1. Personality
Chapter 10

2. Freud and the Psychoanalytic Perspective
Focuses on three factors:
Influence of unconscious mental processes
Importance of sexual and aggressive instincts
Enduring consequences of early childhood experiences

3. Psychoanalysis -cont-
Levels of awareness:
Conscious - thoughts or motives a person is currently aware of or is remembering
Preconscious – thoughts, motives and memories that can be voluntarily brought to mind
Unconscious – thoughts, feelings, motives and memories blocked from conscious awareness
Not directly accessible
Explored through free association – method in which a person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind

4. Freud’s idea of the mind’s structure

5. Psychoanalysis -cont-
Personality structure
Id – completely unconscious
Innate sexual and aggressive instincts and drivse
Impulsive, irrational and immature
Operates on a pleasure principle, seeking to achieve immediate gratification and avoid discomfort
Ex: Your id wants to use your graduation money to buy a car instead of paying for college

6. Psychoanalysis -cont-
Superego – partly conscious
Internalized parental and societal standards
Operates on a morality principle and seeks to enforce ethical conduct
Ex: Your superego would make you feel guilty about putting graduation money towards a car

7. Psychoanalysis -cont-
Ego – both in conscious and preconsicous
Rational and practical
Operates on a reality principle and mediates between the demands of the id and the superego
Ex: Your ego guides you to use most of the money for college tuition while setting some aside for a less-expensive, used car

8. Psychoanalysis -cont-
Freud’s psychosexual stages : id’s pleasure-seeking energies focus on distinct erogenous zones
Stage
Focus
Oral (0-18 mos)
Pleasure centers on the mouth – sucking, biting, chewing
Anal (18-36 mos)
Pleasure focuses on bowel and bladder elimination; coping with demands for control
Phallic (3-6 yrs)
Pleasure zone is the genitals; coping with incestuous sexual feelings; Oedipus complex – boy’s sexual desires for mother and jealousy toward father
Latency (6-puberty)
Dormant sexual feelings
Genital (puberty on)
Maturation of sexual interests

9. Psychoanalysis -cont-
Ego defense mechanisms – unconscious distortions of reality used by the ego to reduce anxiety
Repression – preventing anxiety-producing thoughts and painful feelings from entering consciousness
First and most basic form of anxiety reduction
Ex: Forgetting the details of what you said when you broke up with your boyfriend/girlfriend
Projection – transferring one’s own unacceptable thoughts, motives or personal qualities to others
Ex: You feel dislike for a coach and then insist she dislikes you
Denial – protecting oneself from anxiety-producing information by refusing to acknowledge it
Ex: Refusing to admit you have a drinking problem even though you drink every day

10. Reaction formation – thinking or behaving in a way that is the opposite of your own unacceptable thoughts and feelings
Ex: Taking care of a sick relative whom you actually hate
Displacement – redirecting anger and other unacceptable impulses toward a less-threatening person or object
Ex: Yelling at a teammate after being criticized by your coach
Rationalization – justifying one’s actions by using socially acceptable explanations
Ex: Dealing with the disappointment of being rejected by a college by saying you really didn’t want to attend such an elitist institution
Regression – retreating from a threatening situation by reverting to a pattern of behavior characteristic of an earlier stage of development
Ex: Throwing a temper tantrum when your parents refuse to extend your curfew

11. The Neo-Freudians Neo-Freudians accepted Freud’s basic ideas
Personality structure
Importance of unconscious
Shaping of personality n childhood
Dynamics of anxiety and defense mechanisms
Placed more emphasis on the conscious mind’s role in interpreting experience and coping with the environment
Placed less emphasis on sex and aggression

12. The Neo-Freudians: Alfred Adler
Believed infants and young children are helpless and dependent upon others
Produces an inferiority complex
We deal with inferiority in two ways
Compensating for real or imagined weakness by striving to improve themselves and by developing their talents and abilities
Overcompensating for their feelings of inferiority by developing a superiority complex in which they exaggerate their accomplishments and deny their limitations

13. The Neo-Freudians: Carl Jung
Stressed importance of unconscious process but distinguished between personal unconscious and collective unconscious
Personal conscious – experiences that are unique to each person
Collective unconscious – part of a person’s unconscious that is common to all human beings
Includes ideas like the wise grandfather, the innocent child, and the rebellious son

14. Assessing the Unconscious
Projective tests – use ambiguous images (inkblots and pictures of people) that are open to a number of interpretations
Subject’s response is a projection of his/her unconscious conflicts, motives and personality traits into the test images
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) – people view ambiguous pictures and then make up stories about them

15. Rorschach Inkblot Test – people describe what they see in a series of inkblots
Developed by Hermann Rorschach in 1921
Critics argue that projective tests are time-consuming, expensive and subjective

16. Criticisms of Freud and the Psychoanalytic Perspective
Developmental psychologists see development as lifelong, rather than fixed in childhood
Freud’s generalizations are based on evidence drawn from a small number of patients
Key concepts are impossible to measure empirically
Freud never claimed psychoanalysis was a predictive science
Theories often reflect a sexist view of women
It is most likely that high stress situations enhance rather than repress memories
There is evidence that we utilize defense mechanisms but these are motivated more by our need to protect our self-image

17. The Humanistic Perspective: Abraham Maslow
Proposed we are motivated by a hierarchy of needs
Stressed humans have a natural drive to find self-fulfillment and realize their potential

18. The Humanistic Perspective: Carl Jung
Believed people are innately good
Self-concept is the cornerstone of a person’s personality
Set of perceptions and beliefs that individuals have about their own nature and behavior
Matching self-concept and life experiences result in high self-esteem and better mental health
A growth-promoting climate required
Genuineness
Acceptance – offering unconditional positive regard – attitude of total acceptance toward another person
Empathy

19. The Humanistic Perspective
Assessment
Self-evaluations
Some see this as depersonalizing
Criticisms of the humanistic perspective
Concepts are vague and subjective
Emphasis on individualism can lead to self-indulgence, selfishness and erosion of moral restraint
It is naively optimistic

20. The Trait Perspective Early trait theories
Trait – relatively stable personal characteristic that can be used to describe how an individual consistently behaves
Gordon Allport
Used a comprehensive dictionary to develop a list of 4,504 adjectives that could be used to describe specific personality traits and arranged them in three levels:
Cardinal traits – dominate and shape a person’s outlook
Central traits – influence most of our behavior
Secondary traits – only seen in certain situations
Traits were confusing and overlapping
Raymond Cattell used factor analysis to reduce Allport’s list to 171 terms and later refined those to 16 personality factors
Factor analysis – statistical procedure that identifies clusters of correlated test items that tap basic components of intelligence

21. The Trait Perspective -cont-
Assessing traits
Personality inventories – longer questionnaires that cover a wide range of feelings and behaviors and are designed to assess several traits at once
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
Contains over 500 statements (“I am very tense on the job,” or “I wish I could do over some of the things I have done.”)
Is used to diagnose psychological disorders
Proponents argue that self-report inventories are standardized, objective and relatively inexpensive
Critics argue that respondents can lie

22. The Trait Perspective -cont-
The Big Five Factors
Openness
High scores = curious, open to experience, interested in cultural pursuits, sensitive to beauty
Low scores = conventional thinkers, prefer straightforward answers, regard arts and sciences with suspicion
Conscientiousness
High scores = self-disciplined, well-organized, motivated to achieve personal goals
Low scores = careless, impulsive and undependable

23. The Trait Perspective -cont-
Extroversion
High scores = sociable, talkative, enthusiastic, draw attention to themselves in groups
Low scores = reserved, quiet, prefer time alone
Agreeableness
High scores = trusting, cooperative, helpful
Low scores = suspicious, argumentative, uncooperative
Neuroticism
High scores = insecure, easily upset, anxious, moody
Low scores = calm, easy going, emotionally stable

25. The Trait Perspective -cont-
Current research shows Big Five traits are stable in adulthood
Our personality traits seem stable but the consistency of specific behaviors vary from one situation to the next
Can make personality test scores weak predictors of behavior
Our average behavior across situations is predictable

26. The Social-Cognitive Perspective
Social cognitive perspective – views behavior as influenced by the interaction between people’s traits and their social context
Proposed by Albert Bandura
Bandura also conducted research in self-efficacy – feelings of self-confidence or self-doubt that people bring to a specific situation
Reciprocal determinism – interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition and environment
Different people choose different environments
Out personalities shape how we interpret and react to events
Our personalities help create situations to which we react

27. The Social-Cognitive Perspective -cont-
Personal control – extent to which people perceive control over their environment rather than feeling helpless
External locus of control – believing most situations are governed by chance and lucky breaks
Internal locus of control – accepting personal responsibility for one’s life experiences
Achieve more in school and work, act more independently, enjoy better health, feel less depressed
Evaluating the social-cognitive perspective
Utilizes psychological research more than other perspectives
Critics argue it overemphasizes the situation at the expense of inner traits

28. Exploring the Self
Self – assumed to be the center of personality, and the organizer of our thoughts, feelings and actions
Spotlight effect – overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, performance and blunders
Self-serving bias – a readiness to perceive oneself favorably
People accept more responsibility for good deeds than bad
Most people see themselves as better than average

29. Culture and the Self
Individualism- giving priority to one’s own goals over group goals and defining one’s identity in terms of personal attributes rather than group identifications
Collectivism – giving priority to the goals of one’s group and defining one’s identity accordingly