Theories of Personality

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Theories of Personality

• Chapter 13

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Outline of Todays Lecture

• Measuring Personality
• Genetic influences on personality
• Environmental influences on personality
• Cultural influences on personality
• Psychodynamic influences on personality
• The humanistic approach

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Defining Personality and Traits

• Personality
• Distinctive and relatively stable pattern of
  behaviours, thoughts, motives, and emotions that
  characterizes an individual throughout life.
• Trait
• A characteristic of an individual, describing a
  habitual way of behaving, thinking, and feeling.

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Projective Tests

• Projective tests
• Based on the assumption that the test taker will
  transfer (project) unconscious conflicts and
  motives onto an ambiguous stimulus.
• Examples include the Thematic Apperception Test
  and the Rorschach

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Thematic Apperception Test

• Person is asked to tell a story about the people
  in the picture

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The Rorschach Inkblot Test

• Ambiguous stimuli
• Person is asked to report what they see
• No clear image, so the things you see must be
  projected from inside yourself

Sample Rorschach Card
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Objective Tests

• Standardized questionnaires requiring written
  responses typically include scales on which
  people rate themselves
• I am easily embarrassed T or F
• I like to go to parties T or F
• More reliability and validity than projective
  tests.
• Better at predicting behaviour.

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Objective Tests

• Factor analysis
• A statistical method for analysing the
  intercorrelations among various measures or test
  scores clusters of measures or scores that are
  highly correlated are assumed to measure the same
  underlying trait or ability (factor).

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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

• Most widely used personality instrument
• Now the MMPI - 2
• Clinical Employment settings
• Measures aspects of personality that, if extreme,
  suggest a problem
• e.g., extreme suspiciousness
• Long test - 567 questions

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Characteristics of the MMPI-2

• Has several different subscales (multiphasic)
• Scales thought to measure different kinds of
  psychological disorders
• e.g., depression
• Scale scores indicate how you compare with others

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MMPI Validity Scales

• Four scales designed to determine whether
  respondent is presenting self accurately.
• Example L scale (Fake Good) - Trying too hard
  to present self in a positive light.
• I smile at everyone I meet (T)
• I read every editorial every day (T)

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MMPI Sample Items

• Depression
• I usually feel that life is worthwhile and
  interesting
• Paranoia
• Evil people are trying to influence my mind
• Schizophrenia
• I seem to hear things that other people cant
  hear

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MMPI Score Profile
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Classroom Exercise

• Fill out personality scale

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Score Test

• Reverse Code 2, 6, 9, 11, 15, 17, 18
• Add up the following items
• SCALE A 1, 6, 11, 16, 21
• SCALE B 2, 7, 12, 17, 22
• SCALE C 3, 8, 13, 18, 23
• SCALE D 4, 19, 14, 19, 24
• SCALE E 5, 20, 15, 20, 25
• Whole Scale
• http//www.outofservice.com/bigfive

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Big Five Personality Dimensions

• Extroversion versus Introversion
• Extent to which people are outgoing versus shy
• Neuroticism versus Emotional stability
• Agreeableness versus Antagonism
• Extent to which people are good-natured versus
  irritable
• Conscientiousness versus Impulsiveness
• Extent to which people are responsible versus
  irresponsible
• Openness to experience versus Resistance to new
  experience

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Big Five Personality Dimensions

• The Big Five have emerged as distinct, central
  personality dimensions in many countries around
  the world.
• Are stable over a lifetime.
• Some argue it is incomplete other important
  dimensions (e.g., religiosity) are missing
• Others (Eysenck) argue for only 3 factors.

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Genetic Influences on Personality

• Heredity and temperament
• Heredity and traits

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Heredity and Temperament

• Temperaments
• Physiological dispositions to respond to the
  environment in certain ways.
• Present in infancy and assumed to be innate.
• Includes
• Reactivity
• Soothability
• Positive and Negative Emotionality
• Temperaments are relatively stable over time.

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Genetic Influences on Personality

• 123 pairs of identical twins and 127 pairs of
  fraternal twins
• Measured on Big Five personality dimensions
• Results suggest that personality differences in
  the population are 40 - 50 genetically
  determined.

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Environmental Influences on Personality

• The power of parents
• The power of peers
• Situations and circumstances

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Small Groups Exercise

• Which environmental factor do you think
  influences childrens personality more, their
  parents or their peers?

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The Power of Parents

• The shared environment of the home has little
  influence on personality.
• The nonshared environment is a more important
  influence.
• Few parents have a single child-rearing style
  that is consistent over time and that they use
  with all children.
• Even when parents try to be consistent in the way
  they treat their children, there may be little
  relation between what they do and how their
  children turn out.

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The Power of Parents

• This does not mean that parents have no influence
  on their children
• Longitudinal study revealed that children who
  were impulsive, under-controlled and aggressive
  at age 3 were more likely to be impulsive,
  unreliable and antisocial at age 21. But,
  children whose parents encouraged them to stay in
  school were less likely to have problems later in
  life.

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The Power of Peers

• Adolescent culture includes different peer groups
  organized by different interests.
• Peer acceptance is so important to children and
  adolescents that being bullied, victimized or
  rejected by peers is far more traumatic that
  punitive treatment by parents.

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Situations and Circumstances

• People routinely reveal all of the big five
  traits in their everyday behaviour.
• Why are there variations in individual
  expressions of traits?
• Depending on context, some behaviours are
  rewarded and others are not.
• Reciprocal determinism
• In social-cognitive theories, the two way
  interaction between aspects of the environment
  and aspects of the individual in the shaping of
  personality traits.

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Cultural Influences on Personality

• Culture, values and traits
• Customs in context
• Aggressiveness and altruism

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Culture, Values, and Traits

• Culture
• A program of shared rules that govern the
  behaviour of members of a community or society,
  and
• A set of values, beliefs and attitudes shared by
  most members of that community.

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Culture, Values, and Traits

• Individualist cultures
• Cultures in which the self is regarded as
  autonomous, and individual goals and wishes are
  prized above duty and relations with others.
• Collectivist cultures
• Cultures in which the self is regarded as
  embedded in relationships, and harmony with ones
  group is prized above individual goals and wishes.

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Culture and Aggression
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Culture and Aggression

• Culture of honour
• Emphasis on honour and social status men are
  seen as wimps if they back down from a fight
• Higher incidence of violence
• Culture of honour found in Southern United
  States, Central and Southern Italy and Latin
  America
• Men from the South are more likely to agree that
  a man has a right to kill in order to defend his
  family and home than men from the North.

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Culture and Aggression

• Culture of Honour Study
• Southerners and Northerners were either bumped
  and insulted by a confederate or not
• Compared to Northerners, Southerners were more
  likely to think that their masculine reputations
  had been threatened and they exhibited greater
  physiological signs of being upset and of being
  primed for aggression

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Culture and Aggression

• Culture of Honour Study
• A second confederate walked toward the
  participant in a game of chicken

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Culture and Aggression
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Culture and Altruism

• Culture also has a strong influence on moral
  behaviour. American children were less likely to
  be altruistic when compared with children from
  Kenya, India, Mexico, the Phillipines and Okinawa.

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Psychodynamic Influences on Personality

• Psychodynamic theories
• Explain behaviour and personality in terms of
  unconscious energy dynamics within the
  individual.
• Psychoanalysis
• A theory of personality and method of
  psychotherapy developed by Sigmund Freud.
• Emphasize unconscious motives and conflicts.

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The Structure of Personality

• Id Operates according to the pleasure principle
• Primitive and unconscious part of personality
• Ego Operates according to the reality principle
• Mediates between id and superego
• Superego Moral ideals and conscience

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Defense Mechanisms

• Repression
• Projection
• Displacement
• Reaction formation
• Regression
• Denial

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The Development of Personality

• Freuds psychosexual stages
• Oral Birth to 1 year
• Anal 1-3 years
• Phallic 3-6 years
• Oedipus Complex A conflict occurring during the
  phallic stage in which a child desires the parent
  of the other sex and views the same-sex parent as
  a rival
• Latency period 6-11 years
• Genital Adolesence
• Fixation occurs when stages arent resolved
  successfully.

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Other Psychodynamic Approaches

• Jungian Theory
• Collective unconscious
• The universal memories, symbols, and experiences
  of humankind,
• Represented in the archetypes or universal
  symbolic images that appear in myths, art,
  stories, and dreams.
• 2 important archetypes are maleness and
  femaleness which he believed existed in both
  sexes.

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Other Psychodynamic Approaches

• The Object-Relations School
• Emphasizes the importance of the infants first
  two years of life and the babys formative
  relationships, especially with the mother.
• Emphasized childrens needs for a powerful mother
  and to be in relationships.

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Evaluating Psychodynamic Theories

• Three scientific failings
• Violating the principle of falsifiability.
• Drawing universal principles from the experiences
  of a few atypical patients.
• Basing theories of personality development on
  retrospective accounts and the fallible memories
  of patients.

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The Humanistic Approach

• Abraham Maslow
• Carl Rogers
• Rollo May
• Evaluating Humanists

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Abraham Maslow

• Humanist psychology
• An approach that emphasizes personal growth,
  resilience, and the achievement of human
  potential.
• For Maslow, personality development can be viewed
  as a gradual progression toward
  self-actualization - achieving ones full
  potential.

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Carl Rogers

• Unconditional Positive Regard
• Love or support given to another person with no
  conditions attached.
• Conditional Positive Regard
• A situation in which the acceptance and love one
  receives from significant others is contingent
  upon ones behaviour.

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Carl Rogers Personality Theory
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Rollo May

• Shared with humanists the belief in free will and
  freedom of choice but also emphasized loneliness,
  anxiety and alienation.
• Extistentialism
• Free will confers on us responsibility for our
  actions.

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Evaluating Humanists

• Hard to operationally define many of the
  concepts.
• Have added balance to the study of personality.
• The approach has encouraged others to focus on
  positive psychology.
• The argument that we have the power to choose our
  own destiny has fostered a new appreciation for
  resilience.