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Lecture 13. Theories of Personality

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Lecture 13. Theories of Personality

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zd2244
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Theories of Personality

Introduction to Psychology
Fall 2024

Personality
§ Personality refers to an individual’s
characteristic pattern of thinking,
feeling, and acting.
§ Explains the stability of a person’s
behavior over time and across
situations.
§ Explains the behavioral differences
among people in similar situations.
§ A personality trait is a
characteristic pattern of behavior,
or a disposition to behave in a
particular way in a variety of
situations.

MMPI
§ The classic personality inventory is the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI), which was originally devised to
identify emotional disorders.

1. I like mechanics magazines.


2. I have a good appetite
3. I wake up fresh & rested most mornings
4. I think I would like the work of a librarian
5. I am easily awakened by noise

1
The Big Five
§ McCrae & Costa maintain that most personality traits are
derived from 5 higher-order traits:
§ Extroversion
§ Neuroticism
§ Openness
§ Agreeableness
§ Conscientiousness
§ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWpRKJPCI7M

§ These traits seem to be universally applicable, as well as


relatively stable throughout adulthood.

The Psychoanalytic Approach


§ Freud’s psychoanalytic approach
attempts to explain personality,
motivation, and mental disorders by
focusing on unconscious determinants of
behavior.

§ At first, Freud thought that hypnosis might


unlock the door to the unconscious, but
he ultimately turned to free association.

Level of Awareness
Conscious
Whatever one is aware of at a particular point in time.

Preconscious
Material just beneath the surface of awareness.

Unconscious
Thoughts, memories, desires that are well below the surface of awareness.

2
Personality Structure

§ The primitive, instinctive component of personality


ID that strives to satisfy basic drives.
§ Operates according to the pleasure principle.

§ Contains our partly-conscious perceptions,


EGO thoughts, judgments, and memories.
§ Operates according to the reality principle.

§ The moral compass that focuses on how we ought


SUPEREGO to behave.
§ Produces feelings of pride and guilt.

Defense Mechanisms
§ Defense Mechanisms are tactics that reduce or redirect anxiety
by distorting reality.

Repression Regression Reaction


Formation

Projection Rationalization Displacement

Denial Identification Sublimation

Stages of Psychosexual Development


Stage Age Focus

Oral 0-18 months Focus is on the mouth

Anal 18-36 months Coping with demands for control

Phallic 3-6 years Resolving the Oedipal Complex

Latency 6-puberty Expanding social contacts

Genital Puberty on Establishing intimate relationships

Early childhood experiences can influence an individual’s personality,


with consequences lasting throughout adulthood.

3
Neo-Freudians
§ Neo-Freudians have veered away from Freud in two key ways:
§ They place more emphasis on the conscious mind.
§ They doubt that sex and aggression are all-consuming motivators.

Karen Horney Alfred Adler Carl Jung


Childhood anxiety Much of our In addition to the
is triggered by the behavior is driven personal
child’s sense of by efforts to unconscious, we
helplessness and conquer childhood have a collective
dependence. feelings of unconscious.
inferiority.

Assessing the Unconscious


§ Objective assessments tap into the conscious.

§ Projective tests provide ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger


the projection of one’s inner dynamic.

TAT Rorschach

Behavioral Perspectives
§ Believe that psychology should only study observable behavior,
and explain personality in terms of learning.

§ Personality is a collection of response tendencies.

§ Personality is acquired through learning over the


course of the lifespan.

§ Models have a large impact on our personality


development.
§ Self-efficacy: our beliefs about our abilities to
perform behaviors that should lead to expected
outcomes.

4
Humanistic Perspectives
§ Humanistic psychologists focus on the way healthy people strive
for self-determination and self-realization.
§ Abraham Maslow proposed that we are
motivated by a hierarchy of needs.
§ Studied healthy, creative people.
§ Recent criticism by evolutionary psychologists.

§ Carl Rogers believed that, unless they are


thwarted by their environment, people are
primed for growth and fulfillment.
§ A central feature of personality is self-concept.
§ Three aspects key to our development:

Genuine Accepting Empathic

Biological Perspective
§ Hans Eysenck posited that personality can be characterized
along three dimensions:

Extroversion – Emotional Stability


Psychoticism
Introversion – Instability

§ Eysenck proposed that introverts have higher levels of


physiological arousal, which makes them more easily
conditioned to have inhibitions.
§ Modern research in behavioral genetics has supported his ideas
that personality is molded by heredity.
§ Identical twins reared apart are significantly more similar in
personality than fraternal twins reared together.

Social-Cognitive Perspective

Is your life beyond your Is what happens to you


control? your own doing?

§ Social-cognitive psychologists emphasize our sense of personal


control.
§ External locus of control: The perception that outside forces
determine your fate.
§ Internal locus of control: The belief that you control your own
destiny.

5
Culture & Personality

§ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx-1EthJeIg

Independent Interdependent
Cultures Cultures

Western cultures East-Asian Cultures

View the self as a unique View the self as part of a


individual larger group

§ Cultures seem to exhibit the same basic traits, but vary as to


which particular traits are exhibited most.

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