Personality

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Personality
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Defining personality

• An individuals unique pattern of thoughts,
  feelings, and behaviors that persist over time
  and across situations

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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.

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Major categories of theories

• Trait theories
• Categorize and describe the ways in which
  peoples personalities differ.
• Cognitive-social learning theories
• Find the roots of personality in the ways people
  think about, action, and respond to their
  environment.

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Psychodynamic theories

• Personality is the result of unconscious
• motivations and conflicts.
• Sigmund Freud
• Alfred Adler
• Erik Erikson

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Freuds 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.

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Freuds 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

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Freuds 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

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Alfred Adler

• Humans possess innate positive motives that
  strive for personal and social perfection
• Compensation
• Personality develops through the individuals
  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

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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)

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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

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• 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

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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

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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 ones self)

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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

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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

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Trait theories

• Trait theories focus on describing ones 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

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Trait theories continued.

• Eysencks three dimensions of personality
• Emotional stability
• Introversion-extroversion
• Psychoticism

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Trait theories continued.

• The Big Five Dimensions of Personality by Tupes
  and Christal
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Conscientiousness/dependability
• Emotional stability
• Openness to experience/culture/intellect

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Trait theories continued.

• Evaluation of Trait theories
• Relatively easy to test experimentally
• More descriptive, less explanatory
• Does not explain inconsistencies in personality

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Cognitive-Social Learning Theories

• Behavior is viewed as the product of the
  interaction of cognitions, learning and past
  experiences, and the immediate environment.

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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 ones efforts will be
  successful.
• Performance standards
• Standards that people develop to rate the
  adequacy of their own behavior in a variety of
  situations.

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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
• Ones fate is determined by chance, luck, or the
  behavior of others.

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Cognitive-Social Learning Theories continued.

• Evaluation of Cognitive-Social Learning Theories
• Can be studied scientifically
• Explain why people behave inconsistently

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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

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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.

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