1. PowerPoint® Presentation by Jim Foley
Unit X
Personality
PowerPoint® Presentation
by Jim Foley
© 2013 Worth Publishers

2. Overview: Ways of Looking at the Self
Freudian/Psychodynamic views of 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. 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

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 Vienna 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. Freud Freud began to specialize in neurological disorders.
His patients were showing physical symptoms with no physical reason.
He began to explore the power of the mind. The brain causes physical maladies to protect itself.
Hypnosis wasn’t working so he started using free association to find a path to the unconscious.
He believed the mind is mostly hidden.

7. Psychoanalysis: Techniques
Techniques for revealing the unconscious mind:
He used creative techniques such as free association: he encouraged the patient to speak whatever comes to mind, then the therapist verbally traces a flow of thoughts into the past and into the unconscious.
He also suggested meanings for slips of the tongue (as in this cartoon) and for the “latent” content of 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)?

8. unconscious Freud believed we have 3 levels of consciousness
Freud believed our unconscious carried our thoughts, wishes, feelings and memories.
He believed that we repress unacceptable passions and thoughts.
We block them from our conscious because they are too unsettling to acknowledge.
He did believe that these repressed thoughts influence our behavior without us knowing.

10. 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, memories, that are hidden from awareness because they feel unacceptable.

11. Personality structure
Personality is created by a conflict between impulse and restraint.
Our aggressive, pleasure-seeking biological urges and our social controls are always struggling.
Id- pleasure principle. Immediate gratification.
A crying baby or someone who abuses alcohol or drugs and only thinks of the present

12. Ego- reality principle
Tries to satisfy the id in socially acceptable ways.
Looks for long-term pleasure
Superego- moral compass
Starts around 4 or 5 as we understand feelings of shame and expectations
How we ought to behave. Strives for perfection, judges and produces pride or guilt
The executive mediator is the ego

13. The Developing Personality
In a toddler, an ego develops, a self that has thoughts, judgments, and memories following a “reality principle”, though still focused on serving the id’s needs.
We start life with a personality made up of the id, striving impulsively to meet basic needs, living by “the pleasure principle.”
Around age 4 or 5, the child develops the superego, a conscience internalized from parents and society, following the ideals of 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. Oral- fixation on the mouth
Oral- fixation on the mouth. (0-18months) They may bite nails or chew on things especially when under stress. May treat people with sarcasm
Anal (18-36 months) if they resisted potty training, it may result in stubborn or unwillingness to share. The need to have total control. They may be incredibly neat and tidy or very messy

16. Phallic stage (3-6 years) involves the Oedipus complex or the Electra complex.
They may be sexually promiscuous. Begin identification process
Latency (6-puberty) energies are put into work, hobbies, or school. Defense mechanisms begin
Genital stage (puberty on) is more about heterosexual pleasure instead of self-pleasure

17. fixations
An individual must successfully meet the needs in each psychosexual stage to move forward.
Either the needs aren’t met or they are overindulged which makes the person unwilling to leave that stage.
The libido (energy given to your sexual drive) is permanently stuck in that stage and the conflict must be resolved.

18. Male Development Issues
Freud believed that as boys in the phallic stage seek genital stimulation, they begin to develop unconscious sexual desires for their mothers and hate their fathers as a rival, feeling guilt and fearing punishment by castration.
He named these feelings “the Oedipus complex,” after a story from Greek mythology.
Resolution of this conflict: Boys identify with their fathers rather than seeing them as a rival. Gender identification These early relationships with parents and caregivers influence us as we develop.
Click to reveal bullets.
The Oedipus story, which Freud apparently saw as an allegory to the general male experience: Oedipus kills a man he later realizes is his birth father, and later marries a Queen that he eventually realizes was his birth mother.

19. Defense Mechanisms What is a defense mechanism?
An unconscious way for us to deal with anxiety caused by an inner conflict
Defense Mechanisms
the ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality
Repression
the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness
This is why we do not remember our sexual feelings for our parent. This enables other defense mechanisms.
It does come out in dream symbols or slips of the tongue.

20. Defense Mechanisms Regression
defense mechanism in which an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated
A new kindergartner may be nervous and start to suck her thumb.
College students may wish for the comforts of home.

21. Defense Mechanisms Reaction Formation
defense mechanism by which the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses into their opposites
people may express feelings that are the opposite of their anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings
In situations where you are timid, you may act daring
Defends our self-esteem. Protects our self-image

22. Defense Mechanisms Projection
defense mechanism by which people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others
“He doesn’t trust me” means “I don’t trust him”
Today called the “false consensus effect”. We overestimate the extent to which people agree with us.
Rationalization
defense mechanism that offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions.
People who choose to be drink may say they do it “just to be social”

23. Defense Mechanisms Displacement
defense mechanism that shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person
as when redirecting anger toward a safer outlet
When a kid is angry at a parent, he may kick the family pet

24. Sublimation- transformation of unacceptable impulses to socially valued motivations.
example- da Vinci’s paintings of Madonna are a sublimation of his longing for an intimate relationship with his mother who left him at an early age.

25. Its important to understand that we use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves form anxiety.
Our body protects itself from disease without our knowing.
Terror-management theory- thinking about our own mortality promotes self-esteem. We cling to relationships. Trapped 911 victims called their family members before everyone else.

26. 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.

27. Which Defense Mechanism Am I?
These two are sometimes confused with each other.
The common theme, as with all defense mechanisms: they seek to prevent being conscious of unacceptable feelings.
The difference: the first one compensates, the second one distracts.
A politician gives anti-gay speeches, then turns out to have homosexual tendencies.  Reaction Formation Someone with an anger problem accuses everyone else of being angry and threatening.  Projection
Click to reveal questions, answers, and text box.
Reaction formation seeks to compensate for an unacceptable desire by acting in the opposite direction.
Projection distracts the attention of self and others away from one’s own unacceptable traits, points the finger of blame elesewhere.

28. More About 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. Modern researchers believe we have human tendencies but they are more evolutionary. Not a collective unconscious
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. Inferiority complex- we feel inferior in our own environment. We show aggressive behavior to compensate.
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. Childhood anxiety causes tension

29. 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.

30. 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.

34. What do you think is happening? Thematic Apperception Test

35. Thematic Apperception Test…the client will create a story about the picture. Hopes, desires, and fears will show up in the story

36. 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.

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. Freud’s Legacy
Freud benefitted psychology, giving us ideas about: the impact of childhood on adulthood, and human irrationality, sexuality, evil, defenses, anxiety, and the tension between our biological selves and our socialized/civilized selves.
Most colleges have courses related to psychoanalysis outside of psychology departments!
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.
One concept in the text not listed on the slide: terror management theory, which observes that when we think about death, and thus presumedly engage our fear of death, it affects some of our attitudes and choices, making us more self-centered, self-protective. This is mentioned because it resembles Freud’s idea that we defend ourselves against anxiety.
Not bad for someone writing over 100 years ago with no technology for seeing inside the brain.

40. The Modern Unconscious Mind
Not seen as our passions and repressed censoring but more as a place where we process information without our knowing.
False consensus effect- we overestimate the extent to which people agree with our beliefs and behaviors. (projection)
We choose to speed on the highway because we believe that every one else does it anyway
Terror-management theory- When faced with our own mortality, we show more contempt for others and promote our own self-esteem. They may also hang on to close relationships and may become less defensive.  The anxiety caused by mortality is a major motivator behind many human behaviors and cognitions, including self-esteem, ethno/religio-centrism, and even love.

41. Top Ten What ten things would you take with you to a deserted island?
Its just you. All by yourself. No electricity or internet service.
Decide where each item
fits on Maslow’s
Hierarchy…

42. 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.

43. 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.

44. Rogers’ Person-Centered Perspective
Rogers agreed that people have natural tendencies to grow, become healthy, move toward self-actualization
Genuineness: Being honest, direct, not using a façade.
Acceptance, a.k.a Unconditional Positive Regard: acknowledging feelings, even problems, without passing judgment; honoring, not devaluing.
The 3 conditions that facilitate growth (just as water, nutrients, and light facilitate the growth of a tree):
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 (NOT sympathy: people need to be heard, not to be pitied)

45. Assessing the Self in Humanistic Psychology: Ideal Self vs. Actual Self
Questionnaires can be used, but some prefer open interview. Questions about actual self: How do you see yourself? What are you like? What do you value? What are you capable of? If the answers do not match the ideal, self- acceptance may be needed, not just self-change
Click to reveal bullets.
In the humanistic perspective, the core of personality is the self-concept, our sense of our nature and identity
People are happiest with a self-concept that matches their ideal self
Thus, it is important to ask people to describe themselves as they are and as they ideally would like to be.

46. 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.

47. 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.

48. 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. Wanted to describe traits, not explain them
Myers and Briggs wanted 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 questions
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 descriptions 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.

49. Factor analysis
Factor analysis is a type of statistical procedure that is conducted to identify clusters or groups of related items (called factors) on a test. For example, when you take a multiple choice Introductory Psychology test, a factor analysis can be done to see what types of questions you did best on and worst on (maybe they did best on factual types of questions but really poorly on conceptual types of questions).
For traits, someone who says they like excitement and practical jokes but dislikes silent reading would be labeled an extravert.

50. 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.

51. Traits: Rooted in Biology?
Brain: Extraverts tend to have low levels of brain activity, making it hard to suppress impulses, and leading them to seek stimulation.
Frontal lobe is less active. This is where inhibition exists.
Body: The trait of shyness appears to be related to high autonomic system reactivity, an easily triggered alarm system.
They respond with more stress and anxiety
Genes: Selective breeding of animals seems to create lifelong differences in traits such as aggression, sociability, or calmness, suggesting genetic roots for these traits.
Click to reveal bullets.
Other species show evidence that individuals have distinct, differing, and enduring personality traits.

52. Assessing Traits: Questionnaires
Personality Inventory: Questionnaire assessing many personality traits, by asking which behaviors and responses the person would choose. Assess several traits at once.
Empirically derived test: all test items have been selected because they predictably match the qualities being assessed. Questions are selected because groups tend to answer those questions differently. A test intended to assess depression will include questions that assess depressive tendencies.
All these tests are scored objectively
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): Designed to identify people with personality difficulties
Meant to identify abnormal personalities
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.

53. 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!
Barnum Effect: use positive vague descriptions and everyone will agree
I see by your handwriting you like bananas.
No animation.

54. 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.

55. Big Five Inventory Reverse numbers in front of…7, 19, 33
Add numbers in front of…1, 7, 13, 19, 33, 39, 46, 49, 53
Reverse numbers in front of… 2, 15, 25, 40
Add numbers in front of… 2, 8, 15, 25, 28, 34, 40, 45, 51
Reverse numbers in front of…10, 21, 29, 52
Add numbers… 3, 10, 16, 21, 24, 29, 36, 42, 52
Reverse numbers… 5, 17, 31, 37, 47
Add numbers…5, 11, 17, 22, 26, 31, 37, 43, 47

56. Reverse numbers…9, 14, 32, 54
Add numbers…4, 6, 9, 12, 14, 18, 20, 23, 27, 30, 32, 35, 38, 41, 44, 48, 50, 54
Group 1 extraversion
Scores from 9 to 45
Group 2 agreeableness
Group 3 conscientiousness
Group 4 emotional stability
Group 5 openness
Scores from 18 to 90
If you were to take this test as an older adult, what do you think changes?

57. 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.

58. As we grow we become more stable, less extraverted and less open
We do increase in agreeableness and conscientiousness.
Most conscientious in early 20’s as we start careers and further our education
Agreeableness increases from 30’s to 60’s

59. Questions about Traits These topics are the subject of ongoing research:
Stability: Does one’s profile of traits change over the lifespan?  No, 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: Can we use these traits to predict behavior?  levels of success in work and relationships relates to traits.
Heritability: Are traits learned or genetic?  in general, genes account for 50% of the variation for most traits
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.

60. 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.

61. 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.

62. Person-Situation Controversy
Our behavior is linked to interactions between environment and our traits.
So…do our personality traits persist over time and situations?
Our traits are stable but our behaviors may vary.
Our behaviors may change per the situation. Often, we don’t see our own inconsistencies.
We are less likely to admit that we act different when around different people.
Personality tests are weak predictors of behavior. However, peoples average outgoingness, happiness or carelessness is predictable.
Extroverts DO talk more.

63. Think about your bedroom and how it looks right now…what would people say about your personality?

64. How many dates does it take for you to really act like yourself?
What about the music on your playlist? What would people think?
Do you have a fake laugh?

65. Classical, Jazz, blues and folk music lovers are open to experiences and verbally intelligent
Country, pop, and religious music lovers tend to be cheerful, outgoing and conscientious
Personal websites and electronic communication tells about our personality as well.
Rating personality based on s and blogs correlate to actual scores. Extroverts use more adjectives.
We often hide our personality when paying attention to social cues. Like when meeting someone new.
When asked to act against our personality, we struggle.

66. Personality Affecting the Situation, Not Just a Function of the Situation
Your Facebook timeline and profile picture, 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.

67. 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. Our environment doesn’t control us, we interact.
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.

68. Social-Cognitive vs Behavioral
Social-cognitive perspective on personality focuses in our cognition as well as the context.
More focus on how the environment and we interact with each other.
Behavioral approach focus more on learning. We learn by observing and imitating others.
A child may become timid because they have very strict parents.
They are more controlled by their environment.

69. 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.

70. 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.
Our personality creates an environment that supports our personality. He has self-control therefore he doesn’t buy fatty foods at the grocery store.
Click to reveal bullets.
An optional slide, giving another example to help illustrate this concept and how it relates to personality.

71. The school you attend, what you read, what you watch on tv is part of an environment that you choose. Partly based on your disposition.
Anxious people act as if the world is threatening.
How we view and treat people influences how they will treat us. If we expect someone to be angry, we will avoid them which will make them angry.
Easygoing, positive disposition will create close, supportive friendships.

72. Biopsychosocial Approaches to Personality
No animation.

73. Optimism vs. Pessimism
We can be optimistic or pessimistic in various ways:
Prediction: We can expect the best or the worst. At the extremes, we can get ourselves overconfident or simply depressed or anxious about the future.
Focus of attention: We can focus on what we have (half full) or what we don’t have (empty).
Click to reveal bullets.
Attribution of intent: We can assume that people meant to hurt us or that they were having a bad day.
Valuation: We can assume that we or others are useless, or that we are lovable, valuable.
Potential for change: We can assume that bad things can’t be changed, or have hope.

74. Locus of Control
People with an Internal Locus of Control are more optimistic.
They strong sense of personal control.
A bad grade can be recovered by better study habits or more self-discipline
An External Locus of Control corresponds with attribution style.
Poor performance is beyond their control
Bad grades are their own lack of ability or “my teacher hates me”.

75. Excessive Pessimism vs. Excessive Optimism
Realism
It will be easy, I won’t think about it.
I can’t do it, might as well forget it.
It might be hard; I’d better plan.
I’m trapped, can’t get out of this
I want to make changes or get out.
Someone will rescue me.
Click to reveal examples. In each row, they appear one at a time: Pessimism, then Optimism, then Realism.
I’m sure he just wants what’s best for me, I’ll trust him.
That person hates me, he is against me.
I should ask what he feels about me, what he wants.
Excessive pessimism can leave us depressed, inactive.
Excessive optimism can leave us unprepared, unsafe.

76. Too optimistic?
Can be too optimistic about our ability to overcome and urge to smoke or drink.
Optimistic our team will win
We want the airplane pilot to be a little pessimistic so he is aware of possible problems.
Our positive-thinking tends to vanish when we are waiting for test result or feedback of any kind.
Also after traumatic personal experiences.
Too much optimism can blind us to possible problems

77. A More Positive Psychology
Martin Seligman, who earlier kept dogs from escaping his shocks until they developed learned helplessness.
Developed Positive Psychology, the “scientific study of optimal human functioning,” finding ways to help people thrive.
Focus: building strengths, virtue, emotional well-being, resilience, optimism, sense of meaning.
Click to reveal bullets.
Three pillars of Positive Psychology:
Emotions, e.g. engagement
Character, e.g. courage
Groups, Culture, Institutions

78. 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.
Why don’t we see our own incompetence?
Excessive self-confidence makes it difficult to realize we don’t know what we are doing. 
Click to reveal bullets.
Two topics that otherwise wouldn’t exactly go together if they didn’t cross in the same person.

79. Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Perspective
The social-cognitive perspective on personality helps us focus on the interaction of behaviors, thoughts, and social situations.
This focus, though, may distract us from noticing an individual’s feelings, emotions, inner qualities.
Critics note that traits may be more a function of genetics and upbringing, not just situation.
Example of two people with different reactions in the same situation: Two lottery winners sharing a jackpot; one sobbed, the other slept.
Click to reveal bullets.

81. 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.

82. Possible Selves 1991- Hazel Markus stated the idea of possible selves.
Your ideal self is the person you dream of becoming
We are also driven by the self when we fear what we will become.
These motivate us by laying out goals and creating the energy to work toward them.
When we pretend play, we are trying out different “possible selves”.

83. 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. Adolescents are more prone to this because they are searching for a stable identity.
Lesson: People don’t notice our errors, quirks, features, and shirts as much as we think they do.
Click to reveal bullets.

84. 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.
Have a higher internal locus of control
Low self-esteem, even temporarily lowered by insults, leads to problems: prejudice, being critical of others
Click to reveal bullets.

85. Does self-esteem follow doing well or do we do well because we have high self-esteem?
Can you build someone up too much?
Should children gain self-esteem from achievement, not praise?
Self-efficacy does predict success in school.
Self-image does not.
Self-efficacy- our confidence that we will do well in a particular area.
Not how you feel about a test after you take it.

86. How do words effect self-esteem?
 However, a single negative word can increase the activity in our amygdala (fear center of the brain) and release dozens of stress-producing hormones and neurotransmitters, which in turn interrupt the functioning of our brains, especially with regard to logic, reason, and language.
Even when you say something negative to someone and then say “just kidding”, it doesn’t reverse the damage.

87. By holding a positive and optimistic [word] in your mind, you stimulate frontal lobe activity. This area includes specific language centers that connect directly to the motor cortex responsible for moving you into action. And as our research has shown, the longer you concentrate on positive words, the more you begin to affect other areas of the brain. Functions in the parietal lobe start to change, which changes your perception of yourself and the people you interact with.
A positive view of yourself will bias you toward seeing the good in others, whereas a negative self-image will include you toward suspicion and doubt. Over time the structure of your thalamus will also change in response to your conscious words, thoughts, and feelings, and we believe that the thalamic changes affect the way in which you perceive reality

88. Self-Serving Bias
We all generally tend to think we are above average.
We accept more responsibility for good deeds than failures.
This bias can help defend our self-esteem, as it does for the people in this wheel.
Click to rotate larger comic.

89. 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.
Another evolutionary example: the expression of “disgust” might close the nostrils to block breathing of toxic fumes.

90. Self-Disparagement, Self-Acceptance
Left behind in the supposed increase in egotism: those who feel worthless, unlovable. Some people have a habit of self-disparaging self-talk: “I’m no good. I’m going to fail.” some are seeking positive feedback Sometimes such remarks are a sign of depression or at least feeling inferior. Sometimes such remarks may elicit pity, or prepare us for possible bad events, or help us learn from mistakes (people are more critical of their past selves). Moving from defensive to secure self-esteem requires realistic expectations and self-acceptance.
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