PERSONALITY

An individual’s unique pattern of thoughts,

feelings, and behaviors that persists over
time and across situations.

Two key components

 personality refers to unique

differences.

 personality is presumed to be
stable and enduring.
 What is Personality?

Personality defined
 unique psychological
qualities of an individual that
influence a variety of
characteristic behavior patterns
across different situations and
over time.
People are often confused with two
words
 CHARACTER  TEMPERAMENT
The overall pattern of Biologically based
regularly occurring characteristic way of
behavior. reacting.
In character, moral The things are inborn
component is more or or born with. This has
moral issues are more. bee classified into
three
Difficult
Slow to worm up
Easy.
Characteristics of personality
It has both physical and psychological
components.
Its expression in terms of behavior is fairly
unique in a given individual.
Its main features do not easily change with
time.
It is dynamic in the sense that some of its
features may change due to internal
situational demands.
Thus, personality is adaptive to situations.
 TYPE
OF
THEORIES

TYPE
LEARNING HUMANNISTIC
AND DYNAMIC
BEHAVIORAL EXTINCTION
TRAIT APPROACH
APPROACH APPROACH
APPROACH
Psychodynamic Theories

behavior as a product of psychological forced within the individual, often

outside conscious awareness.
Five propositions common to all psychodynamic theories.

 Much of mental life is unconscious.

 Mental processes such as emotions, motivations, and thought may conflict
with one another.
 Early childhood experiences strongly affect personality development.
 Our mental representation of ourselves and others guides our interactions
with others.
 Development of personality involves learning to regulate sexual and
aggressive urges.
SIGMUND FREUD

Best known of psychodynamic theorists.

Freud was first to stress the
unconscious.
The unconscious is all the ideas,
thoughts, and feelings of which we are
normally not aware.
Freud’s ideas form the basis for
psychoanalysis.
 Three
Parts of
Psychoanalytical
theory

Theory of
Personality
Structure of Theory of
dynamics &
personality Psycho-sexual
ego-defense
development
mechanism
Freud: psychoanalysis

Id
Ego
Superego
Id

Collection of unconscious urges and

desired that continually seek
expression
Operates according to the pleasure
principle, i.e., seeks immediate
pleasure and to avoid pain
Operators entirely in the unconscious
mind
Ego

Mediates between reality, conscience

(superego), and instinctual needs (id)
Operates according to the reality
principle
Operates at the conscious,
preconscious, and unconscious levels
Superego
The social and parental standards that have
been internalized
Conscience
 Our sense of morality
Ego ideal
 The standard of what one would like to be
We are not born with the superego, but it
develops over time
Operates at the conscious, pre conscious,
and unconscious levels
Comparison of Freud’s three SYSTEMS of personality

ID EGO SUPER EGO

NATURE Represents biological Represents psychological Represents societal
aspect aspect aspect

CONTRIBUTION instincts self conscience

TIME ORIENTATION Immediate present present past

LEVEL unconscious Conscious & unconsciousConscious & unconscious

PRINCIPLE pleasure reality morality

PURPOSE Seek pleasure Adapt to reality Represent right & wrong

Avoid pain Know true & false
AIM Immediate gratification Safety & compromise perfection

PROCESS irrational rational illogical

REALITY subjective objective subjective

Diagram of structure of personality
Defense Mechanisms

Anxiety is produced when the ego

cannot satisfy the demands of the id
in a way acceptable to the superego
This anxiety causes feelings of
uneasiness and worry
Ego may employ any of a number of
defense mechanisms to protect the
conscious mind from this anxiety
Repression and Ego Defenses
Ego Defense Mechanisms
– Denial of Reality
– Displacement
– Fantasy
– Identification
– Isolation
– Projection
– Rationalization
Repression and Ego Defenses
 Ego Defense Mechanisms
– Reaction Formation
– Regression
– Repression
– Sublimation
Defense Mechanisms
Denial
– Refusal to acknowledge a painful reality.
Repression
– Unpleasant thoughts are excluded from consciousness.
Projection
– Attributing one’s own feelings, motives, or wishes to others.
Identification
– Taking on the characteristics of other to avoid feeling incompetent.
Regression
– Reverting to childlike behavior.
Intellectualization
– Thinking about stressful problems in an abstract way to detach one self from
them
Reaction Formation
– Expression of exaggerated ideas and emotions that are opposite of true feelings
Defense Mechanisms

Displacement
– Shift repressed motives from an original object to a substitute object.
Sublimation
– Redirecting repressed motives and feelings into socially acceptable
activities.
Development of personality

Freud believed that personality

development is the results of various
ways in which the instinct (also called
the libido) is satisfied during the course
of life.
There are several stages, each focusing
on different bodily areas.
These stages are called the
psychosexual stages.
Drives and psychosocial
development
Concept of libido
5 stages of Psychosexual development
– Oral
– Anal
– Phallic
– Latency
– Genital
• Oedipus and Electra Complexes
• Concept of Fixation
Psychosexual Stages
Oral Stages (birth to 18 months)
 Pleasure is obtained by sucking and swallowing
 Too much oral stimulation may result in an
overly optimistic, gullible, and dependent adult
 Too little stimulation can result in a pessimistic,
sarcastic, argumentative adult
Anal Stages(18months to 3 years)
 Focus of pleasure is the anus, especially
controlling bowels
 Strict toilet training may result in anal retentive
personality types as adults, i.e., stingy and
excessively orderly
Psychosexual Stages
Phallic Stages (after age 3)
 Erotic feelings center on genitals
 Boys experience the Oedipal complex wherein
they are strongly attached to their mother and
jealous of their father
 Girls experience the Electra complex, bring
strongly attached to their father and jealous of their
mother
 These complexes are usually resolved by
identification with the same-sex parent
 Fixation at this stages may result in vanity and
egotism in adult life
Psychosexual Stages

Latency Stages (5 or 6 to 12 or 13)

 Child appears to have no interest in
the another sex
Genital Stages (begins at puberty)
 Final stages marked by
development of mature sexuality
Criticisms of psychodynamic
theories
Culture-bound ideas
Freud made no connection between
women’s subordinate status in
society and their sense of inferiority.
Psychodynamic theories are largely
untestable in any scientific way.
Post-Freudian theories or other
psychoanalytical theories
Alfred Adler
– Inferiority and Superiority
– Individual psychology: the Creative self
Karen Horney
Carl Jung
– Collective Unconscious
– Archetypes
– Analytic psychology.
Carl Jung
Shared Freud’s emphasis on unconscious
processes
Personal unconscious
That part of the unconscious mind
containing an individuals thoughts and
feelings.
• Collective unconscious
 The part of the unconscious that is
inherited and common to all members of a
species.
Archetypes
Ideas/ categories in the collective
unconscious
Examples of archetypes
Persona
 Our public self
Anima
 Female archetype as expressed in male personality
Animus
 Male archetype as expressed in female personality.
Attitude Types

Extroverts
 Focus on external world and social life

Introverts
 Focus on internal thoughts and feelings

Jung felt that everyone had both

qualities, but one is usually dominant.
Personality Types

Rational individuals
People who regulate their actions
through thinking and feeling
Irrational individuals
People who base their actions on
perceptions, either through their
senses or intuition
Alfred Adler

Compensation
Our efforts to overcome real or
perceived weaknesses
Inferiority complex
Fixation on feelings of personal
inferiority that can to emotional and
social paralysis
Karen Horney
Viewed anxiety as a powerful motivating
force
Environmental and social factors
important seen as being as important as
unconscious sexual conflict
Neurotic trends
Irrational strategies for coping with
emotional problems
Learning & Behavioral Theory
Learning & behavioral theories were made based on classical
& operant conditioning
Based on assumptions

The behavior which An individual current

make our personality environment maintain
are based on learning his or her behavior
& conditioned
Difference b/w Learning theorist view &
Psychoanalytical
theorist view

Learning theories view Psychoanalytical theorist

view
Learning theorist Psychoanalytical
emphasized on current theorist emphasized on
environment viewer dynamics
Learning theorist said Theorist main focus
that internal factors are was on sex & women
also influential while
studying behavior The concepts were not
The concepts were scientifically proved
scientifically proved
Cognitive-Social Learning Theories
Hold that people behavior is guided by thought,
expectancies, learning, and the environment
Expectancies
What a person anticipates in a situation or as a
result of behaving in certain ways
Performance standards
Individually determined standards by which to
judge one’s own behavior
Cognitive-Social Learning Theories
Self-Efficacy
→Expectancy that one’s efforts will be
successful
• Locus of control
→Expectancy about whether reinforcement
is under internal or external control.
Criticisms Of Cognitive-Social Learning
Theories
Affirms role of cognition in development of
personality
Focuses on conscious behavior and
experience
Can be studied scientifically
Has led to many useful therapies
Social-Learning and Cognitive Theories
Walter Mischel’s Cognitive-Affective
personality Theory
– Encodings
– Expectancies and beliefs
– Affects
– Goal and values
– Competencies and elf-regulatory plans
Social-Learning and cognitive Theories
Bundura’s Cognitive Social Learning Theory:
Reciprocal Determinism

Person

Behavior
Environment
Social-Learning and Cognitive Theories
Bandura’s Cognitive Social Learning
Theory: Self-efficacy

PERSON BEHAVIOR OUTCOME

EFFICACY OUTCOME
EXPECTATIONS EXPECTATIONS
TYPE THEORY
Type theory was
divided into two- Type
 Type A Theory
 Type B

Type Type
A B
Type A
Are always moving, walking, and eating
rapidly;
Feel impatient with the rate at which most
events take place;
Strive to think or do two or more things at
once;
Cannot cope with leisure time;
Are obsessed with numbers, measuring
their success in terms of how many or how
much of everything they acquire.
Type B
Never suffer from a sense of time urgency
with its accompanying impatience;
Feel no need to display or discuss either
their achievements or accomplishments;
Play for fun and relaxation, rather than to
exhibit their superiority at any cost;
Can relax without guilt.
Type Approach
The Greek Physician Hippocrates has
proposed a typology of personality
based on fluid or humour.
He classified people into four
Temperament
i. Sanguine
ii. Phlegmatic
iii. Melancholic
iv. Choleric
Type Approach
i. Sanguine- somebody who is very
cheerful, optimistic and confident.
ii. Melancholic- somebody who is very
depressed
iii. Choleric- somebody who is very hot-
tempered
iv. Phlegmatic- somebody who is very slow.
Erik Erickson
Eight stages of personality development
◘ Trust vs. mistrust
◘ Autonomy vs. shame and doubt
◘ Initiative vs. guilt
◘ Industry vs. inferiority
◘ Identity vs. role confusion
◘ Intimacy vs. isolation
◘ Generativity vs. stagnation
◘ Ego integrity vs. despair
Criticism of Type Theory
About the mythology reliability, there was
no agreement among the observers.
People questioned the consistency. This
increased the importance of situation.
Trait
The most central concept in personality
psychology is the trait.
A trait is a relatively stable predisposition
to behave in a certain way.
Trait are part of the person, not the
environment.
Do Traits Predict Behaviors?

Consistency Paradox
 Personality ratings are consistent
while behavior ratings are not
Trait Theory
The goal of trait theory is to specify a manageable
set of distinct personality dimension that can be
used to summarize the fundamental psychological
differences among individuals.
Examples of trait approaches-
 Gordon Allport’s list of approximately 4500 traits
 Raymond Cattell's reduction to 16 personality
factors
 Hans Eysenck’s three-factors model
Allport’s Trait Theory
Gordon Allport is considered the pioneer of trait
approach
He proposed that individuals possesses a
number of traits, which are dynamic in nature.
They determine behavior in such a manner that
an individual approaches different situations with
similar plans. The traits integrates stimuli and
responses which otherwise look dissimilar
Allport categorized traits into-
1. Cardinal trait
2. Central trait
3. Secondary trait
Allport’s Trait Theory
 Cardinal trait-
These are highly generalized dispositions. They indicate goal
around which a person’s entire life seems to revolve: e.g. Mahatma
Gandhi's nonviolence & Hitler's Nazism
Such traits are often get associated with name of the person so
strongly that they derive identities
 Central trait-
These traits (e.g. warm, sincere, diligent, etc) are often used in
writing a testimonial or job recommendation for a person.
 Secondary trait-
The least generalized characteristics of a person are called
secondary trait.
Trait such as ‘like mangoes’ or ‘prefers ethnic clothes’ are examples
of secondary trait.
Factor Theory Of Raymond Cattell
Raymond Cattell believed that there is a common structure on
which people differ from each other.
He tried to identify the primary traits from a huge array of
descriptive adjectives found in language. He applied a statistical
technique called factor analysis to discover the common structures.
He found 16 primary or source trait. The source traits are stable
and a considered as the building blocks of personality.
There are also a number of surface traits that result out of the
interaction of source traits.
Cattell describe source traits in terms of opposing tendencies.
Single Trait Research

Basically researchers focus o trait.

For e.g.-locus of control

Locus of control

External locus of control Internal locus of control

Locus Of Control
 The degree to which people believe they
are masters of their own fate.
Internals
Individuals who believe that they control
what happens to them.
Externals
Individuals who believe that what happens
to them is controlled by outside forces
such as luck or chance.
New Approach Of studying
Personality
Five-Factors Model (Big Five) Or There
Are 5 Key Dimension Of Personality.
– Extraversion
– Agreeableness
– Conscientiousness
– Neuroticism
– Openness to experience
Five Big Factors Of Personality
Extraversion: Agreeableness:
Sociable or retiring Softhearted or ruthless
fun-loving or somber trusting or suspicious
affectionate or reserved helpful or uncooperative

Openness:
Imaginative or practical
interested in variety or routine
independent or conforming

Conscientiousness:
Emotional stability: Organized or
Calm or anxious disorganized careful or
secure or insecure careless disciplined or impulsive
self-satisfied or self-pitying
Are The “Big Five” Traits Universal?

Evidence point to the presence of the

big five traits across cultures
Findings suggest a genetic basis for
traits
Criticism Of Trait Theories

Unlike some other theories, trait

theories can be studied scientifically
Merely descriptive
Traits represent statistical averages
of populations rather than individuals
Disagreement over minimum number
of traits needed to fully describe
variety of human behavior