1. Personality: An individual’s characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors [persisting over time and across situations]
Agreeable, Open
Introverted
Naïve
No animation.
Yes, I changed the name of one of the dwarfs to both respect and satirize political correctness and then decided to change the rest into terms more related to personality traits, although “Sleepy” was a tough one, Sneezy was a distortion, and Doc was a stretch. See if students can recall which original names go with the names I made.”
Instructor: The last line of the definition is added to make it clear that we are talking about qualities that are not just a function of one role or one phase of life.
Sensitive, Reactive
Contentedly lethargic
Conscientious
Neurotically irritable

2. Overview: Ways of Looking at the Self
Freudian/Psychodynamic views: the Unconscious parts of the self
Humanistic view of the Self-Actualizing Person
Examining Traits, including the Big Five Factors/Dimensions
Social and Cognitive Influences on Personality
Self-Esteem and Self-Serving Bias
These different perspectives and concepts can help us examine:
What we have in common: personality components, basic drives, stages of development, categories of traits
Ways in which we differ: individual paths through stages, ways of managing basic drives and needs, levels of Trait dimensions
Click to reveal all bullets.

3. Psychodynamic Theories of Personality
Bringing out the Unconscious Part of Your Personality
Freud and the Psychoanalytic on:
Personality Structure: id, ego, superego
Personality Development: Psychosexual Stages
Defense Mechanisms
The Neo-Freudian, Psychodynamic theorists: from sexual to social issues
Assessing Unconscious Processes: Projective Tests.
Modern ideas about the unconscious and other Freudian concepts
Click to reveal bullets.

4. Psychodynamic/Psychoanalytic Theories
These theories of human personality focus on the inner forces that interact to make us who we are.
In this view: behavior, as well as human emotions and personality, develop in a dynamic (interacting, changing) interplay between conscious and unconscious processes, including various motives and inner conflicts.
Click to reveal bullets.
To help and understand people was to focus on bringing out unconscious thoughts, feelings, conflicts, including those rooted in childhood.
These models of understanding the mind began with the man who once said he was “the only worker in a new field”: Sigmund Freud.

5. Freud’s Path to Developing Psychonalysis
Sigmund Freud started his career as a physician.
He decided to explore how mental and physical symptoms could be caused by purely psychological factors.
He became aware that many powerful mental processes operate in the unconscious, without our awareness.
This insight grew into a theory of the structure of human personality and its development.
His name for his theory and his therapeutic technique: psychoanalysis.
Click to reveal bullets.
Instructor, you can mention that he saw patients with unusual symptoms, such as recurring blindness or paralysis only of the hand, that did not seem to have physical causes. He sought to understand how the different parts of the human personality interacted, including the hidden, unconscious parts.

6. Personality StructureId
contains a reservoir of unconscious psychic energy
strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
operates on the pleasure principle, demanding immediate gratification
THE ID (“It”): functions in the irrational and emotional part of the mind. At birth a baby’s mind is all Id - want want want.  The Id is the primitive mind. It contains all the basic needs and feelings. It is the source for libido (psychic energy). And it has only one rule --> the “pleasure principle”: “I want it and I want it all now”.  In transactional analysis, Id equates to "Child". 
Id too strong = bound up in self-gratification and uncaring to others

7. Id: The Pleasure Principle
drive toward immediate gratification, most fundamental human motive
Sources of energy
Eros—life instinct, perpetuates life
Thanatos—death instinct, aggression, self-destructive actions
Libido—sexual energy or motivation

8. Personality Structure
Superego
the part of personality that presents internalized ideals
provides standards for judgement (the conscience) and for future aspirations
THE SUPEREGO (“Over-I”): The Superego is the last part of the mind to develop.  It might be called the moral part of the mind. The Superego becomes an embodiment of parental and societal values. It stores and enforces rules. It constantly strives for perfection, even though this perfection ideal may be quite far from reality or possibility.  Its power to enforce rules comes from its ability to create anxiety.
Superego too strong = feels guilty all the time, may even have an insufferably saintly personality

9. Superego: Conscience Operates on the Morality Principle
Internalization of societal and parental values
Partially unconscious
Can be harshly punitive using feelings of guilt

10. Personality Structure
Ego
the largely conscious, “executive” part of personality
mediates among the demands of the id, superego, and reality
operates on the reality principle, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that will realistically bring pleasure rather than pain
THE EGO: (“I”): functions with the rational part of the mind. The Ego develops out of growing awareness that you can’t always get what you want. The Ego relates to the real world and operates via the “reality principle”.  The Ego realizes the need for compromise and negotiates between the Id and the Superego.  The Ego's job is to get the Id's pleasures but to be reasonable and bear the long-term consequences in mind.  The Ego denies both instant gratification and pious delaying of gratification.  The term ego-strength is the term used to refer to how well the ego copes with these conflicting forces.  To undertake its work of planning,  thinking and controlling the Id, the Ego uses some of the Id's libidinal energy.  In transactional analysis, Ego equates to "Adult". 
Ego too strong = extremely rational and efficient, but cold, boring and distant

11. Ego: The Reality Principle
ability to postpone gratification
in accordance with demands of
reality
Ego—rational, organized, logical, mediator to demands of reality
Can repress desires that cannot be met in an acceptable manner

12. Freud’s Personality/Mind Iceberg
The mind is mostly below the surface of conscious awareness
Personality develops from the efforts of our ego, our rational self, to resolve tension between our id, based in biological drives, and the superego, society’s rules and constraints.
Click to reveal bullets.
The Unconscious, in Freud’s view: A reservoir of thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories, that are hidden from awareness because they feel unacceptable.

13. The Developing Personality
We start life with a personality made up of the id, striving impulsively to meet basic needs, living by “the pleasure principle.”
In a toddler, an ego develops, a self that has thoughts, judgments, and memories following a “reality principle”
Around age 4 or 5, the child develops the superego, a conscience inter-nalized from parents and society, following a “morality principle.”
Click to reveal three stages.
The ego works as the “executive” of this three-part system, to manage bodily needs and wishes in a socially acceptable way.

14. Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Stages
The id is focused on the needs of erogenous zones, sensitive areas of the body.
People feel shame about these needs and can get fixated at one stage, never resolve how to manage the needs of that zone’s needs.
Click to reveal bullets and table.
Instructor: See if students can describe how the cartoons (one will be revealed later in the slide content) relate to one of the psychosexual stages.

15. Personality Development
Oedipus Complex
a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father
Electra Complex
a girl’s sexual desires toward her father and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival mother

16. Personality Development
Castration Anxiety
boys feel guilt and fear that their father would punish them (castration) for sexual desires for their mother & jealousy of their father.
Penis Envy
women fixated in this stage symbolically
castrate men through embarrassment,
deception, and derogation.

17. Identification
Children cope with threatening feelings by repressing them and by identifying with the rival parent. Through this process of identification, their superego gains strength that incorporates their parents’ values.
From the K. Vandervelde private collection

18. Personality Development
Fixation
a lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were unresolved

19. Defending Against Anxiety
Freud believed that we are anxious about our unacceptable wishes and impulses, and we repress this anxiety with the help of the strategies below.
No animation.

20. Psychoanalysis: Techniques
Techniques for revealing the unconscious mind:
He used creative techniques such as free association: encourage the patient to speak whatever comes to mind,
The therapist then interprets any potential unconscious wishes hidden in the client’s hesitations, slips of the tongue, and dreams.
Click to reveal bullets.
How did Freud use Psychoanalysis to bring unconscious processes of patients into conscious awareness, especially an embarrassing process such as a shame about touching one’s genitals (leading to the hand paralysis)?

21. Dream Analysis
Another method to analyze the unconscious mind is through interpreting manifest and latent contents of dreams.
The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli (1791)

22. Neo-Freudian, Psychodynamic Theorists
Psychodynamic theorists, such as Adler, Horney, and Jung, accepted Freud’s ideas about:
Psychodynamic theorists differed from Freud in a few ways:
The importance of the unconscious and childhood relationships in shaping personality
The id/ego/superego structure of personality
The role of defense mechanisms in reducing anxiety about uncomfortable ideas
Adler and Horney believed that anxiety and personality are a function of social, not sexual tensions in childhood
Jung believed that we have a collective unconscious, containing images from our species’ experiences, not just personal repressed memories and wishes
Click to reveal bullets.
Instructor: although few psychodynamic theorists and clinicians today accept Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious, they do accept a similar idea, that we do have some universal human tendencies, formed through evolutionary rather than cultural history, that operate at an unconscious level.

23. The Psychodynamic Theorists
Carl
Jung
Alfred
Adler
Karen
Horney
Highlighted universal themes in the unconscious as a source of creativity and insight. Found opportunities for personal growth by finding meaning in moments of coincidence.
Focused on the fight against feelings of inferiority as a theme at the core of personality, although he may have been projecting from his own experience.
Click to reveal description of each.
Criticized the Freudian portrayal of women as weak and subordinate to men.
She highlighted the need to feel secure in relationships.

24. The Neo-Freudians
Like Freud, Adler believed in childhood tensions. However, these tensions were social in nature and not sexual A child struggles with an inferiority complex during growth and strives for superiority and power.
National Library of Medicine
Alfred Adler ( )

25. Assessing the Unconscious: Psychodynamic Personality Assessment
Freud tried to get unconscious themes to be projected into the conscious world through free association and dream analysis.
Projective tests are a structured, systematic exposure to a standardized set of ambiguous prompts, designed to reveal inner dynamics.
Rorschach test: “what do you see in these inkblots?”
Problem: Results don’t link well to traits (low validity) and different raters get different results (low reliability).
Click to reveal bullets.

26. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Developed by Henry Murray, the TAT is a projective test in which people express their inner feelings and interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
Lew Merrim/ Photo Researcher, Inc.

27. Assessing the Unconscious
Rorschach Inkblot Test
the 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

28. Unrepresentative sampling: Flaws in Freud’s scientific method
Unfalsifiability:
He developed theories that are hard to prove or disprove: can we test to see if there is an id?
Post facto explanations (hindsight bias) rather than predictions:
Whether or not a situation makes you anxious or not, you could either be fixated or repressing.
Unrepresentative sampling:
He did not build his theories on a broad sample of observations; he described all of humanity based on people with unusual psychological problems.
Flaws in Freud’s scientific method
Click to reveal four flaws.
Biased observations:
He based theories on his patients, which may give him an incentive to see them as unwell before his treatment.

29. Evidence has Updated Freud’s Ideas
Development appears to be lifelong, not set in stone by childhood.
Infant neural networks are not mature enough to create a lifelong impact of childhood trauma.
Peers have more influence on personality, and parents less, than Freud assumed.
Dreams, as well as slips of the tongue, have many possible origins, less likely to reveal deep unconscious conflicts and wishes.
We may ignore threatening information, but traumatic memories are usually intensely remembered, not repressed.
Still, sexual abuse stories are more likely to be fact, less likely to be wish fulfillment, than Freud thought.
Gender and sexual identity seems to be more a function of genetics than Oedipus conflicts and relationships with parents.
Click to reveal bullets.

30. The Unconscious As Seen Today: Processing, Perceptions, and Priming, But Not a Place
The following processes operate at an unconscious level, not because they’re repressed, but because they are automatic:
Schemas guide our perceptions
Right hemisphere makes choices the left hemisphere doesn’t verbalize
Conditioned responses, learned skills and procedures, all guide our actions without conscious recall
Emotions get activated
Stereotypes influence our reactions
Priming affects our choices
Unconscious: a stream, not a reservoir
Click to reveal bullets.
The title refers to the unconscious not being a storage area for repressed memories, but more a set of processes that operate without the need for the involvement of our conscious awareness.

31. Freud’s Legacy
Freud benefitted psychology, giving us ideas about: the impact of childhood on adulthood, human irrationality, sexuality, evil, defenses, anxiety, and the tension between our biological selves and our socialized/civilized selves.
Freud gave us specific concepts we still use often, such as ego, projection, regression, rationalization, dream interpretation, inferiority “complex,” oral fixation, sibling rivalry, and Freudian slips.
Click to reveal bullets.
Not bad for someone writing over 100 years ago with no technology for seeing inside the brain.

32. Developing a Healthy, Genuine Human Personality
Maslow: Becoming a self-actualized person
Rogers: Growing, in a social environment of:
Genuineness
Acceptance
Empathy
Assessing the self
Evaluating Humanistic Theories:
What about Evil?
Too much individualism?
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33. Humanistic Theories of Personality
Abraham Maslow
Carl Rogers
In the 1960’s, some psychologists began to reject:
the dehumanizing ideas in Behaviorism, and
the dysfunctional view of people in Psychodynamic thought.
Maslow and Rogers sought to offer a “third force” in psychology: The Humanistic Perspective.
They studied healthy people rather than people with mental health problems.
Humanism: focusing on the conditions that support healthy personal growth.
Click to reveal bullets.

34. Maslow: The Self-Actualizing Person
In Maslow’s view, people are motivated to keep moving up a hierarchy of needs, growing beyond getting basic needs met.
At the top of this hierarchy are self-actualization, fulfilling one’s potential, and self-transcendence.
In this ideal state, a personality includes being self-aware, self- accepting, open, ethical, spontaneous, loving caring, focusing on a greater mission than social acceptance.
Click to reveal bullets.

35. Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective
Rogers agreed that people have natural tendencies to grow, become healthy, and move toward self-actualization.
Genuineness: Being honest, direct, not using a façade
The three conditions that facilitate growth (just as water, nutrients, and light facilitate the growth of a tree):
Acceptance, a.k.a Unconditional Positive Regard: acknowledging feelings without passing judgment;
Click to show three boxes and text on the right.
Note: Empathy is NOT sympathy: what is important to nurture growth is to have someone understand you, consider your feelings and hold them for you. This is more vital to growth than having someone feel sorry for you.
Empathy: tuning into the feelings of others, showing your efforts to understand, listening well

36. Humanistic Perspective
Unconditional Positive Regard
an attitude of total acceptance toward another person
Self-Concept
all our thoughts and feelings
about ourselves, in an answer
to the question, “Who am I?”

37. Critiquing the Humanist Perspective What about evil?
Some say Rogers did not appreciate the human capacity for evil.
Rogers saw “evil” as a social phenomenon, not an individual trait:
“When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.” –Rogers
Click to reveal bullets.
About the capacity for evil, it doesn’t necessarily contradict the humanistic model: it is possible to say that some people are not moving far up the hierarchy, are stuck pursuing basic survival and security needs even if they already have enough money to survive, or are stuck seeking and defending self-esteem.
Humanist response: Self- acceptance is not the end; it then allows us to move on from defending our own needs to loving and caring for others.

38. Critiquing the Humanist Perspective Too much self-centeredness?
Some say that the pursuit of self- concept, an accepting ideal self, and self-actualization encouraged not self- transcendence but self- indulgence, self-centeredness.
Humanist response: The therapist using this approach should not encourage selfishness, and should keep in mind that that “positive regard” means “acceptance,” not “praise.”
Click to reveal bullets.

39. 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
Click to reveal three boxes.
The Self: Spotlight effect, Self-Esteem, Self-serving bias

40. Personality As Seen in Palms and Stars
And handwriting, and crystal balls, and tea leaves, and scattered bones
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!
I see by your handwriting you like bananas.
No animation.

41. Trait Theory of Personality
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.”
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
Click to reveal bullets and text boxes.
A full description of the scales on the Myers-Briggs:
Energy: Extraversion vs. Introversion
Learning: Senses vs. Intuition
Decisions: Thinking vs. Feeling
Relating: Judging vs. Perceiving.
Example of a profile: ENTJs supposedly make good executives.

42. 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.
Click to reveal bullets.

43. 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.”
Click to reveal bullets.

44. Sample MMPI Test Profile
No animation.
Instructor: this is an optional sample of the MMPI showing its use to measure the effectiveness of mental health treatment; here we see that what the MMPI measures goes well beyond the topic of stable personality traits, which may be why this chart is no longer in this chapter.

45. 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”…
Click to reveal bullets and five CANOE factors. Then click to show canoe.

46. The “Big Five”/ C.A.N.O.E. Personality Dimensions
Impulsive
Trusting
Anxious
Conforming
Fun-Loving
No animation.
Instructor: Here we have the dimensional profile of a dog.
I refer to the big five factors as Dimensions here to emphasize that each person can have a profile of a varying levels, rather than factors to be multiplied. The word “variables” would also work, but “dimensions” is more commonly used regarding when describing a person with traits that vary on a spectrum.

47. 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
Click to reveal three text boxes.
Stability question: note that although there are general trends affecting most people, your unique profile, including your levels of each trait relative to other people, doesn’t change much. This suggests that from the trait perspective, though we still go through some changes with adult development, personality is stable.
Prediction question: success in school and work obviously relates to levels of conscientiousness, but there are other patterns: in our communication, extraverts use more personal pronouns, agreeableness predicts use of positive emotion words, and neuroticism predicts use of negative emotion words.

48. Evaluation of Trait Perspective
Doesn’t really explain personality, simply describe the behaviors
Doesn’t describe the development of the behaviors
Trait approaches generally fail to address how issues such as motives, unconscious, or beliefs about self affect personality development

49. Barnum Effect Barnum Effect
believing a horoscope describes you when its very generic.
"There's a Sucker Born Every Minute"

50. 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.
No animation.

51. 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.
Click to reveal bullets.

52. Personality Affecting the Situation, Not Just a Function of the Situation
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.
This room may reflect the personality of the guy who lives there. The setup and contents of the room may also shape his personality.
Click to reveal bullets.

53. 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 we interpret and respond to external events? How do those responses shape us?
How do our memories, expectations, schemas, influence our behavior patterns?
Click to reveal questions.

54. Reciprocal: a back and forth influence, with no primary cause
Reciprocal Influences in Becoming “The Kind of Person Who Does Rock Climbing”
Reciprocal: a back and forth influence, with no primary cause
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.
No animation.
Avoiding the highway today without identifying or explaining any fear: the “low road” of emotion.

55. 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.
Click to reveal bullets.
An optional slide, giving another example to help illustrate this concept and how it relates to personality.

56. 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 “birther” theories.
Click to reveal bullets.
Two topics that otherwise wouldn’t exactly go together if they didn’t cross in the same person.

57. Biopsychosocial Approaches to Personality
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58. No animation.

59. 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
Self-disparagement
Secure self-esteem
Click to reveal bullets.
Instructor: it might be accurate to add to the definition on the left by saying that the “self” is the consciously aware (and self-aware) part of our personality. One could also say that the self is not just the identity but our feelings about that identity.

60. 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.
Click to reveal bullets.

61. 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
Click to reveal bullets.

62. 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.
Click to rotate larger comic.

63. 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
Click to reveal bullets.

64. Culture & Self-Esteem
OBJECTIVE 27| Discuss some ways in which people maintain their self-esteem under conditions of discrimination or low status.
People maintain their self-esteem even with a low status by valuing things they achieve and comparing themselves to people with similar positions.

65. 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:
The behavior of others is attributed more to the situation; also,
Credit for successes is given more to others,
Blame for failures is taken on oneself.
Optional slide
Click to reveal bullets.
Instructor: See if students can explain why this might generally be true, why one’s experience in collectivist cultures might encourage different attributions: is there pressure to interpret things differently, to take blame for failures, or in the collectivist experience, is this more likely to be an accurate view, that successes and behavior are guided by the group and failures are caused by individuals?
Does this cultural difference make this less fundamental? Fundamental doesn’t mean universal, it means most important; to judge someone as having a certain trait just because you see them do a behavior (is a soldier a murderer?) is considered here to be the most basic error you can make in viewing another person.