychologists today

Stay stable through life Almost half the time are inheritable Can be used to predict other traits

• Conscientious do better in school

• Extraverted tend to be more night owls

Evaluating Trait Perspective

Its more than just traits• Different environments can bring out different

traits

• Traits do stabilize over time, but behaviors can change• People don’t act with predictable constancy all the

time

• But you can predict what they will do on average

Judging Personality Person Situation controversy

• Traits and behaviors don’t have to be the same• Look at the average across time

Music Preferences • Asking about what type of music someone likes says a lot about their

personality Facebook pages

• How can you present yourself here? Bedrooms and offices

• Cleanliness or messy can also say quite a bit Email

• A person’s writing voice – how they present info when writing

Social Cognitive Perspective

Albert Bandura• Behavior is influenced by the interaction

between peoples traits and their social context• We learn by observing others and modeling our

behavior after theirs

• Reciprocal determinism• Influences are mutual

• Behavior, cognition, and environment all interact

Reciprocal determinism

Different people choose different environments• The environment you choose to be in shapes your

behavior Personality shapes how we interact and react

• Anxious people react to things differently and see the world differently

Personalities help create situations to which we react• How we view and treat people influences how they

treat us

Personal Control

How much can you control your environment?• External Locus of Control

• Outside forces determine our fate

• Learned helplessness

• Internal Locus of Control• We control our own destiny

• Generally achieve more in school

• Better at dealing with stress

Optimism vs Pessimism

Optimists• Enjoy better health

• Better relationships

Too Optimistic?• Fear of failure is a good thing (pessimism to a

degree)

• Can blind us to real risk

Social Cognitive Evaluation

Focuses too much on the here and now• Doesn’t take into account enough information

about individuals

Our biological traits matter more than may be realized

Exploring the Self

Self – the center of personality• Organizer of thoughts, feelings and actions

Possible selves• Thinking about all the people we could be

• Can motivate us to do great things

Self Esteem

Feelings of self worth

Spotlight effect• Overestimating others thoughts about what

they are thinking about you

• Thinking that every one is looking at you

Benefits of self esteem

People who feel good about themselves live happier lives• Can be used to predict employment and salary later

on in life

Feeling well follows doing well?• Side effect?

Negative self feelings cause more judgmental feelings of others

Self serving bias

Readiness to perceive ourselves as favorable• People accept responsibility for good deeds

more than bad, and success instead of failure

• Most people see themselves as better than average

• All of us have inferiority complexes?• Quick to defend our actions as right

Problems with self serving bias

What about those who feel worthless?

Self directed put downs are subtly strategic• No one likes me – you haven’t met everyone

(can be reassuring)

• Prepare us for possible failure

• Looks at who they were not who they are• At 18 I was a jerk, I am much more sensitive today

Culture and the Self

Individualism – priority given to your own goals over the group• Sense of “me”

• Move in and out of groups easily

• More loneliness/divorce/stress

Collectivism – group over self• Deeper more stable attachments

• Avoiding direct confrontation