1. PSYCHOLOGY:

2. What does it mean to have “personality”?
Researchers have developed many ways of assessing personality, but even if we do gain an understanding of how we are, the question of why we are that way remains.
Ex. We can gain an understanding of HOW (shy, mean, nice) we are, the question of WHY (what caused it) we are that way remains.

3. Personality Traits
Personality is the collection of characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are associated with a person
Personality traits are characteristic behaviors and feelings that are consistent and long lasting
Personality States are temporary patterns of behavior and feelings that may arise in a specific situation
Personality is a construct, like consciousness.

4. The Big Five Traits
Current belief; all personality traits derive from five basic personality traits

5. O C E A N penness xtraversion euroticism greeableness onscientiousness
This is an example of a mnemonic device used to help remember (retrieval)

6. Criticisms of Big Five
Some believe that more than five basic traits are needed to account for the wide personality differences among people
Some believe that five traits is too much. Openness correlates with extraversion and can be combined.
Regardless of how many traits you believe exist, traits are always fairly consistent throughout life and states are just temporary patterns of behavior

7. Psychodynamic Theories
Many exist; they all emphasize unconscious motives and desires, as well as the importance of childhood experiences in shaping personality.
Psychoanalysis involves analyzing thoughts and feelings to reveal what is going on beneath the surface (unconscious)
Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Psychoanalysis
Freud based his theory off of observing patients.

8. Theory is based on impulses and needs of the unconscious and the conflict with societal demands to restrain those impulses.
The Conscious, The Preconscious, and the Unconscious
Conscious contains all the information that a person is paying attention to at any given time.
Preconscious contains all information outside of a person’s attention but readily available if needed.
Unconscious contains thoughts, feelings, desires, and memories of which people have no awareness but can influence their day-to-day lives.

10. Freud believed that information in the unconscious emerges in slips of the tongue, jokes, dreams, illness symptoms, etc. These are called Freudian Slips.
To demonstrate the possible existence of the unconscious, break the class up into groups of three, and have each group choose a theme – for example, “The time I was in the hospital”, or “My most embarrassing moment,”. Two members from each group will recount real experiences on the group’s theme, the third member will tell a lie. Each story should last about a minute. Allow students some time to prepare their stories. Have students present their stories and have the class vote on who is lying out of the group. The point is that the liar cannot successfully lie; the unconscious will slip out.

11. The Id, Ego, and Superego (3 components of personality)
Responsible for survival
Unconscious and operates according to the pleasure principle, the drive to achieve pleasure and avoid pain.
Seeks immediate gratification of impulses (what feels good)
The Id would be like the “devil” sitting on your shoulder

12. Responsible for society’s rules of behavior (moral standards)
Superego
Responsible for society’s rules of behavior (moral standards)
Operates on all three levels of awareness, and is based on morality principle, must follow moral standards and rules and breaking them causes guilt.
Ask students what would happen to a person with a weak superego? Possible answers – no stopping id, self-centered, only worry about their own needs
Ask students what would happen to a person with a strong superego? Possible answers – driven by morals and guilt, just thinking bad thoughts would cause guilt and stress
The superego is like the “angel” or police force.
The superego would let us die rather than break a rule.

13. Ego
Manages the conflict between the id and superego. Balances our desires with the demands of reality.
Operates on all three levels of awareness, and is based on the reality principle, the awareness that gratification of impulses has to be delayed in order to accommodate the demands of the real world.
Students can form groups and make skits in which they role play the id, ego, and superego. Have them do their skit and then have students decide who is the id, ego, superego.
Students can also create an illustration demonstrating the id, ego, and superego.

15. Defense Mechanisms
Conflict – Freud believed Id, Ego, Superego are in constant conflict
Anxiety – arises when ego cannot balance id & superego
Rather than face conflict and anxiety, people deceive themselves into believing nothing is wrong by using defense mechanisms, behaviors that protect people from anxiety

16. Types of defense mechanisms
Repression – keeping unpleasant thoughts, memories, and feelings shut up in the unconscious
Reaction Formation - replacing an unacceptable feeling or urge with its opposite
Projection – attributing one’s own unacceptable thoughts or feelings to someone else

17. Displacement – transferring feelings about a person or event onto someone or something else.
Denial – refusing to acknowledge something that is obvious to others
Regression – reverting to a more immature state of psychological development

18. Freud’s Psychosexual stages of development
Freud believed that personality was fixed by about age 5.
Freud believed adult’s psychological problems have their roots in early childhood and can be traced to unresolved conflicts then. When a conflict is not adequately resolved, an individual becomes fixated at that stage of development.

19. Oedipus complex – a male child’s sexual desire for his mother and hostility toward his father, whom he considers to be a rival for his mother’s love.
A male child who sees a naked female for the first time believes that her penis has been cut off. The child fears that his father will do the same to him for desiring his mother – a fear called castration anxiety. Because of this fear, the child represses his desires for his mother and begins to identify with his father. This illustrates the emergence of the superego.

20. Carl Jung’s Analytical Psychology
Freud drew criticism for his focus on children’s sexuality. Some his followers broke away. These theorists are called neo-Freudians.
Carl Jung’s Analytical Psychology
Jung was a neo-Freudian.
Believed unconscious has two layers. The personal conscious, which resembled Freud’s idea (pleasure principle), and the collective unconscious, which contains universal inherited (handed down from generation to generation) memories.
Personal unconscious – repressed feelings and thoughts developed during life

21. Jung called these universal (common) memories archetypes
Jung called these universal (common) memories archetypes. Archetypes are images or thoughts that have the same meaning for all human beings. Jung believed these archetypes controlled our behavior rather than a pleasure seeking unconscious (Freud’s idea).
In trying to fit to these archetypes we develop a persona, or a mask that we wear to hide our true feelings and try to fit what it is we believe we are to be.

22. Alfred Adler’s Theory on Personality
All people, especially children, have feelings of inferiority. Children are driven by these inner feelings of inferiority to adapt and develop skills.
However, some people suffer from an exaggerated sense of inferiority, or an inferiority complex.
These people may try to make themselves look better and dominate and control others to avoid their own feelings of inferiority. Ex. school bully

23. Criticisms of Psychodynamic Theories
There is no proof that there is an unconscious that controls us against our will (it is a construct)
Jung’s theory isn’t discussed much in psychology anymore, but we do know that animals do inherit certain broad rules of behavior

24. Behaviorist Theories
Behaviorists study only observable behavior. Their explanations of personality focus on learning.

25. B.F. Skinner’s Ideas
Personality arises from Operant conditioning
You make decisions based on reinforcement and punishment. Behaviors that have positive consequences increase, while behaviors with negatives consequences decrease
Environment determines behavior

26. Albert Bandura’s Ideas
Social learning/Observational learning – people learn behaviors (and therefore personality) by watching others
Bandura criticized Skinner for not acknowledging people’s ability to think
Criticisms of Behavioral Approaches
Theories shortchange humans ability to think
Early theories in this area focused on our acts of behaviors as if we were robots

27. Humanistic Theories
Focus on human’s ability to think consciously and rationally, to control impulses, and to achieve full potential
People are responsible for actions and have free will to change them
Optimistic perspective of human nature

28. Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
All of us have inherited something unique, and if the environment will allow it, we have the opportunity to become great. To be great it to realize your full potential (self-actualization).
We satisfy basic needs moving up the hierarchy to reach the top (self-actualization)

29. Carl Roger’s Person-Centered Theory
Believed that the biggest problem that a person faced was living up to the ideal self (as close to perfection as we will come). Believed this shapes a persons personality
When we have united what we should be with what we are, we have become a fully functioning individual

30. Criticisms of Humanistic Theories
Too naively optimistic and fail to provide insight into the evil side of human nature
Too simple and vague to account very well for the great variety of human personality

31. Measuring Personality
Doctors, researchers, and employers use personality assessments for a variety of reasons
Clinical psychologists use assessments for diagnosing psychological disorders
Mental health providers use tests to decide how best to counsel people about normal problems of daily living

32. Some organizations use tests to select personnel to hire (not so much anymore)
Researchers use them to study personality traits

33. 3 ways of assessing personality – Objective tests, projective tests, assessment centers
paper-and-pen tests that require people to answer questions about their typical behaviors
MMPI-2 – Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) – 567 questions divided into groups. People answer true, false, cannot say.
Originally developed to help clinical psychologists diagnose psychological disorders

34. Projective Tests
Require subjects to respond to pictures and phrases that can be interpreted in many different ways.
Rorschach Test – series of ten inkblots that subjects look at and determine what they see
The Rorschach is currently the second most commonly used test in forensic assessment, after the MMPI
Originally created by Hermann Rorschach in 1921, the scoring system was improved after his death

35. (TAT) Thematic Apperception Test – series of pictures containing a variety of characters and scenes. Subjects make up stories about each picture.
Its adherents claim that it taps a subject's unconscious to reveal repressed aspects of personality, motives and needs for achievement, power and intimacy, and problem-solving abilities.
In the case of adults and adolescents of average intelligence, a subject is asked to tell as dramatic a story as they can for each picture, including:
what has led up to the event shown
what is happening at the moment
what the characters are feeling and thinking, and
what the outcome of the story was.
TAT was developed during the 1930s
Declining adherence to the Freudian principle of repression on which the test is based has caused the TAT to be criticised as false or outdated by many professional psychologists

36. Assessment Centers
Allow psychologists to assess personality in specific situations.