What is Personality?

1. What is Personality? • Describe your own personality by generating a list of several key personality qualities you possess, either positive or negative (#1-10) . Begin with the prompt “I am…”

2. What is Personality? • In groups of 4 share your lists and address the following: 1. What personality characteristics were listed most frequently? Is there group agreement that these are aspects to personality? 2. Identify several qualities listed that the group agrees do NOT qualify as personality traits. Why do you think they are not? 3. As a group generate a definition for the broad concept of personality* 4. What do you believe is the focus of Personality Psychologists? • Group responses

3. What is Personality? • Past class definitions. Personality is… • Who we are • A set of different qualities that make up our personal identity and make us unique • In-born tendencies and characteristics that define us and make us individuals • Differences in behavior that separate us from each other • A group of personal qualities, attitudes and behavior that occur enough to characterize us in some general way

4. What is Personality? * • The unique, characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors consistently exhibited by an individual over time (and across situations) that strongly influence our expectations, self-perceptions, values and attitudes, and predicts our reactions to people, problems and stress… • Key components • Distinctiveness and Uniqueness of character • An enduring pattern of behavior (stability - consistency and predictability) • An internal coherence or unified organization of character that embraces the whole person

5. Major Theoretical Perspectives • Personality theory has a long and complicated past with significant disagreement. It focuses on the study of individual differences, personality traits, and types. It is used to understand, assess, predict and treat behaviors • Psychodynamic (Freud, Jung, Adler, Erikson...) • Trait (Allport, Cattell, Eysenck) • Humanistic (Maslow, Rogers) • Behaviorist (Skinner) • Cognitive-Social Learning (Bandura, Seligman, Mischel)

6. Psychodynamic Theories (Freud) • Personality is a product of psychological forces within the individual, often outside conscious awareness • Propositions common to psychodynamic theories • Mental processes such as emotions, motivations, and thought may conflict with one another • Early childhood experiences strongly affect personality development • Development of personality involves learning to regulate sexual and aggressive urges

7. The Psychodynamic Perspective The Unconscious • Mostly comprised of unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories of which we are unaware • Primary role of repression • Versus the contemporary view of the unconscious - information processing (e.g. automaticity)

8. Psychodynamic Personality Structure • Id A reservoir of unconscious psychic energy • Strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives • Operates on the pleasure principle, demands immediate gratification and resides only in unconscious • Superego The source of moral behavior • Represents internalized ideals (societal/parental) • Provides standards for judgment (conscience) • Ego Conscious, “executive” part of personality • Mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality • Operates on the reality principle

9. Personality Structure • Freud’s idea of the mind’s structure

10. Defense Mechanisms • When the ego cannot satisfy the id in ways acceptable to the superego, anxiety and uneasiness ensue (neurosis) • In response the ego may employ a number of defense mechanisms to protect the conscious mind

11. Defense Mechanisms – Examples? • Denial Refusal to acknowledge a painful reality • Repression Unpleasant thoughts are excluded from consciousness • Projection Attributing one’s own feelings, motives, or wishes to others • Identification Taking on the characteristics of other to avoid feeling incompetent • Regression Reverting to childlike behavior • Rationalization Self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions

12. Defense Mechanisms • Intellectualization Thinking about stressful problems in an abstract way to detach oneself from them • Reaction formation Expression of exaggerated ideas and emotions that are opposite of true feelings • Displacement Shift repressed motives from an original object to a substitute object • Sublimation Redirecting repressed motives and feelings into socially acceptable activities • Others?

13. Stage Focus Oral Pleasure centers on the mouth-- (0-18 months) sucking, biting, chewing Anal Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder (18-36 months) elimination; coping with demands for control Phallic Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with (3-6 years) incestuous sexual feelings Latency Dormant sexual feelings (6 to puberty) Genital Maturation of sexual interests (puberty on) Personality Development • Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development

14. Psychosexual Development of Personality • Freud believed that personality is the result of various ways in which the sexual instinct (also called the libido) is satisfied during the course of life

15. Psychosexual Stages • Oral Stage (birth to 18 months) • Pleasure is obtained by sucking and swallowing • Too much oral stimulation may result in an overly optimistic, gullible, and dependent adult - Dependent • Too little stimulation can result in a pessimistic, sarcastic, argumentative adult – Aggressive • Oral fixation

16. Psychosexual Stages • Anal Stage (18 months to 3 ½ years) • Focus of pleasure is the controlling bowels • Strict toilet training may result in anal retentive personality types as adults, i.e., stingy and excessively orderly or anal expulsive (do the math…)

17. Psychosexual Stages • Phallic Stage (after age 3) • Erotic feelings center on genitals • Boys experience the Oedipal complex where they are strongly attached to their mother and jealous of their father (castration anxiety) • Girls experience the Electra complex, being strongly attached to their father and jealous of their mother • These complexes are usually resolved by identification with the same-sex parent • Fixation at this stage may result in vanity and egotism in adult life and difficulty in relationships

18. Psychosexual Stages • Latency Stage (5 or 6 to 12 or 13) • Child appears to have no interest in the other sex • Dormancy, repression and sublimation • Genital Stage (begins at puberty) • Final stage marked by development of mature sexuality • Fixation or repression

19. Psychodynamic Theorists (Neo-Freudians) • Carl Jung – Analytical Psychology • Deemphasizes sexual and aggressive • Emphasizes understanding the psyche through worlds of dreams, art, mythology, religion and philosophy • Collective v. personal unconscious • A shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history. Archetypes • Introversion v. extraversion • Animus v. anima, the persona and shadow

20. Psychodynamic Theorists (Neo-Freudians) • Alfred Adler – Individual Psychology • Importance of childhood social tension. Fuller break from Freud • We are mainly conscious beings, not unconscious • Inferiority v. superiority (inferiority complex) • Role of birth order in personality formation (dethronement, compensation, regression, inferiority)

21. Neo-Freudians • Karen Horney • Importance of childhood and social relations • Basic security vs Basic anxiety or Hostility • Adult neuroses and coping strategies • Compliance – moving toward • Aggression – moving against • Isolation – moving away • Erich Fromm • Outside forces affect personality. Society = loneliness • Freedom has led to isolation. Belongingness

22. Social Psychoanalytic Perspective (Review) • Erik Erikson – Eight Ages of Man Emphasis on childhood social development • trust v. mistrust • autonomy v. shame and doubt • initiative v. guilt • industry v. inferiority • identity v. role confusion • intimacy v. isolation • generativity v. stagnation • integrity v. despair

23. Assessing the Unconscious - Projective • Projective Tests like the Rorschach or TAT versus objective tests • Rorschach Inkblot Test • Most widely used (and controversial) projective test utilizes a set of 10 inkblots. Reliability and validity • Seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing interpretations of the blots

24. Rorschach Inkblot 2

25. Rorschach Inkblot 3

26. Rorschach Inkblot 8

27. Rorschach Inkblot 9

28. Humanistic Perspective • Abraham Maslow • Studied self-actualization processes of productive and healthy people

29. Humanistic Perspective • Carl Rogers (1902-1987) • Unconditional Positive Regard • An attitude of total acceptance toward another person as well aa oneself (v.Conditional PR) • Client Centered Therapy • Focused on growth and fulfillment of individuals focused on Genuineness, Acceptance, and Empathy

30. The Trait Perspective • Trait Theory • A characteristic pattern of behaviorthat is stable • Early contributor Gordon Allportidentified 18,000 words representing traits Allport & Odbert (1936)

31. Irritable Excitement Boisterous Impatient Basic trait Superficial traits Trait Theory • Factor analysisstatistical approach used to describe and relate personality traits • Raymond Cattell used this approach to develop a 16 Personality Factor (16PF) inventory • Surface v. source traits aka Impulsive

32. UNSTABLE Moody Touchy Anxious Restless Rigid Aggressive Sober Excitable Pessimistic Changeable Reserved Impulsive Unsociable Optimistic Quiet Active choleric melancholic INTROVERTED EXTRAVERTED Passive phlegmatic sanguine Sociable Careful Outgoing Thoughtful Talkative Peaceful Responsive Controlled Easygoing Reliable Lively Even-tempered Carefree Calm Leadership STABLE The Trait Perspective • Hans and Sybil Eysenck used two primary personality factors as axes for describing personality variation • A third, psychoticism, was added to the model in the late 1970s (Thus, the PENmodel)

33. The Trait Perspective • EPI

34. Today’s trait researchers believe that Eysencks’ personality dimensions are too narrow and Cattell’s 16PF too large. A middle range (5 factors) of traits does a better job of assessment (Goldberg) Trait Theory - The Big Five Factors

35. The Big Five (Goldberg)

36. Personality Inventories & MMPI Objective v. Projective Testing • Personality Inventory Objective v Projective • Questionnaires used to assess selected personality traits (MMPI-2, Kiersey/Myers-Briggs, Big 5 Inventories) • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) • The most widely researched and clinically used. Originally developed to identify emotional disorders. Now used for many other purposes • Personality Tests and Tools • Five Factor Test

37. Clinically significant range 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Hypochondriasis (concern with body symptoms) Depression (pessimism, hopelessness) After treatment (no scores in the clinically significant range) Hysteria (uses symptoms to solve problems) Before treatment (anxious, depressed, and displaying deviant behaviors) Psychopathic deviancy (disregard for social standards) Masculinity/femininity (interests like those of other sex) Paranoia (delusions, suspiciousness) Psychasthenia (anxious, guilt feelings) Schizophrenia (withdrawn, bizarre thoughts) Hypomania (overactive, excited, impulsive) Social introversion (shy, inhibited) 0 30 40 50 60 70 80 T-score MMPI • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) test profile

38. Enduring Issues in Trait Theory • To what extent are traits • Stable (person-situation vis a vis behaviors)? • Influenced by biology (genetic predisposition)? • Experienced across culture? • Predictive of (other) attributes/behaviors? • Truly indicated on trait inventories (self-report)? • Limited to simply five general areas? Others? • Issue of Situationism and Person-Situation (Mischel)

39. Social-Cognitive Perspective • Social-Cognitive Perspective Views behavior and personality as influenced by the interaction between persons and their social context (Mischel & Bandura) • Reciprocal DeterminismThe interacting influences between personality and environmental factors • People choose different environments (and our environments shape us). Examples? • Our personalities shape how we interpret/react to events • Our personalities help create situations to which we react

40. Concepts in Social Cognitive Perspective (Review of Earlier Concepts) • External Locus of Control v. Internal Locus of Control • Learned Helplessness (Seligman) • Spotlight Effect • Self Esteem • Self-Serving Bias \ • Individualism v. CollectivismDefining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes v priority to the goals of group