Personality Theories and Assessment

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Personality Theories and Assessment

• Psychology A Concise Introduction
• Richard Griggs
• Chapter 8

Prepared byJ. W. Taylor V
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Personality

• A persons internally based characteristic ways
  of acting and thinking

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The Journey

• The Psychoanalytic Approach to Personality
• The Humanistic Approach and the Social-Cognitive
  Approach to Personality
• Trait Theories of Personality and Personality
  Assessment

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The Psychoanalytic Approach to Personality

• Freudian classical psychoanalytic theory of
  personality
• Neo-Freudian theories of personality

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Freudian Classical Psychoanalytic Theory of
Personality

• Developed by Sigmund Freud in the late nineteenth
  century and continued until his death in 1939
• Freud received a medical degree and established a
  practice as a clinical neurologist treating
  patients with emotional disorders
• Believed sex was a primary cause of emotional
  problems and was a critical component of his
  personality theory
• Remains an important influence in Western culture

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Freuds Three Levels of Awareness

• The conscious mind is what you are presently
  aware of, what you are thinking about right now
• The preconscious mind is stored in your memory
  that you are not presently aware of but can gain
  access to
• The unconscious mind is the part of our mind of
  which we cannot become aware
• It contains, however, the primary motivations for
  all of our actions and feelings our biological
  instinctual drives (such as for food and sex)
  and repressed unacceptable thoughts, memories,
  and feelings, especially unresolved conflicts
  from our early childhood experiences

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Freuds Three-Part Personality Structure
Id
Ego
Superego
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The Id

• Is the original personality, the only part
  present at birth and the part out of which the
  other two parts of our personality emerge
• Resides in the unconscious mind
• Includes our biological instinctual drives, the
  primitive parts of our personality located in our
  unconscious
• Life instincts for survival, reproduction, and
  pleasure
• Death instincts, destructive and aggressive
  drives detrimental to survival
• Operates on a pleasure principle that is, it
  demands immediate gratification for these drives
  without the concern for the consequences of this
  gratification

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The Ego

• Starts developing during the first year or so of
  life to find realistic and socially-acceptable
  outlets for the ids needs
• Operates on the reality principle, finding
  gratification for instinctual drives within the
  constraints of reality (the norms and laws of
  society)
• Part of the ego is unconscious (tied to the id)
  and part of the ego is conscious and preconscious
  (tied to the external world)
• Serves as the executive manager of the personality

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The Superego

• Represents ones conscience and idealized
  standards of behavior in their culture
• Operates on a morality principle, threatening to
  overwhelm us with guilt and shame
• The demands of the superego and the id will come
  into conflict and the ego will have to resolve
  this turmoil within the constraints of reality
• To prevent being overcome with anxiety because of
  trying to satisfy the id and superego demands,
  the ego uses what Freud called defense
  mechanisms, processes that distort reality and
  protect us from anxiety

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Defense Mechanisms
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Defense Mechanisms
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Unhealthy Personalities

• Develop not only when we become too dependent
  upon defense mechanisms, but also when the id or
  superego is unusually strong or the ego unusually
  weak

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Freuds Psychosexual Stage Theory

• Was developed chiefly from his own childhood
  memories and from his years of interactions with
  his patients and their case studies that included
  their childhood memories
• An erogenous zone is the area of the body where
  the ids pleasure-seeking psychic energy is
  focused during a particular stage of psychosexual
  development
• A change in erogenous zones designates the
  beginning of a new stage
• Fixation occurs when a portion of the ids
  pleasure-seeking energy remains in a stage
  because of excessive gratification or frustration
  of our instinctual needs and continue throughout
  the persons life and impact their behavior and
  personality traits

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Five Psychosexual Stages
Oral Stage (birth 18 months)
Anal Stage (18 months 3 years)
Phallic Stage (3 6 years)
Latency Stage (6 years puberty)
Genital Stage (puberty adulthood)
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Freuds Psychosocial States of Personality
Development
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Potty Training

• Parents try to get the child to have self-control
  during toilet training
• If the child reacts to harsh toilet training by
  trying to get even with the parents by
  withholding bowel movements, an anal-retentive
  personality with the traits of orderliness,
  neatness, stinginess, and obstinacy develops
• The anal-expulsive personality develops when the
  child rebels against the harsh training and has
  bowel movements whenever and wherever he
  desires

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Phallic Stage Conflicts

• In the Oedipus conflict, the little boy becomes
  sexually attracted to his mother and fears the
  father (his rival) will find out and castrate him
• In the Electra conflict, the little girl is
  attracted to her father because he has a penis
  she wants one and feels inferior without one
  (penis envy)

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Identification

• In the process of identification, the child
  adopts the characteristics of the same-sexed
  parents and learns their gender role (the set of
  behaviors expected of someone of a particular
  sex)
• It is during identification that the superego
  begins to develop

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Evaluation of Freuds Psychoanalytic Theory of
Personality

• Freuds notion of an unconscious level of
  awareness is not accessible to anyone and is
  impossible to examine scientifically
• Indeed, unconscious information processing does
  impact our thinking and behavior
• However, the unconscious is not a storehouse of
  instinctual drives, conflicts, and repressed
  memories and desires
• Although early childhood experiences are indeed
  important, there is little evidence for his
  psychosexual stages impacting development

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Evaluation of Freuds Psychoanalytic Theory of
Personality

• Contemporary researchers think repression,
  seldom, if ever, really occurs
• We understand today how Freuds questioning
  during therapy may have created such repressed
  memories in his patients
• There is evidence we fight hard to maintain
  self-esteem, but not necessarily through
  defense mechanisms as Freud described them

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Neo-Freudian Theories of Personality

• Agree with many of Freuds basic ideas, but
  differ in one or more important ways

Carl Jungs Collective Unconscious
Alfred Adlers Striving for Superiority
Karen Horneyand the Need for Security
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Carl Jungs Collective Unconscious

• The collective unconscious is the accumulated
  universal experiences of humankind, with each of
  us inheriting the same cumulative storehouse of
  all human experiences
• These experiences are manifested in archetypes,
  which are images and symbols of all the important
  themes in the history of humankind (e.g., God,
  mother, hero)
• Notions of collective unconscious and archetypes
  are more mystical than scientific and cannot be
  empirically tested

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Carl Jungs Collective Unconscious

• Jung proposed two main personality attitudes,
  extraversion and introversion
• Jung also proposed four functions/styles of
  gathering information
• Sensing is the reality function in which the
  world is carefully perceived
• Intuiting is more subjective perception
• Thinking is logical deduction
• Feeling is the subjective emotional function
• The two personality attitudes and four functions
  are the basis for the Myers-Briggs Type
  Indicator, still in wide use today

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Alfred Adlers Striving for Superiority

• Adler thought the main motivation was what he
  termed striving for superiority to overcome
  the sense of inferiority that we feel as infants
  given our totally helpless and dependent state
• A healthy person learns to cope with these
  feelings, becomes competent, and develops a sense
  of self-esteem
• Inferiority complex is the strong feeling of
  inferiority felt by those who never overcome this
  initial feeling of inferiority

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Karen Horney and The Need for Security

• Focused on dealing with our need for security,
  rather than a sense of inferiority
• A childs caregivers must provide a sense of
  security for a healthy personality to develop or
  else basic anxiety, a feeling of helplessness and
  insecurity in a hostile world, will result
• Three neurotic personality patterns
• Moving toward people A compliant, submissive
  person
• Moving against peopleAn aggressive, domineering
  person
• Moving away from people A detached, aloof person

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The Humanistic Approach and the Social-Cognitive
Approach to Personality

• The humanistic approach to personality
• The social-cognitive approach to personality

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Alternative Approaches

• Humanistic theories developed in the 1960s as a
  part of a response to the deterministic
  psychoanalytic and strict behavioral
  psychological approaches that then dominated
  psychology and the study of personality
• The humanistic approach emphasizes conscious free
  will in ones actions, the uniqueness of the
  individual person, and personal growth
• During the 1960s, social-cognitive theorists
  rebelled against the narrowness of the strict
  behavioral approach to the development of
  personality, emphasizing both social and
  cognitive factors along with conditioning to
  explain personality development

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The Humanistic Approach to Personality

• Abraham Maslow is considered the father of the
  humanistic movement
• He studied the lives of very healthy and creative
  people to develop his theory of personality
• Maslows hierarchy of needs is an arrangement of
  the innate needs that motivate our behavior, from
  the strongest needs at the bottom of the pyramid
  to the weakness needs at the top of the pyramid

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Maslows Hierarchy of Needs
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Maslows Hierarchy of Needs
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Maslows Hierarchy of Needs
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Self-Actualization

• Characteristics of self-actualized people include
• Accepting themselves, others, and the nature of
  world for what they are
• Having a need for privacy and only a few close,
  emotional relationships
• Being autonomous and independent, democratic,
  and very creative
• Having peak experiences, which are experiences
  of deep insight in which you experience
  whatever you are doing as fully as possible

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Critique

• Maslow hierarchy of needs is criticized for
  being based on non-empirical vague studies of a
  small number of people that he subjectively
  selected as self-actualized

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Rogers Self Theory

• Carl Rogers was a client-centered therapist who
  dealt with young, bright college students with
  adjustment problems
• Emphasized self-actualization
• Believe that people have a strong need for
  positive regard to be accepted by and have the
  affection of others, especially the significant
  others in our life

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Rogers Self Theory

• Our parents set up conditions of worth, the
  behaviors and attitudes for which they would give
  us positive regard
• Meeting conditions of worth continues throughout
  life, and a person develops a self-concept of
  what others think he should be
• Unconditional positive regard acceptance and
  approval without conditions
• Empathy from others, and having others be
  genuine with respect to their own feelings is
  necessary if we are to self-actualized
• Note that neither Maslow nor Rogers theories
  are research-based

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The Social-Cognitive Approach to Personality

• Is research-based by combining elements of three
  major research perspectives
• Cognitive
• Behavioral
• Sociocultural
• Maintains that learning through environmental
  conditioning contributes to personality
  development
• However, social learning/modeling and cognitive
  processes, such as perception and thinking, are
  also involved and are actually more important to
  the development of our personality

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Banduras Self-System

• The self-system is the set of cognitive processes
  by which a person observes, evaluates, and
  regulates his/her social behavior
• There is a conscious decision to choose what
  behavior to engage in, acting in accordance
  with the assessment of whether the behavior
  will be reinforced or not
• Self-efficacy is a judgment of ones
  effectiveness in dealing with particular
  situations and plays a major role in
  determining our behavior
• Low self-efficacy is associated with depression,
  anxiety, and helplessness
• High self-efficacy is associated with
  self-confidence, positive outlook, and minimal
  self-doubt

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Rotters Locus of Control

• Locus of control is a persons perception of the
  extent to which he/she controls what happens to
  him/her
• External locus of control refers to the
  perception that chance or external forces beyond
  your control determine your fate
• Internal locus of control refers to the
  perception that you control your own fate

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Locus of Control

• People with an internal locus of control perceive
  their success as dependent upon their own needs,
  but they may or may not feel that they have the
  competence (efficacy) to bring about successful
  outcomes in various situations
• People with an internal locus of control are
  psychologically and physically better off
• External locus of control may contribute to
  learned helplessness, a sense of hopelessness in
  which one thinks that he/she is unable to prevent
  unpleasant events

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Self-Perception

• Attribution is the process by which we explain
  our own behavior and that of others
• Internal attribution means that the outcome is
  attributed to the person
• External attribution means that the outcome is
  attributed to factors outside the person

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Self-Perception

• Self-serving bias is the tendency to make
  attributions so that one can perceive oneself
  favorably
• If the outcome is positive, we make an internal
  attribution for it
• If the outcome is negative, we make an external
  attribution for it
• Self-serving bias is adaptive because it protects
  us from falling prey to learned helplessness and
  depression

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Learned Helplessness and Depression

• Can result from
• Internal attributions for negative outcomes (I
  failed the test because I am no good at math)
• External attributions for positive outcomes (I
  aced the test because it was so easy)
• Pessimistic explanations are also stable (i.e.,
  the causes are permanent, I will always have no
  ability for math) and global (I have no
  ability for anything)

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Trait Theories of Personality and Personality
Assessment

• Trait theories of personality
• Personality assessment

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Trait Theories of Personality

• Personality traits are internally based,
  relatively stable characteristics that define an
  individuals personality
• Each trait is a dimension, a continuum ranging
  from one extreme of the dimension to the other
• Trait theorists use factor analysis and other
  statistical techniques to tell them how many
  basic personality factors (or traits) are
  needed to describe human personality, as well
  as what these factors are
• Factor analysis identifies clusters of test
  items (e.g., on a personality test) that measure
  the same factor/trait

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Number and Kind of Personality Traits

• Raymond B. Cattell, using factor analysis, found
  that 16 traits were necessary to describe human
  personality
• Hans Eysenck, also using factor analysis, argued
  for three trait dimensions
• Cattell and Eysenck differed because the number
  of traits depends on the level of categorization
  in the factor analysis
• Eysencks theory is at a more general and
  inclusive level of abstraction than Cattells

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Eysencks Three-Factor Theory
Extraversion-Introversion
Neuroticism-Emotionalstability
Psychoticism-Impulsecontrol

• Eysenck argued that these traits are determined
  by heredity

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Eysencks Three-Factor Theory

• The biological basis for the extraversion-introver
  sion trait is level of cortical arousal (neuronal
  activity)
• Introverts have higher normal-levels of arousal
  than an extravert, so extraverts need to seek out
  external stimulation to raise the level of
  arousal in the brain to a more optimal level

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Eysencks Three-Factor Theory

• People who are high on the neuroticism-emotional
  stability dimension tend to be overly anxious,
  emotionally unstable, and easily upset because of
  a more reactive sympathetic nervous system
• The psychoticism-impulse control trait is
  concerned with aggressiveness, impulsiveness, and
  empathy
• A high level of testosterone and a low level of
  MAO, a neurotransmitter inhibitor, lead to high
  levels of psychoticism

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Five-Factor Model of Personality

• These five factors appear to be universal and are
  consistent from about age 30 to late adulthood
• These factors are measured using an assessment
  instrument called the NEO-PI

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Five-Factor Model of Personality
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Personality Assessment

• The main uses of personality tests are to aid in
  diagnosing people with problems, counseling, and
  making personnel decisions

PersonalityInventories
ProjectiveTests
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Personality Inventories

• Are designed to measure multiple traits of
  personality, and in some cases, disorders
• Are a series of questions or statements for which
  the test taker must indicate whether they apply
  to him or not
• The MMPI (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
  Inventory) is the most widely used, translated
  into more than 100 languages

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MMPI

• Uses a True/False/Cannot Say format with 567
  simple statements (e.g., I like to cook)
• Developed to be a measure of abnormal
  personality, with 10 clinical scales such as
  depression and schizophrenia
• Items were developed and tested to differentiate
  different groups of people (a representative
  sample of people suffering a specific disorder
  versus a group of normal people) on certain
  dimensions to be retained, the two groups
  generally responded to an item in opposite ways

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MMPI

• Contains three validity scales, which attempt to
  detect test takers who are trying to cover up
  problems and fake profiles or who were careless
  in their responding
• Its test construction method leads to good
  predictive validity for its clinical scales and
  its objective scoring procedure leads to
  reliability in interpretation

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Projective Tests

• Contain a series of ambiguous stimuli, such as
  inkblots, to which the test taker must respond
  about his perceptions of the stimuli
• Sample tests
• Rorschach Inkblots Test
• Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT)

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Rorschach Inkblots Test

• Contains 10 symmetric inkblots used in the test,
  in which the examiner then goes through the cards
  and asks the test taker to clarify her responses
  by identifying the various parts of the inkblot
  that led to the response
• Assumes the test takers responses are
  projections of their personal conflicts and
  personality dynamics
• Widely used but not demonstrated to be reliable
  and valid

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Thematic Apperception Tests (TAT)

• Consists of 19 cards with black and white
  pictures of ambiguous settings and one blank card
• Test taker has to make up a story for each card
  he sees (what happened before, is happening now,
  what the people are feeling and thinking, and how
  things will turn out)
• Looks for recurring themes in the responses
• Scoring has yet to be demonstrated to be either
  reliable or valid