1. Chapter 12 Personality: Theory, Research, and Assessment

2. Defining Personality: Consistency and Distinctiveness
Personality Traits
Dispositions and dimensions
The five-factor Model
Extraversion
Neuroticism
Openness to experience
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
The concept of personality is used to explain the stability in a person’s behavior over time and across situations (consistency) and the behavioral differences among people reacting to the same situation (distinctiveness).
Personality refers to an individual’s unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits.
A personality trait is a durable disposition to behave in a particular way in a variety of situations…adjectives like honest, moody, impulsive, and excitable describe dispositions that represent personality traits.
In the 1950’s and 60’s, Raymond Cattell used the procedure of factor analysis – correlating many variables to identify closely related clusters of variables – to reduce Gordon Allport’s (1937) list of thousands of personality traits to just 16 basic dimensions. He also developed a test called the 16 PF to measure where a person falls along these 16 personality dimensions.
More recently, McCrae and Costa have used factor analysis to arrive at an even simpler, five-factor model of personality…the big five.
High Extraversion scores signify that a person is outgoing, sociable, upbeat, friendly, assertive, and gregarious. Some trait models refer to this as positive emotionality.
High Neuroticism scores signify that a person is anxious, hostile, self-conscious, insecure, and vulnerable…some models call this negative emotionality.
Openness to experience is associated with curiosity, flexibility, vivid fantasy, imaginativeness, artistic sensitivity and unconventional attitudes.
Agreeableness is associated with people who are sympathetic, trusting, cooperative, modest, and straightforward…may have its roots in temperament.
Conscientiousness people are diligent, disciplined, well organized, punctual, and dependable…some models refer to this trait as constraint…related to high productivity in a variety of occupational areas.

4. Figure 12.1
The five-factor model of personality. Trait models attempt to analyze personality into its basic dimensions. McCrae and Costa (1985, 1987) maintain that personality can be described adequately with the five higher-order traits identified here.

5. Psychodynamic Perspectives
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory
Structure of personality
Id - Pleasure principle
Ego - Reality principle
Superego - Morality
Levels of awareness
Conscious
Unconscious
Preconscious
Conflict
Sex and Aggression
Anxiety
Defense Mechanisms
Psychodynamic theories include all the diverse theories descended from the work of Sigmund Freud, which focus on unconscious mental processes.
Freud ‘s psychoanalytic theory (1901, 1924, 1940) grew out of his decades of interactions with his clients. This theory focuses on the influence of early childhood experiences, unconscious motives and conflicts, and the methods people use to cope with sexual and aggressive urges.
Freud divided personality into 3 components.
The id is the primitive, instinctive component of personality that operates according to the pleasure principle, which demands immediate gratification and engages in primary-process thinking (primitive, illogical, irrational, and fantasy oriented).
The ego is the decision-making component of personality that operates according to the reality principle, seeking to delay gratification of the id’s urges until appropriate outlets can be found, thus mediating between the id and the external world.
The superego is the moral component of personality that incorporates social standards about what represents right and wrong…the superego emerges out of the ego at around 3-5 years of age.
Freud’s most enduring insight was his recognition that unconscious forces can influence behavior. These are depicted in figure12.2.
Freud saw behavior as the outcome of an ongoing series of internal conflicts between the id, ego, and superego; with conflicts centering on sex and aggressive impulses having far reaching consequences. These conflicts lead to anxiety, which causes the ego to construct defense mechanisms, exercises in self-deception, as protection. Defense mechanisms and examples of each are presented in table 12.2.

6. Figure 12.2
Freud’s model of personality structure. Freud theorized that people have three levels of awareness: the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The enormous size of the unconscious is often dramatized by comparing it to the portion of an iceberg that lies beneath the water’s surface. Freud also divided personality structure into three components—id, ego, and superego—which operate according to different principles and exhibit different modes of thinking. In Freud’s model, the id is entirely unconscious, but the ego and superego operate at all three levels of awareness.

7. Figure 12.3
Freud’s model of personality dynamics. According to Freud, unconscious conflicts between the id, ego, and superego sometimes lead to anxiety. This discomfort may lead to the use of defense mechanisms, which may temporarily relieve anxiety.

9. Figure 12.4
Arousal in response to depiction of male homosexual activity. This graph shows the progression of participants’ sexual arousal over time, as measured by a penile strain gauge, in response to
a video depicting male homosexual activity. The homophobic men in the Adams et al. (1996) study did not rate the video as arousing, but the physiological measure showed that they experienced substantial sexual arousal. (Adapted from Adams et al., 1996)

10. Freud on Development: Psychosexual Stages
Sexual = physical pleasure
Psychosexual stages
Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital
Fixation = Excessive gratification or frustration
Overemphasis on psychosexual needs during fixated stage
Freud believed that the foundation of personality is laid by the age of 5. He theorized that the ways in which children deal with immature sexual urges (sexual used as a general term meaning physical pleasure) during different stages of development shape personality.
He proposed 5 psychosexual stages, each with a characteristic erotic focus and developmental challenge.
Fixation is a failure to move forward form one stage to another as expected. Fixation can occur due to excessive gratification or frustration during a particular stage, leading to an overemphasis on the psychosexual needs prominent during the fixated stage in adulthood.

12. Other Psychodynamic Theorists
Carl Jung
Analytical Psychology
Personal and collective unconscious
Archetypes
Introversion/Extroversion
Alfred Adler
Individual Psychology
Striving for superiority
Compensation
Inferiority complex/overcompensation
Birth order
Freud had many followers in the early 1900s. Many of these followers had theories of their own, but Freud was not willing to accept radical departures from psychoanalytic theory. Two members who broke from his group, Carl Jung and Alfred Adler, founded their own brands of psychodynamic psychology, making important contributions in their own right.
Carl Jung called his new theory analytical psychology, proposing that the unconscious mind is composed of two layers: the personal unconscious, which houses material that is not within one’s conscious awareness because it has been repressed or forgotten; and the collective unconscious, which houses latent memory traces inherited from people’s ancestral past.
Jung called these ancestral memories archetypes – emotionally charged images and thought forms that have universal meaning…the mandala.
Jung was also the first to describe the introverted (inner-directed) and extraverted (outer-directed) personality types.
Alfred Adler argued that Freud had gone overboard with his focus on sexual conflict. According to Adler and his individual psychology, the foremost source of human motivation is striving for superiority – a universal drive to adapt, improve oneself, and master life’s challenges. Adler asserted that everyone feels some inferiority and works to overcome it, a process he called compensation. When the feelings are excessive, an inferiority complex can result. People can also conceal, even from themselves, their feelings of inferiority, resulting in overcompensation…seeking status and power and flaunting of their success to cover up underlying inferiority.
Adler was also the first to stress the possible importance of birth order as a factor governing personality.

13. Figure 12.5
Jung’s vision of the collective unconscious. Much like Freud, Jung theorized that each person has conscious and unconscious levels of awareness. However, he also proposed that the entire human race shares a collective unconscious, which exists in the deepest reaches of everyone’s awareness. He saw the collective unconscious as a storehouse of hidden ancestral memories, called archetypes. Jung believed that important cultural symbols emerge from these universal archetypes. Thus, he argued that remarkable resemblances among symbols from disparate cultures such as the mandalas shown here are evidence of the existence of the collective unconscious.

14. Evaluating Psychodynamic Perspectives
Pros
Insights regarding
The unconscious
The role of internal conflict
The importance of early childhood experiences
Cons
Poor testability
Inadequate empirical base
Sexist views
Psychodynamic theories have resulted in groundbreaking insights about the unconscious, the role of internal conflict, and the importance of early childhood experiences in personality development.
On the down side, they have been criticized for their poor testability, inadequate empirical evidence, and male-centered views.

15. Behavioral Perspectives
Skinner’s views
Conditioning
Bandura’s views
Social leaning theory
Cognitive processes and reciprocal determinism
Observational learning
Models
Self-efficacy
Mischel’s views
The person-situation controversy
Skinner’s views on personality were similar to his views on all other human behavior; it is learned through conditioning. He had little interest in unobservable cognitive processes and embraced a strong determinism, asserting that behavior is fully determined by environmental stimuli and free will is but an illusion.
Personality, according to Skinner, is based in response tendencies; acquired through learning over the course of the lifespan.
Bandura developed social learning theory, focusing on how cognitive factors such as expectancies regulate learning. His concept of reciprocal determinism is the idea that internal mental events, external environmental events, and overt behavior all influence one another.
His theory of observational learning holds that behavior is shaped by exposure to models, or a person whose behavior they observe.
Bandura in recent years has emphasized self-efficacy in his research, referring to one’s belief about one’s ability to perform behaviors that should lead to expected outcomes. He believes that self-efficacy (or lack thereof) influences which challenges people tackle and how well they perform. Researchers believe that self-efficacy is fostered by parents who are stimulating and responsive to their children.
Walter Mischel is also an advocate of social learning theory, with a focus on the extent to which situational factors govern behavior, instead of person variables.

16. Figure 12.6
A behavioral view of personality. Staunch behaviorists devote little attention to the structure of personality because it is unobservable, but they implicitly view personality as an individual’s
collection of response tendencies. A possible hierarchy of response tendencies for a specific stimulus situation is shown here.

17. Figure 12.7
Personality development and operant conditioning. According to Skinner, people’s characteristic response tendencies are shaped by reinforcers and other consequences that follow behavior. Thus, if your joking at a party leads to attention and compliments, your tendency to be witty and humorous will be strengthened.

18. Figure 12.8
Bandura’s reciprocal determinism. Bandura rejects Skinner’s highly deterministic view that freedom is an illusion and argues that internal mental events, external environmental contingencies, and overt behavior all influence one another.

20. Evaluating Behavioral Perspectives
Pros
Based on rigorous research
Insights into effects of learning and environmental factors
Cons
Overdependence on animal research
Fragmented view of personality
Dehumanizing views
Behavioral views are based on rigorous research and have provided ample insights into how learning and environmental factors mold personality
They have been criticized for an overdependence on animal research, their fragmented view of personality (carving up personality into stimulus-response relations with no unifying structural concepts tying these pieces together), and radical behaviorism’s dehumanizing view of human nature (no free will).

21. Humanistic Perspectives
Carl Rogers
Person Centered Theory
Self-concept
Conditional/unconditional positive regard
Incongruence and anxiety
Abraham Maslow
Self-actualization theory
Hierarchy of needs
The healthy personality
Carl Rogers was one of the founders of the humanist movement, which emerged in the 1950’s as a reaction to the behavioral and psychodynamic theories.
Rogers viewed personality in terms of the self-concept, a collection of beliefs about one’s own nature, unique qualities, and typical behavior…a person’s mental picture of themselves.
Rogers stressed the subjective nature of the self-concept…it may not be consistent with reality. Rogers believed that when parents make their affection conditional, that is, dependent on a child’s living up to expectations, the child may block out of their self-concept those experiences that make them feel unworthy of love.
Unconditional love is based in assurances that a child is worthy of affection, no matter what they do.
When self-concepts don’t match reality (incongruence), they are threatened, and anxiety results.
Abraham Maslow proposed that human motives are organized into a hierarchy of needs – a systematic arrangement of needs, according to priority, in which basic needs must be met before less basic needs are aroused.
Like Rogers, Maslow argued that humans have an innate drive toward personal growth, culminating in the need for self-actualization, which is the need to fulfill one’s potential (the highest need in his hierarchy. “What a man can be, he must be.”
Maslow set out to identify people who had self-actualized, healthy personalities, for study. Self-actualizing persons, according to Maslow, are people with exceptionally healthy personalities, marked by continued personal growth.
Maslow found that these people are tuned in to reality and at peace with themselves. They are open and spontaneous and sensitive to others’ needs, making for rewarding interpersonal relations.

22. Figure 12.9
Rogers’s view of personality structure. In Rogers’s model, the self-concept is the only important structural construct. However, Rogers acknowledged that one’s self-concept may not be consistent with the realities of one’s actual experience—a condition called incongruence.

23. Figure 12.10
Rogers’s view of personality development and dynamics. Rogers’s theory of development posits that conditional love leads to a need to distort experiences, which fosters an incongruent self-concept. Incongruence makes one prone to recurrent anxiety, which triggers defensive behavior, which fuels more incongruence.

24. Figure 12.11
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. According to Maslow, human needs are arranged in a hierarchy, and people must satisfy their basic needs before they can satisfy higher needs. In the diagram, higher levels in the pyramid represent progressively less basic needs. Individuals progress upward in the hierarchy when lower needs are satisfied reasonably well, but they may regress back to lower levels if basic needs are no longer satisfied.

25. Evaluating Humanistic Perspectives
Pros
Emphasizing subjective experience
Study of the healthy personality
Cons
Lack of research base
Difficult to test empirically
Possibly overly optimistic about human nature
Humanistic theories are credited with highlighting the importance of a person’s subjective view of reality. They are also applauded for focusing attention on the issue of what constitutes a healthy personality.
They are criticized for lacking a strong research base, poor testability, and what may be an overly optimistic view of human nature (Maslow had a hard time finding live people who had self-actualized).

26. Biological Perspectives
Eysenk’s theory
3 higher order traits
Extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism
Determined by genes
Twin studies
Novelty seeking and genetics
The evolutionary approach
Traits conducive to reproductive fitness
Biological theories stress the genetic origins of personality. Eysenck believes that personality can be characterized along just three dimensions and that these are genetically determined in individuals. He believes that genes influence physiological functioning, thereby influencing ease of acquiring conditioned responses.
Twin studies indicate that identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins in personality characteristics, with heritability estimates in the vicinity of 40%.
Some studies have suggested that there is a specific gene for novelty seeking, which involves being impulsive, exploratory, excitable, and extravagant. Evidence is, at this point, inconclusive.
Evolutionary analyses of personality suggest that certain traits and the ability to recognize them may contribute to reproductive fitness…a reproductive advantage.

27. Figure 12.13
Eysenck’s model of personality structure. Eysenck described personality structure as a hierarchy of traits. In this scheme, a few higher-order traits, such as extraversion, determine a host of lower-order traits, which determine a person’s habitual responses.

29. Figure 12.14
Twin studies of personality. Loehlin (1992) has summarized the results of twin studies that have examined the Big Five personality traits. The N under each trait indicates the number of twin studies that have examined that trait. The chart plots the average correlations obtained for identical and fraternal twins in these studies. As you can see, identical twins have shown greater resemblance in personality than fraternal twins have, suggesting that personality is partly inherited.

30. Figure 12.15
Heritability and environmental variance for the Big Five traits. Based on the twin study data of Riemann et al. (1997), Plomin and Caspi (1999) estimated the heritability of each of the Big Five traits. The data also allowed them to estimate the amount of variance on each trait attributable to shared environment and nonshared environment. As you can see, the heritability estimates hovered in the vicinity of 40%, with two exceeding 50%. As in other studies, the influence of shared environment was very modest. (Based on Plomin and Caspi, 1999)

31. Figure 12.17
Self-monitoring and dating. Snyder and Simpson (1984) found that college students who were high in self-monitoring had dated more people in the preceding 12 months than had students low in self-monitoring. Apparently, high self-monitors commit themselves to romantic relationships less readily than low self-monitors do.

32. Evaluating Biological Perspectives
Pros
Convincing evidence for genetic influence
Cons
Conceptual problems with heritability estimates
Artificial carving apart of nature and nurture
No comprehensive biological theory
Researchers have compiled convincing evidence that biological factors affect personality; however, heritability estimates vary depending on sampling procedures and other considerations, and should only be used as ballpark figures.
Additionally, the results of efforts to carve behavior into genetic and environmental components are artificial, as they interact in complicated ways.
A third criticism of the biological perspective is that there is no comprehensive biological theory of personality.

35. Contemporary Empirical Approaches to Personality Traits
Marvin Zuckerman
Sensation Seeking
Mark Snyder
Self-monitoring
Markus and Kitayama
Independence vs. interdependence and culture
Marvin Zuckerman developed the concept of a trait for seeking stimulation. Sensation seeking is the degree to which people seek high or low levels of stimulation. High sensation seekers are willing to take risks, are open to new experiences, and are susceptible to boredom.
Mark Snyder developed the concept of self-monitoring, the degree to which people attend to and control the impressions they make on others. High self-monitors are skilled at impression management but make genuine emotional commitments less readily than others.
Markus and Kitayama study cultural differences in personality, asserting that American culture fosters an independent conception of self, while Asian cultures foster an interdependent view of the self. These different self-conceptions foster cultural disparities in the tendency to engage in self-enhancement.

36. Figure 12.18
Culture and conceptions of self. According to Markus and Kitayama (1991), Western cultures foster an independent view of the self as a unique individual who is separate from others, as diagrammed on the left. In contrast, Asian cultures encourage an interdependent view of the self as part of an interconnected social matrix, as diagrammed on the right. The interdependent view leads people to define themselves in terms of their social relationships (for instance, as someone’s daughter, employee, colleague, or neighbor).

37. Figure 12.20
MMPI profiles. Scores on the 10 clinical scales of the MMPI are often plotted as shown here to create a profile for a client. The normal range for scores on each subscale is 50 to 65. People with disorders frequently exhibit elevated scores on several clinical scales rather than just one.