1. Personality

2. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

3. Defining personality • An individual’s unique pattern of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that persist over time and across situations “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

4. Major categories of theories • Psychodynamic theories • Place the origin of personality in unconscious motivations and conflicts. • Humanistic theories • Spotlight positive growth motives and the realization of potential in shaping personality. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

5. Major categories of theories • Trait theories • Categorize and describe the ways in which people’s personalities differ. • Cognitive-social learning theories • Find the roots of personality in the ways people think about, action, and respond to their environment. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

6. Psychodynamic theories • Personality is the result of unconscious motivations and conflicts. • Sigmund Freud • Alfred Adler • Erik Erikson “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

7. Freud’s 3 Levels of Consciousness • conscious: Ideas, thoughts, and feelings of which we are aware. • preconscious: material that can be easily recalled. • unconscious: All the ideas, thoughts, and feelings of which we are not and normally cannot become aware. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

8. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

9. Freud’s Structure of Personality Id • The collection of unconscious urges and desires that continually seek expression • The only structure that is present at birth and that is completely unconscious • Works on pleasure principle (seeks immediate pleasure and avoid pain) • Since it has no direct contact with real world so it either seeks gratification in following two forms • Reflex action • Wish fulfillment • Or it get a link with reality through ego for its expression “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

10. Freud’s Structure of Personality • Ego • Part of personality that mediates between environmental demands (reality), conscious (superego), and instinct needs (id) • Operates partly consciously, partly pre-consciously, and partly unconsciously • Works on reality principle (by means of intelligent reasoning) • Superego • The social and parental standards that the individual has internalized; the conscious and the ego ideal • Not present at birth and is learned afterwards • Works at both conscious and unconscious level • Works on morality principle “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

11. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

12. Alfred Adler • Humans possess innate positive motives that strive for personal and social perfection • Compensation • Personality develops through the individual’s attempt to overcome imagined or real weakness. • Inferiority complex • The fixation on feelings of personal inferiority that results into emotional and social paralysis • Striving for superiority and perfection “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

13. Psychodynamic theories continued…..…… • Erik Erikson • Presented eight stage theory of personality development • Trust vs mistrust (first year of life) • Autonomy vs shame and doubt (first three years) • Initiative vs guilt (between ages 3 to 6) • Industry vs inferiority (during 6 to 12) • Identity vs role confusion (at puberty) • Intimacy vs isolation (during young adulthood) • Generativity vs stagnation (during middle adulthood) • Ego integrity vs despair (at maturity with onset of old age) “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

14. Differences Between Freud and Adler • Freud • We are controlled by our environment • View of individual: selfish; Eternally in conflict with society • Adler • We can control our own fate • View of individual:striving for perfection; Develops socially constructive goals “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

15. Evaluation of Psychodynamics Theories • Psychodynamic views are based largely on retrospective accounts of people seeking treatment rather than experimental research with healthy individuals • More focus on negative relation ship between self and society “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

16. Humanistic Personality Theories • Any personality theory that asserts the fundamental goodness of people and their striving toward higher levels of functioning. • Human beings are responsible for their lives and their outcomes. • Given reasonable life conditions, people will develop in desirable directions “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

17. Humanistic Personality Theories continued….Carl Rogers • Every organism is born with certain innate capacities, capabilities, or potentials “a sort of blue print”. The goal of life is to fulfill this genetic blue print. • Actualizing tendency: • The drive of every organism to fulfill its biological potential and become the best of what it is inherently capable of becoming. • Self-actualizing tendency: • The drive of human beings to fulfill their self-concepts (conscious images of one’s self) “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

18. Humanistic Personality Theories continued….Carl Rogers • Fully functioning person: • An individual whose self-concept closely resembles his/her inborn potentials. • Determinants of a Fully Functioning Person • Unconditional positive regard: • Fully functioning person & not fully functioning person “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

19. Humanistic Personality Theories continued….. • Evaluation of humanistic theories • The assumptions are difficult to verify scientifically • Fail to take into account the evil in human nature “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

20. Trait theories • Trait theories focus on describing one’s current personality with less emphasis on how the personality developed. • Personality traits: • Dimensions or characteristics on which people differ in distinctive ways such as anxiety, aggressiveness, sociability. • Traits can not be observed directly. They can be inferred from behavior “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

21. Trait theories continued……. Eysenck’s three dimensions of personality • Emotional stability • Introversion-extroversion • Psychoticism “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

22. Trait theories continued……. • The Big Five Dimensions of Personality by Tupes and Christal • Extroversion • Agreeableness • Conscientiousness/dependability • Emotional stability • Openness to experience/culture/intellect “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

23. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

24. Trait theories continued……. • Evaluation of Trait theories • Relatively easy to test experimentally • More descriptive, less explanatory • Does not explain inconsistencies in personality “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

25. Cognitive-Social Learning Theories • Behavior is viewed as the product of the interaction of cognitions, learning and past experiences, and the immediate environment. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

26. Cognitive-Social Learning Theories continued…….Albert Bandura • People evaluate the situation according to certain internal expectancies, and this evaluation affects their behavior. The feedback of actual behavior shapes expectancies in future situations. • Expectancies: • What a person anticipates in a situation or as a result of behaving in certain ways. • Self-efficacy: • The expectancy that one’s efforts will be successful. • Performance standards: • Standards that people develop to rate the adequacy of their own behavior in a variety of situations. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

27. Cognitive-Social Learning Theories continued…….Rotter • Locus of control: • An expectancy about whether reinforcement is under internal or external control. • Internal locus of control • One can control his/her own fate. • External locus of control • One’s fate is determined by chance, luck, or the behavior of others. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

28. Cognitive-Social Learning Theories continued……. • Evaluation of Cognitive-Social Learning Theories • Can be studied scientifically • Explain why people behave inconsistently “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

29. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

30. Methods of Personality Assessment • Personal interview • Unstructured • Structured • Observation • Effect of being watched • Observer bias • Objective tests • tests that are administered and scored in a standard way “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

31. Methods of Personality Assessment • Projective tests (tests consisting of ambiguous or unstructured material) • Rorschach test: • A test composed of ambiguous inkblots; the way people interpret the blots is thought to reveal aspects of their personality. • Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): • A test composed of ambiguous pictures about which a person is asked to write a complete story. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir

32. “Personality” Instructor: Saba Nasir