SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Social Psychology is not a system of psychology in the sense that psychoanalytic theory and reinforcement are

such systems. It utilizes data and concepts from the social sciences, especially sociology. The range of social psychology at the present time includes: 1. 2. Language and Stereotypes. Perception, Memory and Motivation. Perception of Persons. Communication and Opinion Change. Interpersonal Influence. Reference Groups. Behaviour under situational stress. The Socialization of the Child. Social Stratification.

3.
4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.Role and Role Conflict 11. 12. 13. Leadership. Group Structure and Process. Intergroup Tension, Prejudice. But again, when it says: Opinion change you would find other one says; Attitude Change. Where it says: Group process some would say: Group dynamics, and Behaviour under situational stress is in part Crowd Behaviour Social psychology is concerned with the mental processes (or behaviour) of persons insofar as these are determined by past or present interaction with other persons. But we must confess that the domain of social psychology cannot be sharply defined. This is not a cause for embarrassment. Social psychology is a field of study a historical development not a theoretical construct. This is justifiable since it is not perfectly by what principle one separates chemistry from physics and both of these from biology and the lot of them from bio-chemistry, bio-physics and a multitude of others. It is also not clear what principles separate the study of literature from linguistics and both of these from the study of language and the lot of them from psycholinguistics. This is why it is difficult to distinguish the topics of social psychology from topics that remain within general experimental psychology, sociology, anthropology or linguistics. Problems of Psychology and Social Structure: Structure or pattern appears in the social behaviour of both animals and humans. Mating and care of the young are simple examples of social structures or patterns. Movements and contacts of individuals are not random but patterned.
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The basic concept for describing social structure is the social norm. What is a norm? In the first place, it is regularity of learned behaviour. In stating a norm we must specify one of three aspects: 123The kind of behaviour. The kind of situation in which behaviour occurs. The kind of person who behaves so.

Example: Motorists driving automobiles should stay on the right side of the road. Social norms are divided into:

12-

Behavioural norm: the regularity in social behaviour. What we do ourselves in a regular manner. Expectancy norm: what we expect others to do. Not only do we drive on the right side of the road but we expect others to do the

same. Generally, the expectancy is likely to be held by every one familiar with the class of persons, class of situation, and class of behaviour specified in stating the behavioural norm. Expectancies and regularities of action usually go together and one term: Social norm has been used for both. However, these might not always be social norms. To show this: Suppose we moved closer to the community and made continued observation to two individuals. We might find one of them was often alone, the other almost always in company. The one often alone might be seen to be always reading or carrying a book; the other might have a transistor radio clapped to his ear when he was not conversing. There are distinctive regularities in the behaviour of each. These regularities are not social norms but concern the personality and the perception of personality. Norms have to do with the socially recognized classes of persons rather than with individuals. Therefore, a norm is, in its most fundamental sense, a shared rule or guide to behaviour. Since culture is defined as the totality of shared, transmitted guides to behaviour, it follows that a norm is simply a fragment of culture. When we use the word norm without specifying either behavioural norm or expectancy norm it will be in the sense of a rule or guide to behaviour, a standard for the judgement of behaviour. Norms are also formulated in terms of such classifications: 1- Classification by inter-personal relationship
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(e.g. friend, acquaintance, employer, employee). 2- Classification by socio-economic stratum (e.g. gentlefolk, workers, noblemen). 3Classification by role (e.g. men, women, fathers, daughters,

policemen, lawyers). SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS As children become socially aware, they begin to form relationships with others. The first meaningful relationships in childrens lives are with their parents. Friendship in Children: For the first two years of life children dont take much notice of other children (dont get into relationship or friendship) and havent really formed friendships. They are mostly concerned about themselves. Even in play, they dont mix well with other children. And if a child plays with another, he might be considered a friend for a few minutes. The next day that child may be just another person. Friendship in Young Children: Some time between the ages of three and four children start to form special friendships, with particular children. The relationships at this stage are quite intense but they last shortly after. The childs ability to form relationships with others is influenced by the following factors:123Having brothers and sisters. Living in an area where there are many other children. Being sociable and responsive.

Friendship in Middle Childhood: By the age of five, children are mobile and have plenty of energy. They usually prefer the company of others, but are still unlikely to share and cooperate fully. By the age of six, children begin to go to school and they gradually learn to cooperate with each other. Friendships are usually temporary and usually with members of the same sex. Friendships in Older Children: At Puberty, friendships will include opposite-sex members. The circle of friends often widens as children form gangs or groups and individuals compete to be most popular. Friends are drawn from those people who have things in common such as: interests, attitudes and backgrounds.
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Social Facilitation: This refers to the effect that the presence of others may have on an individuals behaviour. The first experiment in social psychology was investigated by Norman Triplett in 1898. He concluded that the presence of others speeds performance by triggering a desire in people to compete. There are two effects: 1. Coaction effect It was founded by Floyd Allport in 1920s. It refers to a situation where a group of people work side by side, often performing the same task, or a similar task, but without interacting with each other (writing an essay in class or filing in a test questionnaire are examples of coaction). A coaction effect describes any change in someones behaviour, which is brought about by knowledge of the action of others. Example: Allport asked some people to solve problems at their own rate of progress. Some of the tasks were simple, such as crossing all the vowels in a newspaper article. Other tasks needed more attention, such as finding what was wrong in a series of statements. Allport still found that his subjects worked faster when in groups than when alone. However, the subjects made more errors in the more difficult tasks than in the simple ones. It seems that a coaction effect appears to speed up peoples performance of simple tasks, but slows down their performance of more complicated tasks. Having people around us interference with our concentration. 2. Social Loafing: This refers to the way in which people often reduce their effort when they know that others are making sufficient effort, and that their lessened effort wont, therefore, be noticed, so coaction effect doesnt always occur. People do not always put more effort into a task when there are others doing the same tasks around them. Bibb Latane and his colleagues demonstrated social loafing in the late 1970s. They asked students to make as much noise as they could. Each student made rather more noise alone, than when tested in groups. It takes some effort to make a lot of noise, so each student let the others make more effort! When they were told that their own, individual efforts would be tested, they made more noise again. Social loafing is more likely to appear under three conditions:

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(A)

If you do not feel responsible for the progress of achievements of the whole group, you may not make a great effort. Because no one would know that the groups failure to achieve has anything to do with your contribution.

(B) (C)

If the tasks the group is doing is boring you arent likely to bother much If you think that working harder would only seem to be duplicating what someone else is already doing, then you will think that there is no point in doing so.

Therefore, if we can reverse these conditions we can increase the groups achievements:

(A) Try to make each person aware of his own contribution. (B) Try to make the tasks more interesting. (C) And think that that contribution is important.
CONFORMITY This is another area of human social relationships. Conformity generally means giving in to group pressures. If a group of female friends wants to do one thing, and one of them doesnt, the oddone-out may give in just to continue to be accepted as one of the group. She has conformed to the majority wish. If your friends think the film youve all just seen was good and you thought it was rubbish you might just nod when they ask you what you thought so as not to appear different from them. You have conformed. There are several kinds of conformity:

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Compliance where someone goes along with the group view but privately disagrees with it. Internalization where someone comes to accept and eventually believe the view. Identification where someone accepts and believes the view because he wants to become associated with the group. FACTORS IN FRIENDSHIP The following are the factors, which are involved in forming friendships with other

people: 1. Exposure: In order to become friends with others we have to become aware of their existence first. We need to see them and hear them. 2. Proximity: People who live close to each other are more likely to be exposed to each other more often.
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3. Familiarity: Proximity can have the opposite effect if someone tries to become too close to you, so a possible explanation for why people who live close to one another are most likely to become friends lies in familiarity. Other factors in friendships include: 4. Similarity: People are most likely to become friends with those people who are similar to them in some way. (e.g. have similar interests). The most influential areas for similarity are in attitudes, values and beliefs. Values and beliefs are ideas which individuals hold to be important and which they might use to govern their behaviour. They include the belief in justice and the freedom to speak your mind, the belief in fairness and truthfulness; the belief in decency and integrity.... etc. Other similarities that help in forming friendship are: similar ages; similar levels of intelligence; similar levels of physical attractiveness; similar experiences. 5. Appearance: As people judge by appearances, smart people are perceived as being more capable and reliable than scruffy people. 6. Physical Attractiveness: Physical attraction is a factor in someones desirability. People are more inclined to choose the good-looking, regardless of how good-looking they are themselves, particularly when males choose females. Why should looks be so important when we all know that beauty is only skin-deep. Perhaps because people associate beauty with goodness and ugliness with badness. Steven Duck has conducted a great deal of research into physical attraction. He concludes that, ... we react more favourably to physically beautiful people than we do to less-attractive, ugly, or even deformed people. However, he points out that simply being attractive doesnt automatically lead to being well-liked or being a popular friend to many people. He says that, relating to others involves interaction and social processes that can prevail over the effects of initially positive responses to superficial characteristics. This means that our personality, our knowledge, our talents, our mannerisms can have more effect than just what we look like. Gain-Loss Theory of Attraction A reciprocal relationship is one where both partners benefit. Reciprocal liking is the belief that someone likes you as much as you like him or her. Aronson and Linder first investigated this. They arranged for their female subjects to meet a confederate and then
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overhear the confederate state the impressions he had been given of them. Afterwards the subjects were asked what they thought about the confederate. The confederates impressions were of course, all preplanned. As expected, the subjects who heard the confederate say pleasant things about them were very likely to say they would like the confederate. Those who heard the confederate expressing an unfavourable impression of them said they didnt want to be friends with the confederate. In the second phase of the experimental condition, Aronson and Linder had the confederates change their minds half-way through. Some started by saying good things about their subjects but changed to being negative. The others began by saying unpleasant things but in the second half of the description, became much more positive. Those subjects who heard themselves being described favourably and then unfavourably were much more critical of the confederates than those who had been disliked all the way through. Those who started unfavourably but ended favourably were more likely to be liked more than those who said positive things all the way through. The most important finding of the theory is that: it helps us to predict that we are more likely to like those people who grow to like us once they learn about us, more than we are to like those who have always liked us. A compliment from them will be appreciated more than a compliment from a friend, as we expect our friends to say good things about us. And if our friends turn against us, we will dislike them more than the people we always dislike. As a confirmation to gain-loss Theory of Attraction Backman and Secord investigated the Expectation Effect. This is the idea that we are more likely to like someone if we have reason to believe that they will probably like us. They told some people who were about to meet a stranger for the first time that the stranger would like them. Others were not given any indication of how the stranger would respond. When questioned after two meetings with the stranger, those who had been told to expect that the stranger would like them said that they liked the stranger too. A. Self-description: This happens when you get into knowing a new friend. You describe some of your experiences or aspects of life to him. In return he will describe aspects of his that are relevant, interesting or even funny.

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B. Self-disclosure: This happens when you go beyond self-description, when you tell some small aspect of your life you wouldnt tell everyone else. When you show something private and more personal. If your friend is sympathetic and understanding towards you and you are the same towards him, then you both get into reciprocal self-disclosure. Sidney Jourard and other shows evidence suggesting that women self-disclose more than men and are more likely to do so with friends who are not particularly close. (Whats your explanation for this? Women are emotional, sympathetic, sentimental, easily stimulated ...etc.). Men do not generally self-disclose anything too personal, but do emphasize or exaggerate some aspects of their lives for amusement (or sympathy). Men are likely to disclose only if they are certain they can trust the person to whom they are disclosing to. However, self-disclosure carries the risk that someone might use the information against you. So, your only insurance is your friend has revealed something personal to you. The reason for this is that people change and what you used to like about your friend might start to irritate you. Familiarity might start to breed contempt. Can you be certain that your friend will honour your secrets when your friendship comes to an end? Self-disclosure must never be rushed. If a stranger starts showing all kinds of personal information to you during a bus ride you will feel very uncomfortable and want to get off the bus as soon as possible. If someone who could have become a friend starts showing too much too soon, then you must not trust him with your secrets. Reciprocal self-disclosure is considered one factor (most probably a major one) in the development of romantic- Love. Taylor and Altman claim that where members of the opposite sex see more of each other, they become more familiar with each other. Then they will be drawn closer together and they may show more intimate and personal information about themselves. Hence, the romantic love develops. The implication of Taylor and Altmans claim is that romantic love is an especially deep form of friendship. But this view is not shared by everyone. C. Complementarity: It is important in attraction. It involves completing or improving something. It simply means your friend will complement what you lack in. For example, if you have the ability to plan and (predict) the best thing to do. But you are not very organized to put the plan into effect very well.

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Someone who has organisational skills would complement your planning skills. He will make a useful friend or partner. Watching and learning from your partner could broaden your experiences and improve your skills. In the early stages of any relationship, similarity is the factor that determines whether you will like someone or not. As the relationship develops, similarities (between you and your friend) are taken for granted. If you arent similar in some ways youll have little in common, so your friendship will decline any way. At this stage Complementarity becomes more important. If your friend has possessions, skills, knowledge, access to people or things...etc that you dont have, and while you have equivalent things your friend doesnt have, then your friendship will continue. PREJUDICE It is an attitude formed about what someone or something is like without much information about them or it. Ethnocentrism: It forms the basis of peoples prejudices. It is the tendency to believe that the group to which you belong is right and good and that members of any other groups are inferior in some way. Secord and Backman claim that all attitudes, including prejudiced attitudes, have three main elements: 1. The cognitive part: what you know or think you know about someone or something. 2. The emotional part: you might dislike people who eat as much as me. 3. The behavioural part: you avoid me. Prejudices are usually fixed attitudes. Once formed, they may be slow to change.

For example: you might regard students as lazy and work-shy. You are quite convinced of this and you are not likely to change your mind. These prejudiced attitudes may lead you to behave in a particular manner towards students. Whenever you learn that someone is a student, you will expect him to be lazy. This expectation will be confirmed simply if the student does anything that you can possibly interpret as a symptom of laziness. Even if the student is hard-working you might claim that he must be an exception to the rule, as you will think that everyone shares your view that students are lazy.
Prejudices are not only negative (i.e. against someone or something). They can be positive as well. Someone who is prejudiced may favour certain people over others, for instance, people who come from the same background or same area, or who have similar interests might be viewed favourably.

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But holding any attitude usually leads to a certain behaviour Therefore we cant talk about whether having a prejudice is necessarily either a good or a bad thing. If you like a particular food then you will try to eat it more often than you eat something you like less. If you like a particular person, you will prefer his company to the company of someone you like less. Acting differently towards someone or something is called Discrimination. The prejudiced attitude in itself is a problem but discrimination is a social problem. Hence, prejudice is the attitude, discrimination is the behaviour. The two do not always coincide! There are three common forms of discrimination 1/ ageism 2/ racism 3/ sexism

Forming Prejudiced Attitudes Prototypes: The first examples of something that we experience. Your first experiences of getting to deal with something new. But your prototype reaction changes when you get at it for a few days. Thats from your experience of something, you may generalise your prototype of that something to all similar things. Then youre adopting a stereotype. Your first experience might not be direct, or first hand. You dont need o be burned to know that fire can hurt you. You dont need to have experienced an electric shock to know that touching live electricity cables isnt sensible. Humans are capable of learning from other peoples experiences. If people you know have prejudiced attitudes towards something your prototype may be the attitudes they pass on you. Many prejudices are learned from parents and friends during childhood. Stereotypes: These are simple, overgeneralised statements about the psychological characteristics (such as attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour) of a whole group of people. Stereotypes exist for categories of people, which can be easily seen. This is because we sort the experiences we have of people into simple categories, such as whether we like them, can trust them, will enjoy them, cant ignore them, have to avoid them and so on. One problem connected with stereotypes is overextension. Thats when we overextend our stereotypes. When we try to apply our understanding of one situation to another situation which is not similar enough to the first. As long as we dont overextend our stereotypes, they can be useful. However, they are readily formed, and can easily become prejudices which lead to discrimination.

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For example: student life might be similar in most colleges, but it wont be the same in college of education as it is at university of Khartoum. If you think it will be similar, you are overextending your understanding. Gordon Allport in The Nature of Prejudice (1954) gives the following example:

Jane Elliot was a teacher in an American School. She conducted an experiment using her own pupils-into the effects of prejudice. She told her class that brown-eyed people were superior to blue-eyed people. She said that they were more intelligent and better behaved. Although there were fewer brown-eyed than blue-eyed children, the brown-eyed were to be given many privileges. For example, they would sit at the front of the class and be given attention first. Blue-eyed children had to sit at the back of the room and wait at the end of the queue. They also had to wear special collars to indicate their lower status. Within hours, the blue-eyed children began to do less well in their schoolwork and began describing themselves as stupid and bad. The brown-eyed children started to insult the blue-eyed children and behave very badly towards them. They soon developed a prejudice which said that superior people dominate and exploit inferior people. As a result the brown-eyed children soon began to discriminate against the blue-eyed children. The next day, the teacher announced that she had made a mistake. In fact the blueeyed people were superior. The attitudes and behaviour of the two groups on the previous day quickly reversed. The blue-eyed children took their revenge for their humiliations of the day before. Clearly prejudices can be triggered by making some people feel superior and others feel interior. The superior ones dominate the inferior. On the third day, Jane told the pupils what she had done and reassured them that they were all equal. She had wanted them to experience what it is like to hold prejudiced attitudes against others, and what it feels like to be a victim of prejudice.
Some stereotypes are acceptable, others are clearly unacceptable. Some have elements of truth in them. For example: We believe that doctors and nurses are professional and dedicated. Some stereotyped attitudes have changed. People used to believe that politicians were all honourable servants of their parties; all policemen were honest and impartial. But people no longer hold these attitudes.

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Many stereotypes are clearly untrue. One obvious example of this is the belief that some people if not most-still hold, that females are less intelligent than males. Women are backward in the development of the mind. Where do Prejudiced Attitudes come from? Prejudices towards people and things are learned during childhood and adolescence. They can be modified during our lives as we gain more experiences. These can be explained in terms of: 1. Classical Conditioning: Where associations can be learned between particular stimuli and particular responses. The response is usually automatic or reflexive. So you may have learned to show fear when you see spider. You have learned to associate spiders and fear. Following on from this, you may learn an association between your fear of spiders and your having a particular attitude towards them. You are frightened of them because you imagine they could harm you. This attitude is a prejudice (But not all prejudices can be explained in such a simple S-R (stimulus-Response) manner. We sometimes hold prejudices about things which we have no knowledge or experience of). 2. Operant Conditioning: This refers to the way in which we learn (Some of our behaviour) from our previous experiences. So for instrumental conditioning all other learning is the result of what happened the previous time we behaved in a similar way. If what we did brought us some benefit, then we are likely to do it again. If it didnt benefit us, then we will try something else next time. So if, we gain some benefit from our prejudiced attitude towards spiders, such as feeling safe when we avoid them, then the benefit would become a reinforcer that would encourage us to behave in the same way again. 3. Social Learning Theory: Albert Bandura believes that people learn through observing and imitating others who are clearly successful at doing something. Watching others behave in a prejudiced way may teach people that such behaviour is appropriate. If you see your parents being cautious of spiders, and avoiding them, then you will learn their prejudices. But still many parents arent frightened of spiders, although their children are. It is known for people to hold certain prejudiced attitudes despite their not having observed anyone else behaving in the prejudiced way. A part from these general explanations, social psychologists have suggested three possible ways in which prejudiced attitudes arise: 1/ first, some researchers see prejudices as being aspects of some peoples personalities. They claim that prejudices develop quite independently of the influence of anyone else.

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2/ second, other psychologists think that people learn to develop prejudiced attitudes from other individuals in the groups to which they belong. 3/ Third, Prejudices may result from competition between people in different groups who are all trying to achieve the same ends. Prejudice and the Personality The authoritarian Personality T. W. Adorno used Freudian ideas about the development of the personality to understand where prejudices come from (Adorno and his colleagues left Nazi Germany in 1930s. They were Jewish and were persecuted by the Nazis. They trained as social psychologists and worked at the Berkeley Campus of the University of California). Adopting a prejudiced attitude can serve as an unconscious defense mechanism. PERSONALITY In our daily life personality refers to how far a person impresses or attracts other, but in psychology it means the whole of a persons outstanding characteristics, his abilities, his emotional and social traits, his interests and attitudes. Psychologists do not agree on an exact definition of personality and when they talk about personality, they are primarily concerned with individual differences, the characteristics that distinguish one person (individual) from another. But for practical purposes personality is defined as [the characteristics patterns of behaviour and modes thinking that determine a persons adjustment to the environment]. The word behaviour in this definition is the result of interaction between personality characteristics and the social and physical conditions of the environment. In addition, personality theorists have different views: A. Some believe that behaviour is internally controlled i.e. determined by the personal characteristics of the individual. B. Others believe that behaviour is externally controlled i.e. determined by the particular situation in which behaviour occurs. Personality is said to consist of two interrelated aspects: 1- The individuals external appearance and behaviour = public Personality: this includes expressive features and mannerisms (your speech patterns, the way you carry yourself), your general disposition (whether you are cheerful or grumpy), the way you react to threatening situations, and the attitudes you express.

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2The individuals own perception of himself and his response to himself = private personality: this includes the fantasies, thoughts and experiences that you don not share with others. You may have some special experiences you have never told anyone about, wishes that seem too childish or embarrassing to reveal, dreams and memories that remain yours alone. What is Personality? In our everyday language we often refer to another person by saying, He has no personality, we mean that he is boring or that she has strong personality, we mean that she is rigid, reluctant to change her mind. The general use of the term personality is very different from that of psychologists. In a psychological sense, a strong person has no more personality than a weak one-all people have a personality. They differ not in the amount they have but in the type they have. According to psychologists there is no single accepted use of the term. Many different approaches have been adopted. Many different definitions have been assumed of the concepts of personality. Shaping of Personality: Physical characteristics such as eyes and hair colour, body build and the shape of the nose are determined at birth. Some personality characteristics are inherited twin studies on the inheritance of personality characteristics have found that identical twins are much more alike in emotional reactivity, activity level, and sociability than fraternal twins. In addition, they give more similar answers to personality tests than fraternal twins. Moreover, there is some indication that identical twins reared apart may be more alike (personality similarity) than identical twins reared together. Hence, twin studies suggest that some personality characteristics are inherited, but there is no evidence that these characteristics are determined by specific genes. The similarities in body build and body physiology shared by identical twins may serve as an explanation of their personality similarity. Body Build: It was assumed that body builds and personality characteristics are related. There is a saying that fat people are jolly tall, skinny people are intellectuals. An early personality theory classified individuals into three categories on the basis of body build and related these body types to personality characteristics.

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It was found that: A short plump person was said to be sociable and relaxed-a tall, thin person was characterized as restrained and self conscious a muscular person was described as noisy, aggressive and physically active. Most psychologists do not consider this classification useful. Because body weight and muscular strength change with age, diet and exercise. You may know some short, plump persons who are sociable and relaxed, but you may also know others who are shy and withdrawn in social situations i.e. unsociable). Our physiques do not determine specific personality characteristics, but they may shape our personalities by affecting how others treat us, the nature of our interactions with others, and the kinds of situations we seek or avoid. Body Physiology: In addition to differences in body build, it was found that some personality differences are related to physiological differences (i.e. the size of endocrine glands, the reactivity of the autonomic nervous system). We came to say that biological predisposition with which an individual is born are shaped by experiences encountered in the course of growing up. Some of these experiences are common-shared by most people growing up in given culture: others are unique to the individual. Common Experiences: Personality characteristics are commonly determined by the culture in which a person is raised. Each culture exerts its influence on the developing personality. Examples:

1-

Sex roles: Most cultures expect different behaviours from males than from females sex roles may vary from culture to culture, but it is natural in any culture for boys and girls to have predictable differences in personality merely they belong to one sex or the other.

2-

Occupation roles: these are patterned by cultural directions different behaviours are expected of doctors, truck drivers, and opera signers. But there has been a great change in sex roles. The females have shared males their occupations and vice versa. Although cultural pressures impose some personality similarities, individual personalities can never completely be shaped from knowledge of the group in which a person is raised for two reasons:

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1. The cultural impacts on the individual are not uniformed because they are transmitted from parents and other people who may not all share the same values and practices. 2. The individual has some experiences that are unique.

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Unique Experiences: Each person reacts in his own way to social pressures. As we mentioned that personal differences may result from biological differences. They may also develop from the rewards and punishments the parents impose on the childs behaviour. Finally the individuals common and unique experiences as well as the biological inheritance-they all interact to shape personality. PERSONALITY THEORIES We can not have all the theories devised by psychologists. Instead we shall discuss these four: 1234Type theories. Trait theories Social learning theories. Psychoanalytic theories. As representative of current psychological thinking in the area of personality and the most stimulating and fruitful approaches to the domain of personality. 1. TYPE THEORIES (Kretschmer & Sheldon (1942) William Sheldon (1942) was the first one to link body shape and personality characteristics. He claimed that people possess one of three body shapes, which he called somatotypes:

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Endomorph: one who is round, soft and inclined to be fat. He is supposed to be warm and friendly and fond of eating. Mesomorph: strong and muscular supposed to be energetic, confident and brave. Ectomorph: tall, thin and weak. Supposed to be intelligent, artistic, creative and introverted.

An alternative type theory, Toshitaka Nomi (Japan), tried to link personality characteristics to blood type:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Type A: hard working and peaceful, has high self-

consciousness and pays great attention to details. Type B: original, individualistic and creative. Type O: realistic and aggressive. Type AB: moody and deceitful.

However, it is unlikely that peoples temperaments are linked to their blood types.

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On the contrary, Hans Eysenck claimed that, to discover whether there are general personality types, we must first observe peoples behaviour to see what patterns emerge. This takes two levels: 1. At the specific-response level: observe actual behaviour:

what do you do under any given circumstance?

2.

At the habitual-response level: observe behaviour on

several occasions. Your habit to behave in a certain way.

2. TRAIT THEORIES (Gordon Allport, Raymond Cattell and Hans Eyzenck) They are concerned with personality description and prediction of behaviour. What is a trait? It is a determining tendency, a predisposition to respond intelligent, anxious cautious aggressive and excitable are trait terms. A trait refers to any characteristic that differ from person to person in a relatively permanent and consistent way. The trait is inferred from the behaviour, but it does not explain behaviour. To say that a student hit his classmate over the head because he has an aggressive trait explains nothing. You can describe him as aggressive individual if you observe him behaving aggressively on a number of occasions. Psychologists working in the area of trait theory are concerned with: 1/ Determining the basic traits that provide meaningful description of personality. 2/ Finding ways to measure these traits. Among psychologists there is lack of agreement on the number of basic personality traits: Raymond Cattell has identified 16 factors as the basic traits underlying personality. Each factor is given two names, (less intelligent-more intelligent + affected by feelings emotionally stable + trusting suspicious and so on). Others have identified as many as 20; still others as few as five factors as the basic dimensions of personality. Eysenck found that the main traits are clustered around two personality dimensions: Introversion and Extraversion (E scale) Stability and instability (N scale) Introvert: person who is more interested in his thoughts and feelings than things outside himself.

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Extravert: person who is more interested in what goes on around him than in his own thoughts and feelings.

UNSTABLE

moody anxious rigid sober pessimistic reserved unsociable quiet

touchy restless aggressive excitable changeable impulsive optimistic active Sanguine Phlegmatic Choleric Melancholic
EXTROVERTED

passive careful thoughtful peaceful controlled reliable Even-tempered calm

sociable lively talkative responsive easygoing outgoing

leadership carefree
STABLE

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Evaluation: The trait approach has been criticised as follows: 1. The possibility that behaviour may vary from one situation to

another. A boy who obtains a high score on the dominant factor of the 16 personality factor Questionnaire (Cattel 16 PF) may assume a dominant role with his classmates but not with his parents and teachers; even with his peer he may behave aggressively on some occasions. 2. Tests designed to measure traits are not predictive:

In predicting behaviour we need to know how personal characteristics-tendencies to be sociable, aggressive, anxious and so on- are influenced by particular environmental conditions. Conclusion: Trait theorists focus on the personal determinants of behaviour. They assume that traits predispose the individual to respond consistently in different situations. Situations have some impact: John does not respond as aggressively when an attractive waitress accidentally spills a cup of coffee on him as he does when a truck driver cuts in front of him in congested traffic. 3. SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY (Albert Bandura) It stresses the importance of environmental or situational determinants of behaviour. Behaviour is the result of a continuous interaction between personal and environmental variables. Environmental conditions shape behaviour through learning a persons behaviour, in turn, shapes the environment. To predict behaviour we need to know how the characteristics of the individual interact with the characteristics of the situation. According to social learning theory, individual differences result from differences in the kinds of learning experiences encountered in the course of growing up. Learning is either through direct experience (direct reinforcement i.e. reward or punishment) or through observational learning (by observing the actions of others). According to social learning, reinforcement is not necessary for learning, although it may facilitate learning by focus in the individuals attention in the appropriate direction. Person-situation Interaction: A persons actions in a given situation depend on the following:1/ The specific characteristics of the situation. 2/ The individuals appraisal of the situation. 3/ Past reinforcement for behaviour in similar situations or observations of others in similar situations.
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Social behaviour is not regularly rewarded across different situations settings. The individual learns to discriminate those contexts in which certain behaviour is appropriate and those in which it is not. However, the individual also ten as to generalize. But if a person is rewarded for the same response in many different situations, generalization takes place, ensuring that the same behaviour will occur in a variety of settings. Thus a boy whose father reinforces him for physical aggression at home as well as at school and at play will probably develop on aggressive personality. But, more often, aggressive response are differentially rewarded, and learned discriminations determine the situations in which the individual will display aggression (for example, aggression is acceptable on the football field but not in the classroom). 1. Person Variables: Individual differences that interact with the conditions of a particular situation will determine what an individual will do in that situation. These variables are 1. Competencies: (what can you do) include intellectual abilities + social and physical skills. 2. Cognitive Strategies: (How do you see it) included in encoding or perception. What is perceived as threat by one person may be seen as challenging by another. 3. Expectancies: (What will happen?) Expectations about the consequences of behaviour as well as about our own abilities will influence behaviour. Examples: If you cheat on an examination and you are caught, what do you expect the consequences to be? If you anticipate the consequences of certain behaviour you may fail to act because you are not certain of your ability to execute the behaviour. 4. Subjective Values: (what is it worth?) Individuals who have similar expectancies may choose to behave differently because they assign different values to the outcomes. 5. Self regulatory systems and plans: (How can you achieve it?). People differ in the standards and rules they adopt for regulating their behaviour as well as in their ability to make realistic plans for reaching a goal. (1) Self-Generated Environments The relationships between our behaviour and the situations we encounter in life is reciprocal. Through our own actions, we can produce the environmental conditions that affect our behaviour. Example:

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A person who acts abrasively may encounter a hostile social environment because his behaviour elicits hostility from others. So, situations are partly of our own devising. Evaluation The theory has been criticized for losing the person as its main emphasis is the importance of situational influence on behaviour (i.e. human actions are reactions to specific environmental and that how environment controls our behaviour and how it can be changed to modify behaviour = changing maladaptive behaviour). 4. THE PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY An introduction As stated elsewhere personality is an abstract concept that cannot be seen, touched, or directly measured. It is ones relatively distinctive and persistent pattern of thinking, feeling and acting. One of the most influential theories of personality (in fact, the first comprehensive theory) was the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. To him, all aspects of human personality, all emotions, endeavours and ideas arise from a basic conflict between our aggressive, pleasure seeking biological impulses and the social restraints against them. In Freuds view, individual personality is the result of each persons attempts to resolve this conflict, to express these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction without also bringing guilt or punishment. The Great Discovery But how did Freud stumble on this great theory of his, the psychoanalytic theory? For most, Freud lived in Vienna, where he earned a medical degree in 1881. He specialised in neurology. Freud was intrigued by the hidden facets of personality when he was faced with certain patients whose apparent disorders made no neurological sense. For example, a patient might have lost feeling in her hand, or become deaf or blind, with no evidence of physical impairment. (There is no sensory nerve that when damaged would destroy feeling in the entire hand and nothing else). Noting that such symptoms could also be produced through hypnosis, Freud became interested by the idea that they may be psychological rather than physiological in nature. Accordingly, he spent several months in Paris studying with Jean Charcot, a French neurologist who was using neurology to treat these same kinds of disorders. When he returned to Vienna, Freud began to use hypnosis with his own patients, encouraging them while in the hypnotic trance to talk freely about themselves and the
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circumstances surrounding the onset of their symptoms. Typically, the patients responded openly, at times becoming quite agitated during the hypnotic experience. Sometimes, they would find their symptoms had disappeared or at least where much relieved. It was in this way that Freud discovered the UNCONSCIOUS . Exploring the Unconscious: Freud believed that the mind is like an iceberg-mostly hidden. Our unconscious thoughts are the part of the iceberg that floats above the surface. Below that is a much larger UNCONSCIOUS region containing thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories of which we are largely unaware. Some of these thoughts are merely stored in the PRECONSICOUS area, from which they can be retrieved at will into conscious awareness. Of greater interest to Freud was the mass of unacceptable passions and thoughts that we repress-forcibly block from our conscious awareness because hey would be so painful to acknowledge. Though we are not aware of these troublesome ideas and feelings, Freud thought them to be powerful shapers of our personality. In his view, our unacknowledged impulses push to be expressed in disguised forms- in the work we do, in beliefs we hold, But how did Freud stumble on this great theory of his, the psychoanalytic theory? For most, Freud lived in Vienna, where he earned a medical degree in 1881. He specialized in neurology. Freud invented Useful aids to understanding to help explain his view of the minds dynamics. THE ID is a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy that constantly strives to satisfy instinctual drives to survive, reproduce and aggress. It is the basic biological foundation of the self. The Id operates on the pleasure principle: it seeks immediate gratification, totally unconstrained by reality. Think of the new born infant, who, governed by the Id, cries out for satisfaction the moment a need is felt, with no recognition of the conditions and demands that may exist in the outside world. The ID has two main instincts associated with it: 1. Eros: The life instinct. It is expressed in sexual behaviour-reproduction from this instinct emerges the most important of ID instincts, the Libido- A force of energy whose nature is sexual (libidinal drive). 2. Thanatos: The death instinct. This instinct is expressed in aggressive acts (e.g. wars).

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THE EGO Develops gradually as the infant learns to cope with the real world. It operates on the reality principle, which seeks to gratify ids impulses in realistic ways that will bring long-term pleasure rather than pain or destruction. What would happen if lacking in ego, we expressed our unrestrained sexual or hostile impulses whenever we felt them. The ego, which contains our mostly conscious perceptions, thoughts, judgements, and memories, is said to be the executive of personality because it decides on our actions as it intervenes between the impulsive demands of the Id and those of the external world. Beginning at around age 4 or 5, the ego recognises a newly emerging psychic system, the superego. THE SUPEREGO is like the voice of conscience that forces ego to consider not only the real but the ideal: Its sale focus is on how one ought to behave. It develops as we internalise the morals and values of parents and society, thereby providing both our sense of right and wrong and our ideal standards. It obeys morality principle. The superego strives for perfection and judges our actions, accompanied by feelings of guilt or pride. Someone with an exceptionally strong superego may be continually upright yet guilt-ridden, while another with a weak superego may be wantonly self-indulgent. Because the superegos demands are often in opposition to those of the id, tension due to anxiety arises, and the individual is in a state of disequilibrium. The ego must struggle to reconcile the two. It is an area of compromise or equilibrium. Adult maladjustment occurs if the ego fails in its attempts to resolve the continuous conflict between the idea and the Superego. PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT Freuds analysis of his patients problems and memories convinced him that personality is decisively shaped in the first few years of life. Again and again his patients symptoms appeared to him to be rooted in unresolved conflicts that originated in early childhood. He concluded that children pass through senses of psychosexual stages of development stages during which the ids pleasure seeking energies are focused on different pleasure sensitive areas of the body called erogenous zones. The Oral Stage: During this stage, which lasts throughout the first 18 months of life, the infants sensual pleasures focus on sucking, biting and chewing. The Anal Stage: During the anal stage, from about 18 months to 3 years, the sphincter muscles become sensitive and controllable and bowel and bladder retention and elimination become a source of gratification.
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The Phallic Stage: This stage is roughly between ages 3-6 years. The pleasure zone shifts to the genitals. During this stage Freud believed that children seek genital stimulation and develop both unconscious sexual desires for the parent of the other sex and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival parent of the same sex. Children also develop feelings of guilt and a fear that the rival parent will punish them; boys, for example, supposedly fear castration by their father. Freud called this collection of feelings the Oedipus complex after the Greek legend of Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. In girls, similar feelings are called the Electra complex after the Greek legend of Electra, who helped kill her mother. Children eventually cope with these threatening feelings by repressing them and by identifying with (by trying to become like) the rival parent. It is through this identification process in which children incorporate many of their parents values, that the superego gains strength. Freud also believed that identification with the same-sex parent provides our gender identity. The Latency Stage: At this stage, sexuality is dormant, and children play mostly with peers of the same sex. The children are less concerned with their bodies and their attention is focused on the skills needed for coping with the environment. The Genital Stage: This is the final stage. The children, now youths, begin to experience sexual feelings toward others. In Freuds view, adult maladjustment we behaviour results from unresolved conflict during the course of these psychosexual stages. At any point in these stages, strong conflicts could lock, or fixate the persons pleasure seeking energies in that stage. Fixation at the Oral Stage: Orally fixated people are said to exhibit passive dependence (like that of a nursing infant) or an exaggerated denial of this dependence-perhaps by acting tough and by indulging in biting sarcasm. They might also continue to seek oral gratification through excessive smoking and eating. Nail biting and excessive gum chewing are other forms of oral fixation.

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Anal Fixation: Those who never quite resolve the anal conflict, between the desire to culminate at will and the demands of toilet training, may as adults become messy and disorganised (anal expulsive) or highly controlled and compulsively neat (anal retentive). In such ways, Freud believed that the twig of personality is bent at an early age. Freuds Psychosexual Stages Stage Oral (0 to 18 months) Anal (18-36 months) Phallic (3 to 6 years) Latency (6 to puberty) Genital (puberty on) PERSONALITY DYNAMICS To live in social groups, we need to control our sexual and aggressive-impulses. When the ego fears losing control of the inner war between the demands of the id and the superego, the result is anxiety. Anxiety, said Freud, is the price we pay for civilization. Unlike specific fears, the dark cloud on anxiety need not be focused on one specific object. Freud proposed that the ego protects itself against anxiety with what he called ego defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms reduce anxiety unconsciously, by distorting reality. 1. Repression: The basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts and feelings from consciousness. Freud believed that repression explains why we don not remember our childhood lust for our parent of the other sex. However, he also believed that the repression is often not complete, and the repressed urges seep out in dream symbols and slips of the tongue. 2. Regression: This is another means of coping with anxiety. Regression is retreating to an earlier, more infantile stage of development where some of our psychic energies are still fixated. Thus, when facing the anxious first days of school, a child may regress to the oral comfort of thumb sucking or nail biting. 3. Reaction Formation: This is the egos unconscious switching of unacceptable impulses into their opposites. Thus people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings. According to the principle behind this defense
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Focus Oral pleasures sucking, biting, chewing Anal pleasures coping with demands for control Genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings Repressed Sexual feelings Maturation of sexual interests

mechanism, vehement social crusaders, such as those who rail against gay rights, may be motivated by the very sexual desires against which they are crusading. 4. Projection: Disguises threatening impulses by attributing them to others. According to the Freudian theory, racial prejudice may be the result of projecting ones own unacceptable impulses or characteristics onto members of another group. 5. Rationalization: This is a familiar defense mechanism that lets us unconsciously generate self-justifying explanations so we can hide from ourselves the real reasons for our actions. Examples

(i)Habitual drinkers may explain that they drink with their friends just to be sociable. (ii) Students who fail to study may rationalize that All work and no play makes jack a dull person. or who wants to be a nerd or a swat head any ways?!
6. Displacement: This diverts ones sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more psychologically acceptable object than the one that aroused them. Example:

Children who do not feel free to express anger against their parents will sometimes displace their anger onto someone or something else, such as the family pet.
7. Sublimation: Is transforming impulses into socially valued motivations. Sublimation is therefore socially adaptive and may even be a wellspring for great cultural and artistic achievements. Freud suggested that Leonardo da Vincis paintings of Madonna were a sublimation of his longing for intimacy with his mother, from whom he was separated at an early age. Note that all these defense mechanisms function indirectly and unconsciously. They reduce anxiety by disguising our threatening impulses. We never say, I am feeling anxious; Id better project my hostile feelings onto someone else. Defense mechanisms would not work were we to recognise them. Just as the body unconsciously depends itself against disease, so, believed Freud, the ego unconsciously defends itself against anxiety. FREUDS DESCENDANTS AND DISSENTERS Although controversial, Freuds writings soon attracted a group of followers, some of whom later broke away to establish their own versions of the psychoanalytic theory, the neo-Freudians.

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Points of Agreement: They accepted Freuds basic ideas about the personality structure of Id, ego and superego. The importance of the unconscious. The shaping of personality in childhood. The dynamics of anxiety and the defense mechanisms. Points of Disagreement: They placed somewhat more emphasis on the role of the conscious mind in interpreting experience and coping with the environment. They doubted that sex and aggression were all-consuming instincts. They placed more emphasis on social relationships. Famous neo-Freudians: Alfred Adler and Karen Horney agreed with Freud that childhood is important. But they believed that the social, not the sexual, tensions of childhood are crucial for personality formation. Adler said that behind much of our behaviour lies an attempt to vanquish childhood feelings of inferiority, feelings that trigger strivings for superiority and power. (We have to thank Adler for the still popular idea of the inferiority complex.) Horney said that childhood anxiety, caused by a sense of helplessness, triggers the desire for love and for security. Erich Fromm and other ego psychologists agreed with Freud that the ego is important. But deemphasizing the role of sexual and aggressive impulses, they viewed the ego as more than a mediator between Id and superego. The ego, they said, strives for unity and love,, for truth and freedom; such conscious strivings are not merely a sublimation of basic motives. Erik Erickson Agrees with Freud that development proceeds through a series of critical stages. But he believes these are psychosocial, not psychosexual, stages. Erickson also believes that lifes developmental stages encompass the whole life span. He maintains that infancy is a time for establishing basic trust, and adolescence for establishing identity, and proposes that in adulthood people strive first for intimacy, then for generativity (a feeling of productivity through family and work), and finally for integrity, a sense that their lives have been meaningful. Freuds Dissenters: Carl Jung placed less emphasis on social factors and agreed with Freud that the unconscious exerts a powerful influence. But he contended that the unconscious contains more than a persons repressed thoughts and feelings.

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There is also a collective unconscious, he believed, a reservoir of imaged derived from our early ancestors universal experiences. This inherited unconscious includes deep-rooted spiritual concerns and explains why people in different cultures share certain myths and images, such as that of the mother as a symbol of nurturance. EVALUATION OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY: After we looked at Freuds ideas, let us now listen to his critics. Bear in mind that we do so from the perspective of the twentieth century, a perspective that is useful subject to revision. Freud died in 1939 without the benefit of all that we have since learned about human development, thinking and emotion, and without todays tools for research. Freuds Ideas in light of Modern Research Freuds idea that conscience and gender identity are formed by the childs resolving the Oedipus or Electra complex at age 5 or 6 is questioned by newer work in developmental psychology. Developmental research indicates that human development is lifelong, not fixed in childhood. Freuds ideas or childhood sexuality arose from his rejection of stories of childhood sexual abuse told by his female patients-stories he thought were reflections of their own childhood wishes and conflicts but that we cannot dismiss today. His ideas that women have weak superegos and that they suffer from a penis-envy are now discounted, even by many psychoanalysts. They are even considered to be sexist. Freuds belief that dreams are disguised wish fulfillments that can be interpreted by skilled analysts has been disputed by newer concepts of dreams. His belief that repression causes forget thing is somewhat supported by reports of memory loss among victims of war trauma and sexual abuse, but the evidence indicates that other mechanisms of forgetting account for most memory loss. Slips of the tongue can be explained as competition of similar verbal choices in our memory network. Freuds surmise that people protect themselves against painful self-knowledge by projecting their own unrecognized negative traits onto others has generally not been supported by research. History has been kinder to Freuds iceberg theory. Research confirms that our knowledge of what goes on inside the mind is very limited. However, the iceberg notion held by todays psychologists differs from that of Freud. They think of the unconscious not in terms of seething passions and repressive censoring but of information processing that occurs without our awareness.
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Freuds Ideas as Scientific Theory: The second level at which Freuds theory is criticized is not about specific concepts but about its scientific shortcomings. A good theory should make sense of observations and offer testable hypothesis that one can verify or reject. (For Freud, his own interpretations of patients free associations dreams, and slips of the tongue were evidence enough). According to critics, the most serious problem of Freuds theory is that it offers after the fact explanations of any characteristics, yet it fails to predict such behaviour and traits. Example:

If you feel angry at your mothers death, you support this theory because your unresolved childhood dependency needs are threatened. If you do not feel angry, then you again support this theory because you are repressing your anger..
After the fact interpretations are perfectly appropriate for historical and literary scholarships, which explain Freuds currently greater influence on literary criticism than on psychological research. But in science a good theory makes testable predications. A few Words for Freud: Is it fair to fault something for not being what it never intended to be? Freudian sociologist Phillip Rieff explains:

Freud never made for psychoanalysis the fundamental claim of modern science: The power of prediction. Psychoanalysis, he maintained, is a retrospective science, never a predictive one... Neurotic states of mind are systematically meaningful-which is what Freud meant by causation-whether we can predict them or ed our view of human nature. Some ideas that
many of us assume to be true-that childhood experiences mold personality, that many behaviours have disguised motives, that dreams have symbolic meaning are partly Freuds legacy, which lives on in our own ideas. As Peter Drucker (1982) remarked, (Many) psychologists have no use for Freud, and I have some grave doubts about him, but he is the only one who created vision and insight and changed our view of ourselves and of the world. For that, Sigmund Freud continues to rank as one of the towering intellectual figures of modern history.

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