1. Personality

2. Agenda
What is personality?
Roots and progression of personality

3. Think of one word to describe your personality.

4. What Is Personality? Complicated
Seems to differ, depending on the perspective (pg 403).
The pattern of enduring characteristics that produce consistency and individuality in a given person.
Across Time
Across Situations

5. Importance of Personality
Your Current Behavior
Why are you sitting at a desk?
Why are you looking forward?
Why are you holding a writing tool?
Why are your eyes open?
Situation or Your Personality?
Mischel (1967)‏
Situation is primary in predicting behavior; Personality is negligible
Personality’s Defense
Individual differences, consistencies, “what’s left”

6. Origin of Personality Where does your personality come from?
How much does your personality change?
Heritability
Twins
Siblings
Parents
Adoption

7. Personality Perspectives
Psychodynamic Perspective
Freud, Jung, Adler, Horney
Focus on subconscious, early experiences
Humanistic Perspective
Rogers, Maslow
Focus on the “upward” motives and free will
Trait Perspective
Current approach

8. Psychodynamic Perspective
Personality Structure
The Iceberg Id
Pleasure Principle (wants, desires, impulses)
Superego
Conscience, Morals, Societal Demands
Ego
Reality Principle
The “Executive” of personality, mediating the id and superego
Defense Mechanisms
Unconscious strategies of reducing anxiety by concealing the source of the anxiety from others and themselves
Suppression, Regression, Displacement, Denial, Projection

9. Psychosexual Stages of Personality Development
The “Sexual” in Psychosexual
Emphasis on childhood
Fixations

10. Psychosexual Stages Oral Anal Up to 12-18 months
Gratification through oral contact
Fixation: Interest in food/chewing/the mouth or Agreeableness
Anal
12-18 months to 3 years
Gratification through bowel control
Fixation: Cleanliness/Responsibility

11. Psychosexual Stages Phallic Latency Gental 3 to 5-6
Gratification with gender/genitals
Oedipal/Elektra Complexes
Penis Envy/Castration Anxiety
Fixation: Various problems (e.g. deviance, fetishes)
Latency
5-6 to Adolescence
Sexual focus subsides/suppressed
Gental
Adolescence until death
Focus is on adult sexual relationships

12. Evaluating the Psychodynamic Approach
Support
Implicit processes
Dream importance
Critiques
Difficult to disprove
Overly focused on sex and aggression
Focus on unconscious/suppression
The subjectivity of psychoanalysis
Neo-Freudan Psychodynamic Theories

13. Next Class Trait Perspective Trait Theories Trait Measurement
In the lab, and in the real world