Chapter 12 Personality

1. Chapter 12 Personality

2. Video • http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6908578833040876327&ei=p9xdS_ORIqTyqAO-vvGuCA&q=personality&hl=en#

3. Defining Some Terms • Personality: A person’s unique long-term pattern of thinking, emotion, and behavior; the consistency of who you are, have been, and will become • Character: Personal characteristics that have been judged or evaluated; desirable or undesirable qualities • Temperament: Hereditary aspects of personality, including sensitivity, moods, irritability, and distractibility

4. p. 389

5. Some More Terms • Personality traits: Stable qualities that a person shows in most situations • Behavioral genetics: Study of inherited behavioral traits • Personality type: People who have several traits in common • What are the limitations of placing people in personality categories?

6. Personality and the Self • Self-concept: Your ideas, perceptions, and feelings about who you are • Self-esteem: self-evaluation of one’s worth as a person (as either high or low) • How does self-esteem varies across cultures?

7. Judging the personalities of others: Halo Effect Tendency to generalize a favorable or unfavorable first impression to unrelated details of personality (make a good first impression)

8. Personality Theories: An Overview • Personality theory: System of concepts, assumptions, ideas, and principles proposed to explain personality • Includes four perspectives: • Trait Theories • Psychodynamic Theories • Behavioristic and Social Learning Theories • Humanistic Theories

9. Trait Theories • Attempt to learn what traits make up personality and how they relate to actual behavior • Remember: Personality traits are the stable qualities that a person shows in most situations

10. Psychodynamic Theories • Focus on the inner workings of personality, especially internal conflicts and struggles

11. Behavioristic and Social Learning Theories • Focus on external environment and on effects of conditioning and learning • Attribute difference in personality to socialization, expectations, and mental processes

12. Humanistic Theories • Focus on private, subjective experience and personal growth

13. Gordon Allport and Traits • Common traits: Characteristics shared by most members of a culture • Examine which traits different cultures emphasize • Individual traits: Define a person’s unique personal qualities • Cardinal traits: So basic that all of a person’s activities can be traced back to the trait • Compassion and Mother Teresa

14. More on Traits • Central traits: Core qualities of a personality • Secondary traits: inconsistent or relatively superficial • Surface traits: observable traits to one’s personality

15. The “Big Five” Personality Factors:Traits that relate to temperament • Extroversion • Agreeableness • Conscientiousness • Neuroticism • Openness to experience

16. Traits and Situations • Trait-situation interactions: When external circumstances influence the expression of personality traits

17. Some Key Freudian Terms • Psyche:Freud’s term for the personality; contains id, ego, and superego

18. Fig. 12-5, p. 400

19. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: The Id • Innate biological instincts and urges; self-serving, irrational, and totally unconscious • Works via pleasure principle: Wishes to have its desires (pleasurable) satisfied NOW, without waiting and regardless of the consequences

20. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: The Ego • Executive; directs id energies • Partially conscious and partially unconscious • Works via reality principle: Delays action until it is practical and/or appropriate

21. Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory: The Superego • Judge or censor for thoughts and actions of the ego • Superego comes from our parents or caregivers; guilt comes from the superego • Two parts • Conscience: Reflects actions for which a person has been punished • Ego ideal: Reflects behavior one’s parents approved of or rewarded

22. Freud: Levels of Awareness • Unconscious: Holds repressed memories and emotions and the id’s instinctual drives • Conscious: Everything you are aware of at a given moment including thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and memories • Preconscious: Material that can easily be brought into awareness

23. Freudian Personality Development • Develops in psychosexual stages; everyone goes through same stages in same order • Majority of personality is formed before age 6 • Erogenous zone: Area on body capable of producing pleasure • Fixation: Unresolved conflict or emotional hang-up caused by overindulgence or frustration

24. Freudian Personality Development: Oral Stage • Ages 0–1. Most of infants’ pleasure comes from stimulation of the mouth. If a child is overfed or frustrated, oral traits will develop

25. Freudian Personality Development: Anal Stage • Ages 1–3. Attention turns to process of elimination. Child can gain approval or express aggression by letting go or holding on. Ego develops.

26. Freudian Personality Development: Phallic Stage • Ages 3–6. Child now notices and is physically attracted to opposite sex parent

27. Freudian Personality Development: Latency and Genital Stages • Latency: Age 6–puberty. Psychosexual development is dormant. Same-sex friendships and play occur here • Genital stage: Puberty and later. Realization of full adult sexuality occurs here; sexual urges re-awaken

28. Neo-Freudians • Accepted broad aspects of Freud’s theory but revised parts of it

29. Carl Jung • Persona: Mask or public self presented to others • Personal unconscious: Individual’s own experiences are stored in here • The contents are unique to each individual • Collective unconscious: Unconscious ideas and images shared by all humans • Archetypes: Universal idea, image, or pattern found in the collective unconscious

30. Carl Jung • Introversion • Extroversion

31. Carl Jung (cont) • Anima: Archetype representing female principle • Animus: Archetype representing male principle • Self archetype: Represents unity, completion, and balance • Mandala: Circular design representing balance, unity, and completion • Symbolized in every culture

32. p. 403

33. Learning Theories and Some Key Terms • Behavioral personality theory: Model of personality that emphasizes learning and observable behavior • Learning theorist: Believes that learning shapes our behavior and explains personality • Situational determinants: External causes of our behaviors

34. p. 405

35. Social Learning Theory • An explanation of personality that combines learning principles, cognition, and the effects of social relationships • Psychological situation: How the person interprets or defines the situation • Expectancy: Anticipation that making a response will lead to reinforcement • Reinforcement value: Subjective value attached to a particular activity or reinforcer

36. Some More Key Terms • Self-efficacy (Bandura): Belief in your capacity to produce a desired result • Social reinforcement: Praise, attention, approval, and/or affection from others

37. Humanism • Approach that focuses on human experience, problems, potentials, and ideals • Human nature: Traits, qualities, potentials, and behavior patterns most characteristic of humans • Free choice: Ability to choose that is NOT controlled by genetics, learning, or unconscious forces

38. Subjective Experience • Private perceptions of reality

39. Abraham Maslow • Self-actualization: Process of fully developing personal potentials • Peak experiences: Temporary moments of self-actualization • Think about these times in our lives. Let’s discuss.

40. Characteristics of Self-Actualizers • Efficient perceptions of reality • Comfortable acceptance of self, others, and nature • Spontaneity • Task centering • Autonomy

41. Characteristics of Self-Actualizers (cont) • Continued freshness of appreciation • Fellowship with humanity • Profound interpersonal relationships • Comfort with solitude • Non-hostile sense of humor • Peak experiences

42. How to Become Self-Actualized (Maslow, 1971) • Be willing to change • Take responsibility • Examine your motives • Experience honestly and directly

43. How to Become Self-Actualized (Maslow, 1971) (cont) • Make use of positive experiences • Be prepared to be different • Get involved • Assess your progress

44. Carl Rogers’ Self Theory • Fully functioning person: Lives in harmony with his/her deepest feelings and impulses • Self: Flexible and changing perception of one’s identity • Self-image: Total subjective perception of your body and personality • Incongruence: Exists when there is a discrepancy between one’s experiences and self-image • Ideal self: Idealized image of oneself (the person one would like to be)

45. Fig. 12-6, p. 411

46. More Rogerian Concepts • Possible self: Collection of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and images concerning the person one could become • Conditions of worth: Internal standards of evaluation • Positive self-regard: Thinking of oneself as a good, lovable, worthwhile person

47. Even More Rogerian Concepts! • Organismic valuing: Natural, undistorted, full-body reaction to an experience • Unconditional positive regard: Unshakable love and approval

48. Table 12-3, p. 414

49. Fig. 12-9, p. 418

50. Fig. 12-10, p. 419