EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGY EIGHTH EDITION IN MODULES David Myers PowerPoint Slides Aneeq Ahmad Henderson State University Worth Publishers, © 2011

2 Personality

Contemporary Perspectives on Personality Module 31 3

4 The Trait Perspective  Exploring Traits  THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT: How to Be a “Successful” Astrologer or Palm Reader  Assessing Traits  The Big Five Factors  Evaluating the Trait Perspective

5 The Social-Cognitive Perspective  Reciprocal Influences  Personal Control  CLOSE UP: Toward a More Positive Psychology  Assessing Behavior in Situations  Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective

6 Exploring the Self  The Benefits of Self-Esteem  Self-Serving Bias

7 The Trait Perspective Gordon Allport offered an alternative to Freud’s view of personality. He came to define personality based on traits, people’s characteristic behavior patterns or dispositions to feel or act a certain way.

8 Exploring Traits One way to condense the immense list of personality traits is through factor analysis, a statistical approach used to describe and relate personality traits. Each personality is uniquely made up of multiple traits. Allport & Odbert (1936), identified almost 18,000 words representing traits.

9 Exploring Traits Personality dimensions are influenced by genes. 1.Brain-imaging procedures show that extraverts seek stimulation because their normal brain arousal is relatively low. 2.Genes also influence our temperament and behavioral style. Differences in children’s shyness and inhibition may be attributed to autonomic nervous system reactivity.

10 Assessing Traits Personality inventories are questionnaires (often with true-false or agree-disagree items) designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors assessing several traits at once.

11 MMPI The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is the most widely researched and clinically used of all personality tests. It was originally developed to identify emotional disorders. The MMPI was empirically derived by testing a large pool of items and then selecting those that discriminated between diagnostic groups.

12 The Big Five Factors Today’s trait researchers believe that simple trait factors are important, but fail to tell the whole story. So, an expanded range, Big Five, traits does a better job of assessment. The recent wave of Big Five research asks various questions including: -How stable are these traits? and -How heritable are they?

13 The “Big Five” Personality Factors

14 Evaluating the Train Perspective The Person-Situation Controversy Trait theorists argue that behaviors from a situation may be different, but average behavior remains the same. Therefore, traits matter.

15 The Person-Situation Controversy Walter Mischel (1968, 1984, 2004) points out that people do not act with predictable consistency. This inconsistency makes personality tests weak predictors of behavior. However, people’s average outgoingness, happiness, or carelessness over many situations is predictable.

16 The Person-Situation Controversy Samuel Gosling and his colleagues studied music preferences, dorm room and offices, personal Web sites, and and found that our traits can be found consistently in all of these. Samuel Gosling John Langford Photography

17 The Social-Cognitive Perspective Bandura (1986, 2001, 2005) believes that personality is the result of an interaction between a person and their social context. He emphasized this interaction when he proposed the social - cognitive perspective.

Reciprocal Influences Bandura views the person-environment interaction as reciprocal determinism – behavior, internal cognition, and environment all influence one another. 18

19 Reciprocal Influences Different people choose different environments. Our personalities shape how we react to events. Our personalities shape situations. Specific ways in which individuals and environments interact

20 The Biopsychosocial Approach to the Study of Personality Behavior emerges from an interplay of external and internal influences.

21 Personal Control External locus of control refers to the perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate. Internal locus of control refers to the perception that we can control our own fate. Social-cognitive psychologists emphasize our sense of personal control, whether we control the environment or the environment controls us.

22 Learned Helplessness When unable to avoid repeated adverse events an animal or human develops a sense of passive resignation called learned helplessness.

23 Optimism vs. Pessimism An optimistic or pessimistic attributional style is your way of explaining positive or negative events. Positive psychology aims to discover and promote conditions that enable individuals and communities to thrive.

24 Toward a More Positive Psychology Positive psychology, the study of optimal human functioning, attempts to foster human fulfillment. The movements three pillars are positive emotions, positive character, and positive social groups. Martin Seligman

25 Assessing Behavior in Situations Social-cognitive psychologists observe people in realistic and simulated situations because they find that it is the best way to predict the behavior of others in similar situations.

26 Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective Critics say that social-cognitive psychologists pay a lot of attention to the situation and pay less attention to the individual, his unconscious mind, his emotions, and his genetics. The social-cognitive perspective on personality sensitizes researchers to the effects of situations on and by individuals. It builds on learning and cognition research.

27 Exploring the Self Research on the self, the center of our personality, has a long history because the self organizes thinking, feelings, and actions. 1.Research focuses on the different selves we possess. Some we dream and others we dread. 2.Research studies how we overestimate our concern that others evaluate our appearance, performance, and blunders (spotlight effect).

28 Benefits of Self-Esteem How we feel about ourselves is important. High self-esteem – a feeling of self-worth – has benefits like better sleep, more persistence at difficult tasks, and being less shy, anxious, and lonely. But, low self-esteem also has effects, such as becoming overly critical of others when your own sense of self has been deflated.

29 Self-Serving Bias One of psychology’s most provocative and recent conclusions is that of the self-serving bias – our readiness to perceive ourselves favorably. We take responsibility for good deeds and successes more than for bad deeds and failures and most people see themselves as better than average.