1. PowerPoint® Presentation by Jim Foley Personality © 2013 Worth Publishers

2. Module 35: Contemporary Perspectives on Personality

3. Trait Theories, Social-Cognitive Theories, and the Self

4. Getting you to think about the qualities you may see in yourself: Traits: Stable components of personality  Dimensions and factors  Assessing traits: MMPI  The 5 “CANOE” factors  The impact of traits on situations & vice versa Social-Cognitive influences on personality  Reciprocal Determinism among thoughts, social situation, behavior  Internal vs. external locus of control  Optimism and positive psychology The Self: Spotlight effect, Self-Esteem, Self-serving bias,

5. Personality: An individual’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors [persisting over time and across situations] Sensitive, Reactive Naïve Agreeable, Open Introverted Neurotically irritable Conscientious Contentedly lethargic

6. Getting you to think about the qualities you may see in yourself: Traits: Stable components of personality Dimensions and factors Assessing traits: MMPI The 5 “CANOE” factors The impact of traits on situations & vice versa Social-Cognitive influences on personality Reciprocal Determinism among thoughts, social situation, behavior Internal vs. external locus of control Optimism and positive psychology The Self: Spotlight effect, Self-Esteem, Self-serving bias

7. Personality As Seen in Palms and Stars  By saying something that is vague and likely to be true of you, then following up on comments that you reinforce by nodding, someone can appear to see into your soul. You too can turn your keen sense of the obvious into a career in predicting the present! And handwriting, and crystal balls, and tea leaves, and scattered bones I see by your handwriting you like bananas.

8. Trait Theory of Personality  Gordon Allport decided that Freud overvalued unconscious motives and undervalued our real, observable personality styles/traits.  Myers and Briggs wanted to to study individual behaviors and statements to find how people differed in personality: having different traits.  The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a questionnaire categorizing people by traits. Trait theory of personality: That we are made up of a collection of traits, behavioral predispositions that can be identified and measured, traits that differ from person to person Trait: An enduring quality that makes a person tend to act a certain way. Examples: “honest.” “shy.” “hard-working.” MBTI traits come in pairs: “Judging” vs. “Perceiving.” “Thinking” vs. “Feeling.”

9. Traits: Rooted in Biology?  Brain: Extraverts tend to have low levels of brain activity, making it hard to suppress impulses, and leading them to seek stimulation.  Body: The trait of shyness appears to be related to high autonomic system reactivity, an easily triggered alarm system.  Genes: Selective breeding of animals seems to create lifelong differences in traits such as aggression, sociability, or calmness, suggesting genetic roots for these traits.

10. Factor Analysis and the Eysencks’ Personality Dimensions  Factor Analysis: Identifying factors that tend to cluster together.  Using factor analysis, Hans and Sybil Eysenck found that many personality traits actually are a function of two basic dimensions along which we all vary.  Research supports their idea that these variations are linked to genetics.

11. Assessing Traits: Questionnaires  Personality Inventory: Questionnaire assessing many personality traits, by asking which behaviors and responses the person would choose  Empirically derived test: all test items have been selected to because they predictably match the qualities being assessed.  Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): Designed to identify people with personality difficulties  T/F questionnaire; items were selected because they correlated with various traits, emotions, attitudes  Example: depressed people tend to answer “true” to: “Nothing in the paper interests me except the comics.”

12. Sample MMPI Test Profile

13. The “Big Five” Personality Factors  The Eysencks felt that people varied along two dimensions.  Current cross-cultural research and theory supports the expansion from two dimensions to five factors:  Conscientiousness: self-discipline, careful pursuit of delayed goals  Agreeableness: helpful, trusting, friendliness  Neuroticism: anxiety, insecurity, emotional instability  Openness: flexibility, nonconformity, variety  Extraversion: Drawing energy from others, sociability To help us remember the five factors, remember that the first letters spell “CANOE”…

14. The “Big Five”/ C.A.N.O.E. Personality Dimensions Impulsive Trusting Anxious Conforming Fun-Loving

15. Questions about Traits These topics are the subject of ongoing research: Stability: One’s distinctive mix of traits doesn’t change much over the lifespan. However, everyone in adulthood becomes:  More conscientious and agreeable, and  Less extraverted, neurotic/unstable, and less open (imaginative, flexible). Predictive value: Levels of success in work and relationships relates to traits such as openness and conscientiousness. Heritability: For most traits, genes account for 50% of the variation among individuals

16. Change vs. Consistency: Shifts with Age Over years of development, we change interests, attitudes, roles, jobs, relationships; we develop skills, maturity. Do traits stay stable through all this change? The evidence shows that it takes time for personality to stabilize. Traits do change, but less and less so over time. We change less, become more consistent.

17. Person-Situation Controversy  Trait theory assumes that we have traits that are a function of personality, not situation.  There is evidence that some traits are linked to roles and to personas we use in different cultures, environments.

18. Personality Affecting the Situation, Not Just a Function of the Situation This room may reflect the personality of the guy who lives there. The setup and contents of the room may also shape his personality.  Your Facebook posts, your website, music lists, choice of ringtone--these all reflect your personality.  These choices also may shape how others treat you, which may affect your personality.

19. Social-Cognitive Perspective Albert Bandura believes that Personality is: The result of an interaction that takes place between a person and their social context, involving how we think about ourselves and our situations. Questions raised in this perspective: How do the personality and social environment mutually influence each other? How do our memories, expectations, schemas, influence our behavior patterns? How do we interpret and respond to external events? How do those responses shape us?

20. Reciprocal Influences in Becoming “The Kind of Person Who Does Rock Climbing” Avoiding the highway today without identifying or explaining any fear: the “low road” of emotion. Example: a tendency to enjoy risky behavior affects choice of friends, who in turn may encourage rock climbing, which may lead to identifying with the activity. Reciprocal: a back and forth influence, with no primary cause

21. Reciprocal Determinism: How personality, thoughts, social environment all reinforce/cause each other  Why is Jake a happy, smiley person? He may have started with an “easy” temperament;  He may attract other happy people, and people are more likely to smile when around him, which reinforces his smiles;  His mind fills in the reasons why he’s smiling even if some of it was a reflection of his happy friends, and these happy reasons give him more reason to smile.

22. Evaluating Behavior in Situations: Blindness to One’s Own Faults  Donald Trump as the host of “The Apprentice” prided himself on assessing executive skills in others.  Assessments based on performance in such simulations predict future job performance better than interviews and questionnaires.  Donald Trump as a politician could not understand why more people didn’t join his candidacy, his debates, his theories.

23. Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective  The social-cognitive perspective on personality helps us focus on the interaction of behaviors, thoughts, and social situations.  This focus, though, may distract us from noticing an individual’s feelings, emotions, inner qualities.  Critics note that traits may be more a function of genetics and upbringing, not just situation.  Example of two people with different reactions in the same situation: Two lottery winners sharing a jackpot; one sobbed, the other slept.

24. Biopsychosocial Approaches to Personality

26. Exploring the Self, Viewing the Self  Research in personality includes the topic of a person’s sense of self.  Topics of research include self-talk, self-esteem, self- awareness, self- monitoring, self-control.  The field has refined a definition of “self” as the core of personality, the organizer and reservoir of our thoughts, feelings, actions, choices, attitudes. Topics for our study of people’s sense of self:  The Spotlight Effect (self-consciousness)  Self-esteem, low and high, benefits and risks  Self-Serving Bias  Narcissism  Culture and the Self: Individualism and Collectivism

27. Self-Consciousness: The Spotlight Effect Experiment: Students put on Barry Manilow T-shirts before entering a room with other students. (Manilow was not even cool “back in the day.”) Result: The students thought others would notice the T-shirt, assumed people were looking at them, when this was not the case; they greatly overestimated the extent to which the spotlight was on them. The spotlight effect: assuming that people are have attention focused on you when they actually may not be noticing you. Lesson: People don’t notice our errors, quirks, features, and shirts as much as we think they do.

28. Self-Esteem: High and Low, Good and Bad  People who have normal or high self-esteem, feeling confident and valuable, get some benefits:  Increased resistance to conformity pressure  Decreased harm from bullying  Increased resilience and efforts to improve their own mood  But maybe this “high” self- esteem is really realistic, and is a result, not a cause, of these successes.  Low self-esteem, even temporarily lowered by insults, leads to problems: prejudice, being critical of others

29. Self-Serving Bias We all generally tend to think we are above average. This bias can help defend our self- esteem, as it does for the people in this wheel.

30. Self-Focus and Narcissism  Since 1980, song lyrics have become more focused on the self, both gratification and self-praise.  Empathy scores and skills are decreasing, being lost; people increasingly don’t bother trying to see things from the perspective of others.  There is a rise in narcissism (self-absorption, self- gratification, inflated but fragile self-worth).  Narcissists see themselves as having a special place in the world.  Danger, especially in narcissism: When self-esteem is threatened, it can trigger defensive aggression.  Preventing this aggressive defense of self-esteem: not raising self-esteem, but reinforcing it, having people state their own values and qualities

31. Left behind in the supposed increase in egotism: those who feel worthless, unlovable Some people have a habit of self-disparaging self-talk: “I’m no good. I’m going to fail.” Sometimes such remarks are a sign of depression or at least feeling inferior. Sometimes such remarks may elicit pity, or prepare us for possible bad events, or help us learn from mistakes (people are more critical of their past selves). Moving from defensive to secure self-esteem requires realistic expectations and self-acceptance. Self-Disparagement, Self-Acceptance

32. Culture and the Self: Individualism and Collectivism  Individualist cultures value independence. They promote personal ideals, strengths, and goals, pursued in competition with others, leading to individual achievement and finding a unique identity.  Collectivist cultures value interdependence. They promote group and societal goals and duties, and blending in with group identity, with achievement attributed to mutual support. Individualist and Collectivist Cultures Compared

33. Thinking about the self: Cultural differences People in collectivist cultures (those which emphasize group unity, allegiance, and purpose over the wishes of the individual) do not make the same kinds of attributions: 1.The behavior of others is attributed more to the situation; also, 2.Credit for successes is given more to others, 3.Blame for failures is taken on oneself.