Bell Ringer What is a “Freudian slip?” (if you don’t know… take an educated guess!) (Please make sure you check your grade. Any missing work is due no later than Thursday!)

Personality entry #4

Where does our personality come from? Personality: An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Each dwarf has a distinct personality.

Psychologists use 5 approaches to explain the development of personality: 1. Psychoanalytic Approach (aka Psychodynamic) 2. Humanistic Approach 3. Trait Approach/The Big 5 4. Learning Approach 5. Social-Cognitive Approach

Psychoanalytic Theory Describes personality as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion Believes that behavior is merely a surface characteristic and that to truly understand who we are we have to analyze the symbolic meaning of behavior and the deep inner workings of the mind

Created by Sigmund Freud Believed we repress (forcibly block from our conscious thought) thoughts, beliefs, and memories that are too upsetting to acknowledge

Exploring the Unconscious A reservoir (unconscious mind) of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories. Freud asked patients to say whatever came to their minds (free association) in order to tap the unconscious.

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

Freud believed our personality is made up of 3 structures:  Id  Ego  Superego

Id Instincts & impulses Sexual drives Aggression Seeks immediate gratification Ruled by the “Pleasure Principle” = maximize pleasure, minimize pain Completely unconscious

Ego Controls the id Rational decision-making Obeys the “Reality Principle” = deals with the demands of reality

Superego Moral decision making Is one’s “conscience”  tells you right from wrong

Freud’s Iceberg Analogy

al al Id, ego, superego video (5 min)

ID, Ego, Superego Review 1. Which component of your personality operates entirely on pleasure and want without worry of consequence? 2. Which structure could be described as the “Jiminy Cricket” of your personality? 3. A starving man resists chasing a $20 bill into the street because there is a car coming. Which structure was responsible for this decision? 4. Which structure might make the following statement: “I feel guilty about having sex.”? 5. You get so angry at a kid in your 7 th period class that you loose it and punch him in the face. Which structure of your personality was responsible for this action?

Psychoanalytic Theory Believes that behavior is merely a surface characteristic and that to truly understand who we are we have to analyze the symbolic meaning of behavior and the deep inner workings of the mind (#2)

Created by Sigmund Freud Believed we repress (forcibly block from our conscious thought) thoughts, beliefs, and memories that are too upsetting to acknowledge (#3)

Exploring the Unconscious Freud asked patients to say whatever came to their minds (free association) in order to tap the unconscious. (#1)

Freud believed that a person’s personality develops mostly during the first few years of life (#4) Personality is rooted in unresolved childhood conflicts (#4) Believed that children pass through 5 Psychosexual stages of development: childhood stages of development during which the id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on the erogenous zones (#5)

Fixation Freud believed that conflicts unresolved during early psychosexual stages could surface as maladaptive behaviors in adult years. Strong conflict could lock, or fixate, the person’s pleasure-seeking behaviors in that stage. Fixation: being stuck in a stage of development, and carrying the behaviors from that stage into adulthood. (#6)

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development Oral 0-18 months Pleasure focus is on the mouth  sucking, biting, chewing (no key terms for this stage)

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development Anal months Pleasure focus is on bowel and bladder elimination  coping with demands for control (no key terms for this stage)

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development Phallic 3-6 years Pleasure focus is on genitals  coping with incestuous feelings Key terms: Oedipus Complex (a boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father), Electra Complex

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development Latency 6-puberty No focus, sexual feelings are dormant (children eventually cope with Oedipus Electra by repressing these feelings and identifying with rival parent= if you can’t beat em, join em) Key terms: Identification  superego gains strength and begins to incorporate the parents values (trying to become like parent) Gender Identity: sense of being male or female

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development Genital puberty on Focus is on maturation of sexual interests No key terms at this stage

Defense Mechanisms Defense mechanisms are used by the ego to resolve conflicts and demands between the id and superego. (#11) These defense mechanisms reduce or redirect anxiety by distorting reality (#11)

Defense Mechanisms Repression: bury it in the unconscious  Ex: mugging or rape too traumatic to deal with, push it into unconscious… no recollection of it happening Projection: disguise your own threatening impulses by attributing them to others  Ex: “That guy sucks! How did he make the team?”

Defense Mechanisms Denial: the conscious mind ignores or can’t admit the problem  Ex: alcoholics, drug addicts Displacement: take out feelings on someone/something else completely unrelated to the problem  Ex: you have a fight with your boyfriend and come home and scream at your brother

Defense Mechanisms Sublimation: take negative behaviors and try to put them towards a positive use  Ex: join football team to redirect aggressive actions Regression: reverting to an earlier stage of development in response to frustration or an inability to cope – acting infantile/childish  Ex: Bad day at school- come home and curl up in mommy’s lap and suck your thumb

Defense Mechanisms Rationalization: try to justify our behaviors or feelings – make excuses  Its not my fault I flunked my psych test, Mrs. DeKalb tests are too hard- its unfair! Reaction Formation: acting the opposite of what you really unconscious think or feel  Mrs. DeKalb you are sooooo pretty and the best teacher ever!

Defense Mechanisms Identification: embracing or adopting a style that you previously disliked or had been against  Ex: Eating a big juicy steak even though you used to be a strict vegetarian

Projective Personality Tests (#20) Have no clearly defined answers Use an open-ended format Present ambiguous stimuli and ask test taker to interpret what they see - The interpretation is thought to reveal information about their personality

Two most common projective personality tests are the  Rorschach Inkblot Test  Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) (#21)

Rorschach Inkblot Test Created by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach in 1921 Uses 10 official inkblots  5 black and white  2 black and red and white  3 multicolored

Rorschach Inkblot Person is shown card with inkblot and asked what they think it could be Responses to cards are interpreted according to the following factors:  Location  responding to whole card or part of card?  Determinants  responding to particular shaping, coloring, textures  Content  the precise object that the test-taker is seeing  Form  is the answer based on the actual shape of the blot, or are they seeing a different form entirely?

Thematic Apperception Test Created in the 1930’s by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray Involves a picture interpretation technique Test takers are shown ambiguous pictures and asked to create a story for the picture

TAT Subject’s story may include:  What has led up to the event shown  What is happening at the moment  What the characters are feeling and thinking  What the outcome of the story was

TAT Each story is carefully analyzed to uncover the test takers unconscious mind, including any  Repressed aspects of personality  Motives and needs for achievement  Power and intimacy  Problem solving abilities

Learning Theory of Personality 2 learning approaches:  Behaviorism  Social-Learning Theory

Behaviorism Watson: believed external forces or influences- NOT internal traits or inner conflicts- shape people’s preferences and behavior Skinner agreed, believed we should focus on how organisms behave, not what’s going on in their mind Neither believed in the influences of personal freedom, choice, and self-direction

Behaviorists believe our personality is LEANRED and shaped by:  Environmental influences (reinforcements, punishments) parent/peer approval  Cultural factors Social customs  Socialization The process by which we learn socially desirable behaviors and adopt them as part of our personality

Social Learning Theory Bandura and others agree we learn from our environment, but emphasized that we learn by OBSERVATION of our environment, not just reinforcement and punishment Said we can influence our environment based on our own internal factors:  Our skills  Our values  Our goals  Our expectations  Self-efficacy expectations: positive thinking about yourself “I think I can… I think I can…”

Bell Ringer What is a personality trait? List at least 5 of your personality traits.

Trait Approach –entry #5 Rather than focusing on unconscious forces and unsatisfactory growth opportunities, some psychologists attempt to explain personality in terms of stable and enduring behavior patters = TRAITS

Trait Approach Traits are fixed (created) at an early age Traits are consistent and unchanging = you act/react the same in a variety of situations Examples of Traits: Honest Dependable Moody Impulsive

Trait Theorists Hippocrates: said personality caused by combinations of different bodily fluids, which he called humors  Blood  made people sanguine (cheerful)  Black bile  made people meloncholly (sad)  Yellow bile  made people phlegmatic (unconcerned, lazy)  Green bile  made people choleric (irritable, short- tempered)

Trait Theorists Gordon Allport: defined personality in terms of identifiable behavior patters (traits) -identified 18,000 words representing traits! - Factor analysis is a statistical approach used to describe and relate personality traits = cluster similar traits into groups

Example of factor analysis: People who describe themselves as outgoing also say that they like excitement, practical jokes, and taking on leadership roles.  these behaviors can be clustered together to describe 1 basic personality trait: =extraversion

Trait Theorists Raymond Cattell: used factor analysis to develop a 16 Personality Factor inventory -whittled down 18,000 traits in 16 basic source traits

-Believed that by determining which of these 16 traits a person has you can predict their behavior in certain situations

Trait Theorists Hans Eysenck: categorized personality traits according to two polar dimensions: extraversion vs. introversion and emotional stability vs. emotional instability.

Assessing Traits Personality inventories are questionnaires (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) designed to assess several traits at once. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is the most widely used of all personality tests.

The Big Five Factors Today’s trait researchers believe that Eysencks’ personality dimensions are too narrow and Cattell’s 16PF too large. The “Big Five” says that there are 5 basic personality dimensions: Conscientiousness Agreeableness Neuroticism Openness Extraversion

The “Big Five” remember CANOE! Conscientiousness  Agreeableness  Neuroticism  (emotionally stable or unstable) Openness  Extraversion  Organized, careful, disciplined -or- disorganized, careless, impulsive? Trusting, helpful -or- suspscious, uncooperative? Calm, secure -or- anxious, insecure? Independent, open to variety, imaginative -or- conforming, likes routine, practical? Sociable, fun-loving, affectionate -or- shy, quiet, reserved

Evaluating the Trait Perspective -Walter Mischel (1968, 1984, 2004) points out that traits may be enduring, but the resulting behavior in various situations is different. =Therefore, traits are not good predictors of behavior. -Trait theory explains where we get our personalty from, but does not explain where traits come from!