1. Psychoanalytic Perspective

2. Personality The Theory Conscious: Current awareness
Preconscious: “Beneath the surface,” but easily retrieved
Unconscious: Thoughts, memories “deep below the surface,” with great influence – thoughts/feelings you aren’t aware of
Thus, human behavior largely based on “instincts” or drives
Sex (Eros – the “life force”)
Aggression (Thanatos – the “death force”)
How do we access the unconscious?
Freudian slips
Dreams & “wish fulfillment” (remember manifest vs. latent content!)
“Repressed” memories

4. Personality

5. Personality The Components The Id:
Present at birth, completely unconscious
Basic urges: eat, sleep, sex, defecate
Focused on primary process thinking: primitive, illogical, irrational – impulsive
Based on the pleasure principle: all needs must be satisfied immediately; unsatisfied needs lead to anxiety
What if your Id is dominant?

6. Personality The Components The Superego: The “moral watchdog”
Not present at birth; Freud theorized it “emerges” from the ego around 3-5 years of age
Social standards of “right & wrong” – internalization of social norms
Compares behavior against “ego ideal,” the standard of excellence
“Overactive” superego may lead to excessive guilt

7. Personality The Components The Ego: Controls thinking & reasoning
Operates at all levels of awareness
Secondary Process Thinking: rational, realistic, can incorporate long-range planning (contrast w/ Id)
Governed by reality principle: still desires gratification of Id, but based in social reality, mediate between Id & “real world”
With only Id & Ego, one would be unsocial & selfish

8. Personality Psychosexual Stages
Assumes “driving force” behind personality development is resolution of task/challenge at each stage, rooted in unconscious thoughts/instincts
Unsuccessful = fixation, “stuck”
Excessive gratification or frustration
Leads to overemphasis on needs of that period

9. Stage 1: The Oral Stage (Birth-18 mos.)
Personality
Stage 1: The Oral Stage (Birth-18 mos.)
Source of satisfaction: mouth
During an age of complete dependence
Challenge: weaning – rejection? Need for gratification?
Fixation: lack of confidence, obsessive eating, smoking, sarcasm, passive dependence etc.

10. Stage 2: The Anal Stage (18 mos.-3 yrs)
Personality
Stage 2: The Anal Stage (18 mos.-3 yrs)
Source of satisfaction: anus
Challenge: toilet training (society’s 1st effort to regulate our bodily urges); focus is on control
Fixation: obsession w/ neatness (anal retentive) or messy & disorganized (anal expulsive); hostility towards women, anxiety about sex

11. Stage 3: The Phallic Stage (3-5 yrs)
Personality
Stage 3: The Phallic Stage (3-5 yrs)
Source of satisfaction: genitals – attachment to parent of opposite sex, jealous of same sex
Oedipal Complex (boys)

12. The Phallic Stage (cont)
Personality
The Phallic Stage (cont)
Electra Complex & Penis Envy! (girls)
Fixation: improper identification, homosexuality

13. Stage 4: The Genital Stage (13-19 yrs)
Personality
Latency Period (5-13 yrs)
Suppression of sexual instincts
A “natural” homosexual period, prefer company of same sex
Evaluating Freud
Unconscious can influence behaviors, early childhood can influence adult personality, BUT:
Lacks scientific evidence
Male-centered
Penis envy, castration anxiety etc. seem quite a stretch…
Stage 4: The Genital Stage (13-19 yrs)
Maturation of sexual desires, relationships

14. Exploring the Unconscious Psychosexual Stages

15. Personality Development
Erogenous zones
Oedipus complex
A boy’s sexual desires
toward his mother &
feelings of jealousy and
hatred for the rival father.
Electra complex
Vice Versa
Identification
Child copes and represses such feelings and begins to identify with rival parent.
Fixation
A strong conflict within a stage that would lock a person in that stage.

16. Personality Freud & Defense Mechanisms What are they?
Coping methods; unconscious defense against unpleasant emotions
Purpose is to avoid anxiety; uncomfortable thoughts & feelings in one’s unconscious create anxiety (e.g., impulses from Id threaten to get out of control) & defense mechanisms help protect your conscious mind by reducing/avoiding it
Overactive Id: can I control myself?
Overactive Superego: overabundance of guilt

17. Personality
The Same Unacceptable Impulse Can Lead to Different Defense Mechanisms
Sample Unacceptable Impulse: Negativity
Defense Mechanism
Application
Sublimation
Being a move or restaurant clinic
Reaction Formation
Expressing optimism & finding positives to any situation
Projection
Being sensitive to or critical of negativity in others
Rationalization
Believing the world is in a dismal state, so negativity is “justified”
Regression
Doing sloppy work or whining
Denial
Not accepting one’s negativity

18. Personality Freud & Defense Mechanisms Repression (#1!)
Anxiety-evoking thoughts, memories pushed into unconscious
Sexual desires, childhood trauma, etc.
“Motivated forgetting”
Denial
Refusal to acknowledge
painful, anxiety-
producing info

19. Personality Freud & Defense Mechanisms Projection
Attributing one’s own unacceptable impulses, qualities unto another
Rationalization
Creating acceptable, logical reasons for things that otherwise would produce anxiety, would not be acceptable
“I failed the MCAT, but I never really wanted to be a doctor anyway.”
“Everyone thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.”
“It depends what your definition of sex is.”
Displacement
Redirect undesirable motives from original source to another

21. Personality Freud & Defense Mechanisms Identification
Dealing with anxiety by taking on the characteristics of another
Mid-life crisis as trying to take on the characteristics of a younger man
Regression
Reverting to childlike behaviors & defenses in response to threatening situations
Intellectualization
Avoiding the uncomfortable emotional aspects of a painful experience by focusing on abstract ideas
Dealing with a cancer diagnosis by researching the illness extensively & becoming an “expert” rather than dealing with the emotional impact

22. Personality Freud & Defense Mechanisms Reaction Formation
Refusing to acknowledge or deal with uncomfortable or anxiety producing thoughts by displaying the opposite desires/behaviors
Often marked by persistent behaviors
Homophobia in response to one’s own homosexual desires
Sublimation
Most adaptive of the defense mechanisms
Convert unacceptable/uncomfortable desires or thoughts; allows an outlet for anxiety through acceptable behaviors
Watch boxing to sublimate desire for aggression
Suck on lollipops to sublimate desire for a cigarette

23. Personality Defense Mechanisms in Real Life
After spending time with his mistress, a man picks up some flowers for his wife because he feels like she doesn’t love him anymore.
Projection?
2. A minister preaches about the evils of homosexuality, when he is gay himself
Reaction Formation?
3. A woman says that she is no longer mourning the death of her child, but feels anxious every time she sees a small boy.
Repression?

24. Neo-Freudians

25. Neo-Freudians
Neo-Freudians are followers of Freud, but typically disagreed with him in at least one way or another

26. Neo-Freudian and Psychodynamic Theorists
Neo-Freudians veered away from Freud
Placed more importance on conscious mind’s role in interpreting experience and in coping with environment
Doubted that sex and aggression were all consuming motives
Tended to emphasize loftier motives and social interactions

27. Carl Jung Jung disagreed with Freud in two major points
1. Had more positive view of human nature
Try to develop potential while trying to handle their instinctual urges

28. Personality Neo-Freudians Carl Jung & Analytical Psychology
Coined terms “intraversion” & “extraversion”
Personal Unconscious: similar to Freud’s idea of the unconscious
Collective Unconscious: shared instincts, urges, memories, & behaviors, inherited from past generations, & common to everyone
Archetype: “thought forms,” collective memories based on ancestral experiences (birth, death, power, evil, hero, mother)
Persona: “mask” used to deal w/ outside world, “fake” personality
Broke w/ Freud over emphasis on sexuality

29. Carl Jung Archetype themes throughout many cultures stay the same
Example:
Jack and the Beanstalk is similar to David
And Goliath)
PLOT?
Batman? Superman?
Such stories are common due to reoccurrence in history and stored
in unconscious.
Sense of self is an archetype
Use our personal and collective unconscious
to shape our personality

30. Alfred Adler Felt the driving force of personalities is the desire to
Overcome feelings of inferiority
Examples:
Napoleon
Glenn Cunningham
Coined the term inferiority
complex
A pattern of avoiding feelings of
inadequacy rather than trying to
overcome their source
Starts in childhood because one
Cannot take care of themselves

31. Alfred Adler
Also believed the way parents treat their child influences the styles of life they choose
Over pampering leads to self-centeredness
Neglect leads to angry, hostile person
Ideally children should learn courage and self-reliance from father and generosity and feelings for others from their mother

32. Karen Horney
She was a follower of Freud but disagreed with Freud in many ways
Stressed the importance of basic anxiety which leads to helplessness
Feelings of hostility towards parents due to anxiety and helplessness.
Believed that if a child was raised in a
loving environment, child would avoid
parent-child conflict.
Countered Freud’s assumption
of “penis envy”

33. Personality Neo-Freudians Karen Horney
Saw anxiety as the true motivating force; how one reacts to real or imagined dangers or threats
Saw personality as built around fighting rejection
Social/environment issues critical, especially childhood relationships
Believed we all need affection, love

34. Assessing Unconscious Processes
To study personality there must be a pathway to the unconscious
Projective tests- personality test that provides ambiguous stimuli designed to trigger projection of one’s inner dynamics, like a psychological X-Ray.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)- people express their feelings &
interests through the stories they
make up about certain scenes.

35. Testing Personality Projective Test Example
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): 20 picture cards of human figures in ambiguous situations
Viewed one-by-one, “tell a story”
Who does the respondent identify with? What are the “themes” of the story?

36. Testing Personality

37. Testing Personality

38. Testing Personality

39. Testing Personality

40. Assessing Unconscious Processes
Rorschach Inkblot Test- most widely used projective test, a set of 10 inkblots, designed by Hermann Rorschach; seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots
Scoring has improved: computer aided tool has been designed to improve agreement among raters and enhance the test’s validity

41. Testing Personality

42. Testing Personality Projective Test Example
Rorschach Inkblot Test: best known & for a long time most frequently used (less today)
“What do you see?” – open ended
Patterns unique in form, color shading
Does respondent use “mirror image”? Color? White space? Focus on certain “subjects”?

43. Testing Personality

44. Testing Personality

45. Testing Personality

46. Testing Personality

47. Testing Personality

48. Testing Personality

49. Testing Personality

50. Testing Personality

51. Modern Unconscious Mind
Freud was right about one thing: we indeed have limited access to all that goes on in our minds
However Anthony Greenwald believes it is time to abandon Freud’s idea of the unconscious
View unconscious as information processing that occurs without awareness
We fly on auto-pilot more than we know

52. Humanistic Perspective & Personality

53. Humanistic Perspective and Personality
During 1960s, Humanistic perspective began to develop
Goes against Freud and Skinner
Freud Unconscious
Skinner behaviorism and learning
Humanistic psychologists focused on the ways “healthy” people strive for self-determination and self-realization

54. Humanistic Perspective and Personality
Pioneers
Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
Offered a third force perspective that emphasized human potential

55. Humanistic Perspective and Personality
Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person
Motivated by a hierarchy of needs
Once our self-esteem is met we ultimately seek self-actualization and self-transcendence

56. Humanistic Perspective and Personality
Decided that each of these people were self- aware and self-accepting, secure in who they were
Their interests were problem centered rather than self-centered
During his study on colleges students, he speculated that those likely to become self-actualizing adults were
Compassionate towards elders & disturbed by cruelty and meanness .
Had courage to be unpopular & unashamed

57. Humanistic Perspective and Personality
Carl Rogers’ Person Centered Perspective
Believed that people are basically good and are endowed with self-actualizing tendencies
Growth-promoting environment required three conditions
Genuineness, acceptance, and empathy
People nurture growth by being genuine
Being open with their own feelings and being transparent

58. Humanistic Perspective and Personality
People nurture growth by being accepting
Unconditional positive regard: according to Rogers, an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
People nurture growth by empathy
Sharing and mirroring our feelings and reflecting our meanings
“Rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change I know.”
These three factors are the nutrients that enable people to grow.

59. Humanistic Perspective and Personality
Central feature of personality is one’s self-concept
Self-concept: all our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, in answer to the question ”Who am I?”
“…help others to know, accept, and be true to themselves.”

60. Criticisms of Humanism
Concepts are vague and subjective
Can lead to self-indulgence, selfishness, and erosion of morals
Fails to appreciate the human capacity for evil.

61. Social Cognitive Perspective
Albert Bandura

62. Bandura Proposed by Bandura
Social-Cognitive views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits (including their thinking) and their social context
Viewing nature and nurture as working together

63. Learned Behaviors
SOCIAL: Believed we learn many of our behaviors either through conditioning or by observing others and modeling our behaviors after theirs
COGNITIVE: Also emphasizes the importance of mental processes
What we think about our situation plays a factor as well

64. Reciprocal Determinism
Bandura views the person-environment interaction as reciprocal determinism
The interacting influences of behaviors, internal cognition, and environment
Calls these “interlocking determinates of each other”
Example: Children’s TV-viewing habits (past behavior) influences their viewing preferences (internal factor), which influences how TV (environmental factor) affects their current behavior.

65. Social Cognitive Perspective
Personal control: the extent to which people perceive control over their environment rather than feeling helpless
2 ways to study the effect of personal control
Correlate people’s feelings of control with their behaviors and achievements
Experiment by raising or lowering peoples sense of control and noting the effects

66. Social Cognitive Perspective
Internal vs. External Locus of Control
I: You control your fate.
E: Outside forces control your fate.
Depleting and strengthening self control
Self-control: the ability to control impulses and delay gratification
Predicts good adjustment, better grades, and social success according to June Tangney
Self-control requires attention and energy

67. Learned Helplessness vs. Personal Control
People who feel helpless and oppressed often perceive control as external
Learned helplessness: Helpless behavior following repeated experiences that seemed to have no control.
In an experiment on learned helplessness, Seligman found that animals that were unable to change their situation for long periods of times seemed unable or unwilling to change when the possibility was opened to them.

68. Outcomes of Personal Control
Learned Helplessness
Uncontrollable
bad events
Perceived
lack of control
Generalized
helpless behavior
Important Issue
Nursing Homes
Prisons
Colleges

69. Optimism vs. Pessimism
Good measure of how helpless or effective you feel
Optimism health: outlive pessimists or live with fewer illnesses
Dating couples have conflicts, optimists and their partners see it as engaging constructively
Excessive Optimism = not a good thing!

70. The Trait Perspective
Belief that personality is defined by specific characteristics, or traits… (Genetic emphasis)
Trait: a characteristic of personality (combination of traits = personality)
Viewed as stable and motivates behavior in keeping with the trait (lazy, friendly, etc.)
Nature! “You are who you are!”
Gordon Allport (1919) pioneer: defined personality in terms of specific traits / identifiable behavior patterns

71. Personality Inventory
A self-report questionnaire (true-false or agree-disagree items)
designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors
used to assess personality by identifying specific traits
Objectively graded / assessed
Used by most all personality theorists
Factor analysis: statistical procedure used to identify clusters of questions (Example: strong correlations between social, friendly, talkative = Extraversion as basic personality trait

72. Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory
Most popular inventory in corporate sector
89 of 100 largest corporations : 2.5 million/year
Colleges: Career placement office

73. Eyesenck Personality Questionnaire
Hans Eyesenck: two primary personality factors as axes for describing personality variation
UNSTABLE
STABLE
choleric
melancholic
phlegmatic
sanguine
INTROVERTED
EXTRAVERTED
Moody
Anxious
Rigid
Sober
Pessimistic
Reserved
Unsociable
Quiet
Sociable
Outgoing
Talkative
Responsive
Easygoing
Lively
Carefree
Leadership
Passive
Careful
Thoughtful
Peaceful
Controlled
Reliable
Even-tempered
Calm
Touchy
Restless
Aggressive
Excitable
Changeable
Impulsive
Optimistic
Active

74. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
MMPI: Used to assess abnormal personality / emotional disorders
Hysteria
(uses symptoms to solve problems)
Masculinity/femininity
(interests like those of other sex)
T-score 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Hypochondriasis
(concern with body symptoms)
Depression
(pessimism, hopelessness)
Psychopathic deviancy
(disregard for social standards)
Paranoia
(delusions, suspiciousness)
Psychasthenia
(anxious, guilt feelings)
Schizophrenia
(withdrawn, bizarre thoughts)
Hypomania
(overactive, excited, impulsive)
Social introversion
(shy, inhibited)
Clinically
significant
range
After
treatment
(no scores
in the clinically
significant range)
Before
(anxious,
depressed,
and
displaying
deviant
behaviors)

75. Testing Personality Examples of Objective Personality Tests:
MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory): far & away most widely used
567 items: true/false/cannot say
Checks for consistency – geared toward assessing validity (e.g. lying, defensiveness, too many “cannot say”)
Used to diagnose personality disorders
16PF (187 items – Cattell’s “16 Factors”)
NEO (built around the “Big 5”
Edwards Personal Preference Schedule
Miller Motivation Schedule (single trait)

76. Testing Personality Projective Tests
Unlimited number of response to ambiguous stimuli: respondent projects his/her characteristic concerns, conflicts, & desires on to the stimulus, allowing the examiner to draw conclusions about the respondent’s personality
Advantages:
Less tension than a “test” situation
True purpose unclear, less “faking”
May uncover unconscious thoughts, feelings
Disadvantages:
Very subjective, unstandardized; scoring may differ from one examiner to another
Need highly trained examiner

77. The Big Five (Personality traits)

78. Personality First-Borns: Have to grow up fast
Confident, perfectionist, self- reliant
Comfortable w/ adults
Last-Born:
Crave attention, people- oriented
May feel they’re not taken seriously
Tend to be impatient, temperamental, yet carefree
Middle-Child:
Little recognition, respect
May feel they don’t “belong”
Most balanced; family “mediator”
Prone to peer pressure, most vulnerable
Only-Children:
Much like first-born (reliable, etc.)
May have trouble relating to peers, have to adapt to an adult’s world

79. Self-Serving Bias A readiness to perceive oneself favorable.
People accept more responsibility for successes than failures.
Appears to be adaptive as it wards off extreme depression.

80. Does culture play a part in our personality (according to humanistic psychologists)?
Individualism: giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals. Defining your identity in terms of yourself.
More privacy, more accepting of different lifestyles, people feel free to switch jobs, churches, and homes.
Collectivism: giving priority to the goals of a group and defining your identity as part of that group.
Less divorce, homicide, stress-related disease, and loneliness