Chapter Six Personality
Chapter Six Personality
“One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be,
rather than being yourself”. Shannon L. Alder
Dear student, based on the above quote reflect on the following questions please?
The word personality is derived from the word ‘persona‘, which has Greek
and Latin roots and
refers to the theatrical masks worn by Greek actors. Personality has been
defined in many
different ways, but psychologists generally view personality as the unique
pattern of enduring thoughts, feelings, and actions that characterize a
person.
Personality should not be confused with character, which refers to value
judgments made about a person‘s morals or ethical behavior; nor should it
be confused with temperament, the enduring characteristics with which
each person is born, such as irritability or adaptability.
However, both character and temperament are vital personalities.
6.2. Theories of Personality
He argued that people are in constant conflict between their biological urges
(drives) and the need to tame them.
The psychoanalytic theory includes a theory of personality structure.
In Freud's view, personality has three parts which serves a different
function and develops at different times: the id, the ego, and the
superego.
The first and most primitive part of the personality in the infant is the id. The Id is
a Latin word that means ‘it ‘.
When these drives are active, the person will feel an increase in not only physical
tension but also in psychological tension that Freud called libido, the instinctual
energy that may come into conflict with the demands a society‘s standards for
behavior.
When libidinal energy is high, it is unpleasant for the person, so the goal is to
reduce libido by fulfilling the drive; Eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, and
satisfy the sex when the need for pleasure is present.
The pleasure principle, which can be defined as the desire for immediate
satisfaction of needs with no regard for the consequences. The pleasure
principle can be summed up simply as ‘if it feels good, do it.’
Ego: The Executive Director-
According to Freud, to deal with reality, the second part of personality develops
called the ego.
The ego, from the Latin word for ‘I’, is mostly conscious and is far more rational,
logical and cunning than the id.
The ego works on the reality principle, which is the need to satisfy the demands of
the id and reduce libido only in ways that will not lead to negative consequences.
This means that sometimes the ego decides to deny the id its drives because the
consequence would be painful or too unpleasant.
If a 6-month-old child sees an object and wants it, she will reach out and grab it despite
her parent‘s frantic cries of “No, no!”.
The parent will have to pry the object out of the baby‘s hands, with the baby protesting
mightily all the while.
But if the same child is about 2 years old, when she reaches for the object and the parent
shouts “No!” she will most likely draw back her hand without grabbing the object
because her ego has already begun to develop.
In the first case, the infant has only the id to guide her behavior, and the id wants to grab
the object and doesn‘t care what the parent says or does. But the 2 years old has an ego
and that ego knows that the parent‘s ‘No!’ may very well be followed by punishment, an
unpleasant consequence.
The 2 years old child will make a more rational, more logical decision to wait
until the parent isn‘t looking and then grab the object and run.
A simpler way of stating the reality principle is ‘if it feels good, do it, but only if
you can get away with it.’
Superego: The Moral Watchdog
Regression: involves reverting to immature behaviors that have relieved anxiety in the past.
Eg. a girl/a boy who has just entered school may go back to sucking her/his thumb or
wetting the bed.
Trait theorists seek to measure the relative strength of the many personality
characteristics that they believe are present in everyone.
2. Personality traits are relatively stable across situations, and they can explain
why people act in predictable ways in many different situations.
Eg, A person who is competitive at work will probably also be competitive on
the tennis court or at a party.
The five trait dimensions can be remembered by using the acronym OCEAN, in
which each of the letters is the first letter of one of the five dimensions of
personality.
Openness can best be described as a person‘s willingness to try new things and be
open to new experiences.
People who try to maintain the status quo and who don‘t like to change things would
score less on openness.
Conscientiousness refers to a person‘s organization and motivation, with people
who score high in the dimension being those who are careful about being in
places on time and careful with belongings as well.
Someone scoring low on this dimension, for example, might always be late to
important social events or borrow belongings and fail to return them or return in
poor coordination.
Extraversion is a term first used by Carl Jung, who believed that all people
could be divided into two personality types: extraverts and introverts.
> Extraverts are outgoing and sociable,
> Introverts are more solitary and dislike being the center of attention.
Agreeableness refers to the basic emotional style of a person, who may be
easygoing, friendly and pleasant (at the high end of the scale) or grumpy,
crabby and hard to get along with (at the low end).
Like Maslow, Rogers believed that human beings are always striving to fulfill their
innate capacities and capabilities and to become everything that their genetic
potential will allow them to become.
The self-concept is based on what people are told by others and how the sense of self
is reflected in the words and actions of important people in one‘s life, such as
parents, siblings, coworkers, friends, and teachers
Real and Ideal Self
Self-concept
Real self (one‘s actual perception of characteristics, traits, and abilities that form the basis of the
striving for self-actualization)
Ideal self (the perception of what one should be or would like to be). The ideal self primarily
comes from those important, significant others in one‘s life, most often the parents.
According to Rogers
when the real self and the ideal self are very
close or similar to each other, people feel
competent and capable,
When one has a realistic view of the real self, and the ideal self is attainable, there
usually isn‘t a problem of a mismatch.
It is when a person‘s view of self is distorted or the ideal self is impossible to attain
that problems arise.
Once again, it is primarily how the important people (who can be either good or bad
influences) in a person‘s life react to the person that determines the degree of
agreement between real and ideal selves.
Conditional and Unconditional Positive
Regard- Rogers defined positive regard as warmth, affection, love, and respect that
comes from the significant others (parents, admired adults, friends, and teachers) in
people‘s experience.
Positive is vital to people‘s ability to cope with stress and to strive to achieve self-
actualization.
Rogers believed that unconditioned positive regard, or love, affection and respect
with no strings attached, is necessary for people to be able to explore fully all that
they can achieve and become.
Unfortunately, some parents, spouses, and friends give conditional positive regard,
which is love, affection, respect and warmth that depend, or seem to depend, on doing
what those people want.
For Rogers, a person who is in the process of self-actualizing, activity exploring
potentials and abilities and experiencing a match between real and ideal selves is a fully
functioning person.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of this unit, you are expected to:
When someone behaves in culturally unacceptable ways and the behaviors he/she
exhibit violates the norm, standards, rules and regulations of the society, this person
is most likely to have a psychological problem.
Only abnormal behavior cannot be sufficient for the diagnosis of psychological problem.
Hence, we need to consider the context in which a person‘s behavior happens.
The context in which ‘abnormal’ behavior occurs must be considered before deciding
that it is symptomatic of psychological disorders.
2. Mala-daptiveness
Maladaptive behavior in one way or another creates a social, personal and occupational problem on those who
exhibit the behaviors.
These behaviors seriously disrupt the day-to-day activities of individuals that can increase the problem more.
3. Personal Distress
Our subjective feelings of anxiety, stress, tension and other unpleasant emotions determine whether we have a
psychological disorder.
These negative emotional states arise either by the problem itself or by events happen that on us. But, the
criterion of personal distress, just like other criteria, is not sufficient for the presence of psychological
disorder.
This is because of some people like feeling distressed by their own behavior. Hence, behavior that is abnormal,
maladaptive, or personally distressing might indicate that a person has a psychological disorder.
7.2 Causes of Psychological Disorders (Based on Perspectives)
A. Psychoanalytic perspective
Sigmund Freud, the founder of the psychoanalytic approach, believed that the
human mind consists of three interacting forces: the id (a pool of biological
urges), the ego (which mediates between the id and reality), and the superego
(which represent society‘s moral standards).
Abnormal behavior, in Freud’s view, is caused by the ego’s
inability to manage
the conflict between the opposing demands of the id and the superego.
Especially important is the individuals‘ failure to manage the conflicting of id’s sexual
impulses during childhood, and society’s sexual morality to resolve the earlier childhood
emotional conflicts that determine how to behave and think later.
B. Learning perspective
Most mental and emotional disorders, in contrast to the psychoanalytic perspective, arise
from inadequate or inappropriate learning. People acquire abnormal behaviors through
the various kinds of learning.
C. Cognitive perspective
Whether we accept it or not, the quality of our internal dialogue either builds
ourselves up or tear ourselves down and has profound effect on our mental
health.
The main theme of this perspective is that self-defeating thoughts lead to the
development of negative emotions and self-destructive behaviors.
People's ways thinking about events in their life determines their emotional and
behavioral patterns.
Most of the time our thinking patterns in one way or another affects our
emotional and behavioral wellbeing in either positive or negative ways.
Our environmental and cultural experiences in our life play a major role in
the formation of our thinking style.
7.3. Types of Psychological Disorders
In this connection, there are many types of psychological disorders, but here in
this section we will try to see only types of mood disorder, anxiety disorder and
personality disorder.
1) Mood Disorders
If you have a mood disorder, your general emotional state or mood is distorted or
inconsistent with your circumstances and interferes with your ability to function.
You may be extremely sad, empty or irritable (depressed), or you may have periods
of depression alternating with being excessively happy (mania).
The disorders in this category include those where the primary symptom is a
disturbance in mood.
Anxiety disorders are the most common of mental disorders and affect nearly 30
percent of adults at some point in their lives.
However, anxiety disorders are treatable and a number of effective treatments are
available.
Anxiety Disorders categorize a large number of disorders where the primary feature is
abnormal or inappropriate anxiety.
The disorders in this category include Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, Specific Phobias,
Social Phobia, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and
Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
a) Panic Disorder is characterized by a series of panic attacks. A panic attack is
an inappropriate intense feeling of fear or discomfort including many of the
following symptoms: heart palpitations, trembling, shortness of breath, chest
pain, dizziness.
These symptoms are so severe that the person may actually believe he or she is
having a heart attack.
In fact, many, if not most of the diagnoses of Panic Disorder are made by a
physician in a hospital emergency room.
b) Agoraphobia literally means fear of the marketplace. It refers to a series of
symptoms where the person fears, and often avoids, situations where escape or
help might not be available, such as shopping centers, grocery stores, or other
public place.
Agoraphobia is often a part of panic disorder if the panic attacks are severe
enough to result in an avoidance of these types of places.
c) Specific or Simple Phobia and Social Phobia represent an intense fear and
often an avoidance of a specific situation, person, place, or thing.
To be diagnosed with a phobia, the person must have suffered significant
negative consequences because of this fear and it must be disruptive to their
everyday life.
d) Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) -is characterized by obsessions
(thoughts which seem uncontrollable) and compulsions (behaviors which act to
reduce the obsession).
Most people think of compulsive hand washers or people with an intense fear of
dirt or of being infected.
These obsessions and compulsions are disruptive to the person's everyday life,
with sometimes hours being spent each day repeating things, which were
completed successfully already such as checking, counting, cleaning, or bathing.
e) Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) occurs only after a person is
exposed to a traumatic event where their life or someone else's life is
threatened.
Eg- war, natural disasters, major accidents, and severe child abuse.
Once exposed to an incident such as this, the disorder develops into an
intense fear of related situations, avoidance of these situations, reoccurring
nightmares, flashbacks, and heightened anxiety to the point that it
significantly disrupts their everyday life.
f) Generalized Anxiety Disorder- is diagnosed when a person has extreme
anxiety in nearly every part of their life.
It is not associated with just open places (as in agoraphobia), specific
situations (as in specific phobia), or a traumatic event (as in PTSD).
Treatment of mental illnesses can take various forms. They can include medication, talk
therapy, a combination of both, and can last only one session or take many years to
complete.
Many different types of treatment are available, but most agree that the core components
of psychotherapy remain the same. Psychotherapy consists of the following:
1. A positive, healthy relationship between a client or patient and a trained psychotherapist
2. Recognizable mental health issues, whether diagnosable or not
3. Agreement on the basic goals of treatment
4. Working together as a team to achieve these goals
With these commonalities in mind, this chapter will summarize the different types of
psychotherapy, including treatment approaches and modalities and will describe the
different professionals who perform psychotherapy.
Important element of treatment
Humanistic
Cognitive,
Behavioral, and
Psycho-Dynamic.
CHAPTER EIGHT INTRODUCTION TO LIFE SKILLS
As defined in the document of World Health Organization life skills are “abilities for adaptive and
positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of
everyday life.”
It is also defined as “behavioral changes or behavioral development approach designed to address a
balance of three areas: knowledge attitude and skills” (UNICEF‟s definition).
Life skills are essentially those abilities that help to promote mental well-being and competence in
young people as they face the realities of life.
Hence, students who are able to understand and use these skills, along with their educational
qualifications, will be better placed to take advantage of educational and employment
opportunities.
8.3. Components of Life Skills
Critical thinking
Self- confidence
If someone is able to develop them at
Self-awareness
least to an average level, s/he can lead
Self- esteem a better and peaceful life. Moreover, to
Decision making be effective in life, one has to develop
Interpersonal relationship skills of expressing views, challenging
Reflective communication stereotypes, making connections,
thinking creatively, getting good
Peer resistance advices, managing time, learning how
Knowing rights and duties to learn, listening actively, and the like.
Problem solving
Critical thinking - thinking more effectively within curricular subject areas,
understanding the reasoning employed, assessing independently and
appropriately, and solving problems effectively. It involves, as well, improved
thinking skills in dealing with real life problems in assessing information and
arguments in social contexts and making life decisions.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the chapter, you are expected to:
Define self-concept, self-awareness, self-esteem, and self-
confidence and illustrate with real life examples;
Describe features of emotional intelligence and anger
management and demonstrate with examples from your
experience;
Explain resilience and coping with stress by taking
different stressors as an example;
Explain critical and creative thinking, problem solving and
decision making by taking hypothetical/real life stories.
9.1. Self-Concept and Self-Awareness
A. Self-concept
The self is a reflexive phenomenon that develops in social
interaction and is based on the social character of human language
(Gecas, 1982) .
It is the totality of ideas that a person holds about the self
It includes everything the person believes to be true about
himself/herself.
It is composed of relatively permanent self-assessments that of
course changes over time with life experiences and relationships
It is not restricted to the present. It also includes past and future
selves
It is a multi-dimensional construct that refers to an individual's
perception of "self" in relation to a number of characteristics, such
as academics, gender roles, racial identity, and many others
It guides our actions, motivations, expectations and goals for
future
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B. Self- awareness
A. Self-esteem
"Esteem" is derived from the Latin aestimare, meaning "to
appraise, value, rate, weigh, estimate," and self-esteem is our
cognitive and, above all, emotional evaluation of our own
worth.
More than that, it is the matrix through which we think, feel,
and act, reflects and determines our relation to ourselves, to
others, and to the world.
Self-esteem deals with the evaluative and emotional
dimensions of the self-concept.
Self-evaluation or self-esteem refers to the evaluative and
affective aspects of the self-concept.
Self-esteem refers to an individual's overall self-evaluation. It
is the judgment or opinion we hold about ourselves. It‟s the
extent to which we perceive ourselves to be worthwhile and
capable human beings.
The term confidence comes from the Latin fidere, "to trust."
To be self-confident is to trust in oneself, and, in particular,
in one‘s ability or aptitude to engage successfully or at least
adequately with the world.
It is said that we have a limited ability to regulate ourselves, and if we use our
control resources on unimportant tasks, there will be less available capacity for
the important ones.
9.4. Anger Management
When people are angry or annoyed, they may walk away or use
a harsh tone of voice. Other times, they may yell, argue, or start
a fight.
When angry, think or do something that will make you feel more
valuable, i.e., worthy of appreciation.
Do not trust your judgment when angry. Anger magnifies and amplifies
only the negative aspects of an issue, distorting realistic appraisal.
Try to see the complexity of the issue. Anger requires narrow and rigid
focus that ignores or oversimplifies context.
Do not justify your anger. Instead, consider whether it will help you act in
your long-term best interest.
Know your physical and mental resources. Anger is more likely to occur
when tired, hungry, sick, confused, anxious, preoccupied, distracted, or
overwhelmed.
Focus on improving and repairing rather than blaming. It's
hard to stay angry without blaming and it's harder to blame
when focused on repairing and improving.
After sometime, you will make them part of your daily behavior and you may not
need to remember them.
9.5. Emotional Intelligence and Managing Emotion
Last but not least, it links strongly with concepts of love and
spirituality.
Individuals have different personalities, wants, needs, and
ways of showing their emotions.
Catastrophes - Catastrophes are unpredictable, large scale events, such as war and
natural disasters, that nearly everyone appraises as threatening.
Significant Life Changes - the death of a loved one, loss of a job, leaving home,
marriage, divorce, etc. Life transitions and insecurities are often keenly felt during
young adulthood.
Daily life events - our happiness stems less from enduring good
fortune than from our responses to daily events such as a
waiting to hear medical results, perfect exam scores, gratifying
phone call, your team‘s winning the big game and the like.
Although some people can simply shrug off such hassles, others
are easily affected by them.
Adversity is a fact of life and resilience is succeeding in the face of
the adversity. Resilience is about getting through pain and
disappointment without letting them crush your spirit.
In other language, resilience is the quality to come back at least as
strong as before after being knocked down by adversity.
Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity,
trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress such as
family and relationship problems, serious health problems or
workplace and financial stressors.
Analytic Generative
Convergent Divergent
Vertical Lateral
Probability Possibility
Judgment Suspended judgment
Hypothesis testing Hypothesis forming
Objective Subjective
Answer An answer
Closed Open-ended
Linear Associative
Reasoning Speculating
Logic Intuition
Yes but Yes and
9.8. Problem Solving and Decision Making
Problem solving
Problems are a central part of human life and it is almost impossible to
avoid it.
There are two classes of problems:
1.Well-defined problems are those problems whose goals, path to
solution, and obstacles to solution are clear based on the
information given.
Eg. the problem of how to calculate simple simultaneous equation.
2. Ill-defined problems are characterized by their lack of a clear path
to solution. Such problems often lack a clear problem statement as
well, making the task of problem definition and problem
representation quite challenging.
Eg. the problem of how to find a life partner is an ill-defined
problem.
Problem solving is a process in which we perceive and resolve
a gap between a present situation and a desired goal, with the
path to the goal blocked by known or unknown obstacles.
Even though the type, degree and context of the problem vary from
individual to individual, there are activities that should be
accomplished one after the other. The steps are:
1. Recognize or identify the problem.
2. Define and represent the problem mentally.
3. Develop a solution strategy alternatives and select the best one.
4. Organize knowledge about the problem and avail the necessary
resources.
5. Allocate mental and physical resources for solving the problem.
6. Monitor his or her progress toward the goal.
7. Evaluate the solution for accuracy.
Decision-making
Time management does not mean being busy all the time. It means using your time
the way you want to use it which can include large doses of day dreaming and
doing nothing.
Good time management brings with it increasing relaxation, less stress, more
satisfaction and greater accomplishment.
Time is a communal non-renewable resource for all human
beings but abused by many individuals.
Time is not something that we can get back again once passed
although it is a freely available resource.
Many of us do not consider time as a resource and we savagely
spend it without doing something important for our life. Some
people even use it to harm themselves.
Therefore, wise utilization of time is very beneficial for
success, happiness and peace of mind.
Much like money, time is both valuable and limited: it must be
saved, used wisely, and budgeted.
Good time management is essential to success at university.
Planning your time allows you to spread your work over
sessions, avoid a jam of works, and cope with study stress.
Many deadlines for university works occur at the same time.
Hence, unless you plan in advance, you will find it impossible
to manage.
To meet the demands of study, you need to spread your
workload over sessions of time.
Work out what needs to be done and when they should be done.
Plan on how you have to use your available time as efficiently
as possible.
People who practice good time management techniques often
find that they:
Are more productive,
Have more energy for things they need to accomplish,
Feel less stressed,
Are able to do the things they want,
Get more things done,
Relate more positively to others, and
Feel better about themselves.
Finding a time management strategy that works best for individuals
depends on their personality, ability to self-motivate and level of self-
discipline.
Determine the lecture topic and review past readings and notes
Complete readings assigned to lecture topics and preview any
other auxiliary materials
Prepare questions you may have from the readings
During Class
Instead of recopying your notes, record yourself reviewing what you wrote (if
possible).
18. Find out when and where the test will be given;
In other language career management skills (CMS) are competencies which help
individuals to identify their existing skills develop career learning goals and take
action to enhance their careers.