What is Personality

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What is Personality?

• Personality
• an individuals characteristic pattern of
  thinking, feeling, and acting
• through each of the perspectives
• Psychoanalytic
• Humanistic
• Trait (biological)
• Social Cognitive
• Behavioral

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Personality Assessment

• Surveys, questionnaires, inventories
• - wording, bias, honesty, sampling,
• non-test situations
• Behavioral Observations
• - observer bias, situational
• Case Studies
• - representativeness,
• generalization to whole population

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The Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Freuds theory of personality that attributes our
  thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and
  conflicts
• Techniques used in treating psychological
  disorders by seeking to expose and interpret
  unconscious tensions

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The Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Free Association Dream Analysis
• in psychoanalysis, a method of exploring the
  unconscious
• person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind,
  no matter how trivial or embarrassing

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The Psychoanalytic Perspective

• Unconscious
• according to Freud, a reservoir of mostly
  unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings and
  memories
• contemporary viewpoint - information processing
  of which we are unaware

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Freuds Idea of Personality Structure
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Problem I want to sleep, but,
I belong in class.
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Personality Structure

• Freuds idea of the minds structure

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Defense Mechanisms

• Definition
• the egos protective methods of
• reducing anxiety caused by the
• conflict between the id and superego
• by unconsciously distorting reality 10
• 1. Repression
• the basic defense mechanism that banishes
  anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories
  from consciousness

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Defense Mechanisms

• 2. Regression
• an individual faced with anxiety retreats
• to a more infantile psychosexual stage,
• where some psychic energy remains fixated
• 3. Denial (more than a river in Egypt)
• . A person refuses to acknowledge anxiety-
• producing realities.
• 4. Projection
• people disguise their own threatening impulses
• by attributing them to others

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Defense Mechanisms

• 5. Rationalization
• defense mechanism that offers self-justifying
  explanations in place of the real, more
  threatening, unconscious reasons for ones
  actions
• 6. Displacement
• defense mechanism that shifts sexual or
  aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or
  less threatening object or person, i.e., kick the
  cat

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Neo-Freudians

• Alfred Adler
• strive for superiority, seeking to adapt,
  improve,
• and master environment
• importance of overcoming feelings of inferiority
• Carl Jung
• emphasized the collective unconscious
• concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of
• memory traces from our species history

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Archetype
the inherited, unconscious ideas and images that
are the components of the collective unconscious
In Jungian terms, Batman and the Joker are
archetypes, or universally recognizable symbols,
of good and evil.
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Psychoanalytic
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Assessing the Unconscious

• Projective Test
• a personality test,
• such as the Rorschach
• or TAT, that provides
• ambiguous stimuli
• designed to trigger
• projection of ones
• inner dynamics
• Sentence/drawing completion

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Test this projective test

• This drawing was made by a young man who
  bludgeoned his girlfriend with a hammer in a
  jealous rage. A psychologist has interpreted the
  drawing as follows The upraised hands represent
  aggression and readiness to strike the short
  legs represent feelings of inadequacy and the
  red shirt represents passion, violence, and
  impulsivity. Rank the plausibility of this
  analysis, on the following scale
• Very high___/___/___/___/___/Very low

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but . . .

• Suppose now we tell you that the drawing was made
  by a young man hospitalized following a suicide
  attempt.
• A psychologist has interpreted the drawing as
  follows The upraised hands represent
  helplessness and loss the short legs represent
  diminished stature, an inability to measure up
  and the red shirt represents anger turned toward
  himself. Rank the plausibility of this analysis,
  on the following scale
• Very high___/___/___/___/___/Very low

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• What does this exercise
• tell you about how prior
• knowledge about a person
• might affect the interpretation
• of the persons performance on
• a projective test, such as
• the Rorschach Inkblot Test?
• ovaries?

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Vocabulary review
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Humanistic Perspective

• Abraham Maslow (1908-1970)
• studied self-actualization processes of
  productive and healthy people (e.g., Lincoln)

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Humanistic Perspective

• Self-Actualization
• the ultimate psychological need that arises after
  basic physical and psychological needs are met
  and
• self-esteem is achieved
• the motivation to fulfill ones potential

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Humanistic Perspective

• Carl Rogers (1902-1987)
• focused on growth and fulfillment of individuals
• genuineness
• acceptance
• empathy

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Humanistic Perspective

• Unconditional Positive Regard
• an attitude of total acceptance toward another
  person
• Self-Concept
• all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in
  an answer to the question, Who am I?

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Contemporary Research-- The Trait Perspective

• Trait
• a characteristic pattern of behavior
• a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by
  self-report inventories and peer reports
• Personality Inventory
• a questionnaire (often with true-false or
  agree-disagree items) on which people respond to
  items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings
  and behaviors used to assess selected personality
  traits
• (factor analysis)

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Trait Perspective

• Gordon Allport 18,000
• cardinal central secondary
• pervasive friendly, calm
  food/music likes
• Raymond Cattell 16 (factor analysis)
• trait clusters
• Myers-Briggs

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The Trait Perspective

• Eysenck used two primary personality factors as
  axes for describing personality variation
• OCEAN
• Open, Conscientious, Extravert, Agreeable,
  Neurotic BIG 5

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The Trait Perspective

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
  (MMPI)
• the most widely researched and clinically used of
  all personality tests
• originally developed to identify emotional
  disorders (still considered its most appropriate
  use)
• now used for many other screening purposes

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The Trait Perspective

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
  (MMPI) test profile

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Trait Consistency?

• Walter Mischel
• If human behavior is
• determined by many
• interacting variables
• both in the person
• and in the environment
• then a focus on any one of
• them is likely to lead to limited
• predictions and generalizations.

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Vocabulary review
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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Social-Cognitive Perspective
• views behavior as influenced by the interaction
  between persons and their social context
• Reciprocal Determinism
• the interacting influences between personality
  and environmental factors

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Social Cognitive Perspective
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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Personal Control
• our sense of controlling our environment rather
  than feeling helpless
• External vs. Internal Locus of Control
• the perception that either outside forces beyond
  ones personal control determine ones fate or
  one has control over ones fate

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Whos Who
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Social-Cognitive Perspective

• Positive Psychology
• the scientific study of optimal human functioning
• aims to discover and promote conditions that
  enable individuals and communities to thrive

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Exploring the Self
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Exploring the Self

• Spotlight Effect
• overestimating others noticing and evaluating our
  appearance, performance, and blunders (the big
  pimple principle)
• Self Esteem
• ones feelings of high or low self-worth
• Self-Serving Bias
• readiness to perceive oneself favorably

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Exploring the Self cultural influence

• Individualism
• giving priority to ones own goals over group
  goals and defining ones identity in terms of
  personal attributes rather than group
  identifications
• The squeaky wheel gets the grease
• Collectivism
• giving priority to the goals of ones group
  (often ones extended family or work group) and
  defining ones identity accordingly
• The quacking duck gets shot.

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Exploring the Self
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Who Are You?