1. Personality

2. What is Personality?
An individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
Four basic perspectives:
Psycholanalytic
Trait
Humanistic
Social Cognitive

3. Psychoanalytic Perspective
Childhood development and unconscious motives influence our personality
Psychoanalysis – seek to expose and interpret unconscious tensions

4. Psychoanalytic Perspective
Free Association
Person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing.

5. Psychoanalytic Perspective
Unconscious
Freud - reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories
Today – information processing of which we are unaware
Preconscious
Information that is not conscious, but is easily retrievable into conscious awareness

6. Personality Structure
Id – unconscious psychic energy
Strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives.
Operates on the “pleasure principle”, demanding immediate gratification

7. Personality Structure
Superego
We strive for perfection
Ego-ideal – rules of good behavior and standards of excellence to which we aspire
Conscience uses guilt as punishment for bad behavior

8. Personality Structure
Ego
The largely conscious, “executive” part of personality
Mediates between the demands of the id and superego
Operates on the “reality principle”, satisfying the id’s desires in ways that are realistic in the real world

9. Defense Mechanisms
Defense Mechanism – the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
Repression – suppresses anxiety provoking thoughts, feelings, and memories
Sublimation – transform unacceptable impulses into socially accepted forms

10. Defense Mechanisms
Regression – retreat to a more infantile stage when faced with anxiety

11. Defense Mechanisms
Reaction formation – express feelings that are the opposite of unconscious anxiety feelings

12. Defense Mechanisms
Projection – attribute their own threatening impulses to others
Rationalization – defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions

13. Defense Mechanisms
Displacement – divert aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object (kick the dog syndrome)

14. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Fixation – a sudden halt in a person’s development
Oral (0-18 months)- mouth is pleasure center
Anal (18-36 months) – poop is pleasurable

15. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Phallic (3-6 years) – pleasure from genitals
Oedipus complex –
A boy's id impulses involve sexual desire for the mother and a desire to eliminate, even kill, the father. This is called the Oedipus complex. The boy's hostile fantasies about his father create a fear of retaliation called castration anxiety, which leads the boy's ego to repress the incestuous desires and identify with the father.
Electra complex -
The female child begins with a strong attachment to her mother. She experiences penis envy and blames her mother for the missing penis and considers her inferior for lacking a penis. The child transfers her love to her father, but she identifies with her mother by adopting female gender-role behaviors.

16. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Girls yuk!!!
Latency (6-puberty) – dormant sexual period (no interest)
Genital (puberty on) – sexual interest matures

17. Neo-Freudians Karen Horney – women are not inferior Carl Jung
Womb envy
Cultural factors
Carl Jung
Emphasized collective unconscious – concept of a shared, inherited reservoir of memory traces from our species’ history.

18. Assessing the Unconscious
Projective Tests
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
People express their feelings through responses to ambiguous stimuli

21. Assessing the Unconscious
Rorschach Inkblot Test
Most widely used
Identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of blots

22. Trait Theory of Personality
The trait approach assumes that personality is made up of stable internal characteristics (traits, factors, dimensions, etc.) which appear at varying strengths in different people & which guide their behavior.
Assumptions of the Trait Approach:
Personality traits are relatively stable & predictable over time.
Personality traits are relatively stable across diverse situations & they can explain why people act in predictable ways in many different situations.
People differ with regard to how much of a particular personality trait they possess; no two people are exactly alike on all traits.

23. Trait Theory Sheldon’s Body Types:
Ectomorph - A person with a tall, thin, fragile frame and a large head tended to be intellectual, introverted, self-conscious and often nervous.
Endomorph - With a rounded soft, plump body, this person was thought to be sociable, friendly, relaxed with a fondness for food and comfort.
Mesomorph - This athletic body type had a muscular, sturdy and thick-necked frame. A mesomorph tended to be active and noisy, risk-taking and sometime insensitive in interpersonal relationships.

24. Social Desirability Scale
Give yourself one point for indicating true on items 1,2,4,7,8,13,16,17,18,20,21,24,25,26,27,29,31, and 33
Give yourself one point for indicating false to 3,5,6,9,10,11,12,14,15,19,22,23,28,30,and 32.
Mean of for undergrads college students.
People with high scores tend to present themselves in a favorable light.

25. Trait Perspective
Hans and Sybil Eysenck use two primary personality factors as axes for describing personality variation

26. The Trait Perspective
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
Most widely used test
Now used for screening purposes

27. The Trait Perspective

28. “Big Five” Inventory
Extraversion: Reverse the numbers placed in front of items 7,19, and 33 (1=5, 2=4, 3=3, 4=2, 5=1), then add all the numbers for items 1,7,13,19,33,39,46,49, and 53. Scores range from 9-45 with a higher score reflecting greater extraversion
Agreeableness: Reverse the numbers placed in front of items 2,15,25,and 40, then add all the numbers for items 2,8,15,25,28,34,40,45, and 51. Scores range from 9-45 with a higher score reflecting greater agreeableness.
Conscientiousness: Reverse the numbers placed in front of items 10,21,29,52, then add all the numbers in front of items 3,10,16,21,24,29,36,42, and 52. Scores range from 9-45 with a higher score reflecting greater conscientiousness.
Emotional Stability: Reverse the numbers placed in front of items 5,17,31,37, and 47, then add all the numbers in front of items 5, 11,17,22,26,31,37,43, and 47. Scores range from 9-45 with a higher score reflecting greater emotional stability.
Openness: Reverse the numbers in front of items 9,14,32,54, then add the numbers in front of 4,6,9,12,14,18,20,23,27,30,32,38,41,44,48,50, and 54. Total scores range from with the highest score reflecting greater openness.

29. Social-Cognitive Perspective
What we think about our situations affects our behavior
How do we interpret and respond to external events?
How do our schemas, our memories, and our expectations influence our behavior patterns?

30. Social-Cognitive Perspective
Do you feel that you control your own fate?
Rotter’s Locus of Control – sense of controlling our environments
Internals – one can control his/her own fate
Externals – one’s fate is determined by luck, chance or behavior of others

31. Learned Helplessness – passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events

33. Social-Cognitive Perspective
Bandura called the process of interacting with our environment reciprocal determinism

34. Humanistic Perspective Carl Roger’s Person-Centered Approach
Focused on growth and fulfillment of individuals
Requires:
Genuineness
Acceptance – unconditional positive regard
empathy
Unconditional positive regard – attitude of total acceptance of another person

35. Humanistic Perspective Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person
Self Actualization –
The ultimate psychological need that arises after basic physical and psychological needs are met and self-esteem is achieved
The motivation to fulfill one’s potential

36. The Four Perspectives of Personality