1. Chapter 15: Personality
AP Psychology

2. Personality Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory Humanistic Approach
Personality - an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting
Major personality theories
Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory
Humanistic Approach
Trait Theory
Social-Cognitive Perspective

3. Psychoanalytic Perspective of Personality
Sigmund Freud ( )
Austrian physician - treated patients with “neurotic” disorders (no physical cause)
Psychodynamic (psychoanalytic) theory – Theory of personality that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts
Expose and interpret unconscious tension through:
Free association
Dream analysis
“Freudian slips,”

4. Free Association Used by Freud to explore the unconscious mind
Person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind, no matter how trivial or embarrassing
Trace thoughts to a patient’s unconscious, painful memories (repressed memories?)

5. Free Association Hate Alone Time Grandma Life Heart Good Love
Influence
Impossible

6. Freudian Slip A Freudian slip, AKA parapraxis, “slip of the tongue”
Error in speech because of interference of unconscious, repressed, or hidden desire or conflict guided by the super-ego and the rules of correct behavior.
Modern psychoanalytic theory might explain this as simple misreadings or mishearings

7. Freudian Slips
“Good Morning Beheaded – Uh, I mean Beloved!”

8. Psychoanalytic Theory
Freud believed that the mind is mostly hidden
Unconscious – Beneath our conscious mind is a larger mind with mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories that we are unaware of
Freud believed nothing was accidental
Dreams and free associations were windows to the unconscious

9. Freud’s Model of the Mind
The mind is like an iceberg. It is mostly hidden, and below the surface lies the unconscious mind. The preconscious stores temporary memories.

10. Personality develops as a result of our efforts to resolve conflicts between our biological impulses and social restraints.

11. Freud’s Personality Structure - Id
Unconscious portion of personality
The Id unconsciously strives to satisfy basic sexual and aggressive drives
Operates on the pleasure principle
Demands immediate gratification – (infants, impulsive people)

12. Freud’s Personality Structure - Ego
The ego functions as the “executive” and mediates the demands of the id and superego.
Develops from id as parents, teachers, etc. place restrictions on id behavior
Operates on “reality principle”- Seeks to gratify demands of the id in realistic ways
Voice of conscience

13. Freud’s Personality Structure - Superego
The superego provides standards for judgment and for future aspirations.
Internalized rules and values of parents and society (develops ages 4-5)
Voice of conscience that forces ego to consider not only the real but the ideal (How you ought to behave)
As relentless, unreasonable in demands as id

15. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Personality develops during early childhood
Psychosexual stages – stages of development during which the id’s pleasure seeking energies focus on erogenous zones
Failure to resolve conflict at a stage results in fixation – unconscious preoccupation with area of pleasure associated with stage
Affects adult personality characteristics

16. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Oral Stage (1st year)
Mouth is center of pleasure at this stage
Fixation can come from weaning too early or late
Can result in adult characteristics like overeating, thumb sucking, smoking, childlike dependence (late weaning), “biting” sarcasm (early weaning)

17. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Anal Stage (2nd year)
Child’s ego develops to cope with parental/societal demands (toilet training clashes with freedom to “go” at will)
Fixation from toilet training too early or harsh → “anal retentiveness” or stinginess/excessive neatness (symbolically withholding feces)
Fixation from training too late/lax → “anal-expulsive” or disorganized, impulsive behavior (symbolically expelling feces)

18. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Phallic Stage (ages 3-5 years)
Focus shifts to genital area
Oedipus Complex - Boy has sexual desire for mother and wants to eliminate father’s competition for her attention
Fear of castration from father leads ego to repress desires and identify” with father (superego begins to develop)
Girls are believed to experience a similar Electra complex

19. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Latency Period (childhood to puberty)
Peaceful interval where sexual impulses remain in background
Focus on education, same-sex peer play, develop social skills
Genital Stage (adolescence on)
Sexual impulses reappear at conscious level with genitals as focus

20. Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Identification – Children eventually cope with threatening feelings, identify with, and try to become like the rival parent
“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”
Superego gains strength - gain parents’ values
Identify with same-sex parent - part of gender identity
Fixation – the person’s pleasure-seeking energies are locked in a given stage
Can lead to difficulty dealing with authority figures and an inability to maintain stable love relationships

22. Defense Mechanisms
Defense Mechanisms - Unconscious tactics used by the ego to protect against anxiety & guilt (from id & superego) by preventing material from surfacing or disguising it when it does, or distorting reality

23. Defense Mechanisms
Repression – banishing anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, repressed urges slip out in dreams or slip-ups
Regression – an individual faced with anxiety retreats to a more infantile psychosexual stage, where some psychic energy remains fixated (thumb sucking, clinging to mommy)

24. Defense Mechanisms
Projection – People disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others (“He doesn’t trust me” really means “I don’t trust him”)
Rationalization – offers self-justification explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions. (“I drink with my friends” not “I’m an alcoholic.” “I’m a social smoker”)
Sublimation – People channel their unacceptable impulses into socially approved activities (paint or play a sport to channel your unconscious desires)

25. Defense Mechanisms
Displacement – Shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person; redirecting anger toward a safer outlet. (Kick the dog instead of yelling at your wife or child)

26. Defense Mechanisms
Denial – People refuse to believe or even perceive painful realities. (Deny your wife is cheating on you)
Reaction Formation – the ego unconsciously switches unacceptable impulses to their opposite. People may express feelings that are opposite of their unconscious feelings. (”I love dad” instead of “I hate dad”)
All of these defense mechanisms function independently and unconsciously.

27. Neo-Freudian & Psychodynamic Theorists
Followers of Freud who eventually moved away from some of his theories and ideas
Accept Freud’s basic ideas of:
• Personality
• Unconscious
• Importance of childhood
• Defense mechanisms.
• Placed more emphasis on:
• Conscious mind
• Doubted sex & aggression were that big

28. Neo-Freudians – Alfred Adler
Social, not sexual tensions, crucial for personality development
Most fundamental motive is striving for superiority
Can’t get rid of feelings of inferiority = Inferiority Complex & Compensation
People may hide feelings of inferiority by flaunting superficial indicators of superiority such as wealth, status, good looks

29. Neo-Freudians – Carl Jung
Disagree with social tensions or Freud’s role of the unconscious
Collective unconscious – shared sense of universal experiences common to all human beings (unaware of these)
Organized into archetypes – universal concepts that influence our expectations, perceptions, & behavior (Ex. Mother as a symbol for nurturing)
Introduced personality types (no stages) –
Introversion – tendency to reflect on one’s own ability
Extraversion – tendency to focus on the social world

30. Neo-Freudians – Karen Horney
Disagreed with Freud’s male-dominated theory
Culture (social factors) was the main force in the formation of personality, not biological factors
Women envy men’s superior status, not their anatomy
Childhood anxiety leads to need for love & security (necessary for the formation of a healthy personality)

31. Assessing the Unconscious Mind
Projective Tests – provide ambiguous stimuli designed to reveal the hidden unconscious mind
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)– subjects express inner feelings & interests through the stories they make up about ambiguous scenes.
Rorschach Inkblot Test - uses a set of 10 inkblots to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of the blots (most widely used)

32. Explain the following:
1. What has led up to the event shown
2. What is happening at the moment
3. What the characters are feeling and thinking
4. What the outcome of the story was

33. Explain the following:
1. What has led up to the event shown
2. What is happening at the moment
3. What the characters are feeling and thinking
4. What the outcome of the story was

36. Evaluating the Psychoanalytic Perspective
No empirical way to study the origins and the effects of the unconscious
Doubt gender identity comes from overcoming the Oedipus complex at 5 or 6
Freud overestimated parental influence & underestimated peer influence
• Freud typically used case studies, which aren’t as reliable as experimentation
High stress enhances memory – powerful negative emotional events are remembered well
Freudian slips are just language mistakes – competition between similar verbal choices in our memory network

37. Humanistic Perspective
Explains personality by describing how people differ in terms of self-awareness, creativity, decision-making & responsibility
Believe that people have an innate drive that promotes & directs growth and achieving their potential
Focused on “healthy people” rather than troubled clinical cases like Freud.

38. Abraham Maslow – Self-Actualization
Believed that we are motivated by a hierarchy of needs
We ultimately seek self-actualization – the process of fulfilling our potential

39. Abraham Maslow – Self-Actualization
Studied people who were
Healthy, creative
Notable for their rich and productive lives (Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt)
These people shared certain characteristics:
Self-aware
Self-accepting
Loving & caring
Open & spontaneous
Problem-centered
Not worried about what others think
Few deep relationships
Uneasy about cruelty and meanness

40. Carl Rogers – Person-Centered Perspective
People are basically good and can reach self-actualization unless in environment that inhibits growth.
Growth is promoted by having an environment with the following three qualities:
Genuineness
Acceptance
Empathy

41. Carl Rogers – Person-Centered Perspective
Genuineness - Being open with one’s feelings & being transparent and self-disclosing.
Accepting - Unconditional Positive Regard = total acceptance toward another person.
Empathic - Sharing and mirroring our feelings
We are able to grow if surrounded by people with these qualities

42. Humanistic Perspective
Central feature of personality is one’s self-concept – all the thoughts and feeling we have in response to the question, “Who am I?”
If our self-concept is positive, we tend to perceive the world as positive.
If it is negative, in our own eyes, we fall short of our ideal self.
Assessing a person’s sense of self (questionnaire) – Who do you ideally want to be vs. who you actually are?
If ideal and actual are nearly alike = positive self-concept

43. Evaluating the Humanistic Perspective
Proponents:
Key to happiness and success: positive self-concept
Acceptance and empathy nurture positive feelings
People are basically good and can improve
Critics:
Research is vague & subjective (Others might not share the values that Maslow & Rogers find to be positive).
Can lead to self-indulgence, selfishness, & erosion of moral restraints
Fails to consider the capacity for evil.

44. Trait Perspective – Gordon Allport
Ever taken an online personality test? That is the trait perspective!
Allport – one of the 1st trait researchers
Describe personality rather than explain it.
Sought to describe personality in terms of fundamental traits or identifiable behavior patterns
Traits = Internal characteristics that are stable, consistent over time, and displayed through mulutiple situations

45. Exploring Traits
There are over 18,000 words in a dictionary to describe people, so how do we cerate a list of manageable traits we can use to describe personality? (Allport counted them!)

46. Trait Perspective –
Individual Traits
Cardinal Trait – traits that define someone’s personality so well that the person exemplifies that trait in everything they do
Very rare – Ex. Mother Theresa – kindness & compassion
Central traits (source traits) – most people have – are easily recognized & have a strong influence on personality (caring)
Secondary (surface traits) –more specific to certain situations and change over time, not consistent (competitive)

47. Factor Analysis – Raymond Cattell
Based his research on Allport’s work
Factor Analysis – statistical method that analyzed multiple variables that are correlated and identifies how those correlations connect with each other
Allowed Cattell to find overarching qualities that connect numerous traits into clusters, reducing the number of traits.

48. Raymond Cattell’s 16 Source Traits
Came up with 2 overarching types of traits:
Surface Traits - observable behaviors
16 Source Traits – fundamental characteristics that drive personality & result in the observable surface traits
Organized the source traits into 16 pairs, each pair forming a continuum & developed a test called the 16 Personality Factor (PF) Psychometric Questionnaire to measure them

50. Hans & Sybil Eysenk
Also used Factor Analysis to analyze traits
Arrived at 3 genetically-influenced dimensions of personality (temperaments)
Introversion vs Extroversion – needing either more external stimuli or less
Neuroticism vs Stability – degree of emotional stability
Psychoticism vs Socialism – the degree of aggression or noncomformity

51. Eysenk Model of Personality

52. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
Personality test taken by 2 million people a year
Sorts people into 16 basic personality types based on Carl Jung‘s theories
Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I): Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world?
Sensing (S) or Intuition (N): Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning?
Thinking (T) or Feeling (F): When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency or first look at the people and special circumstances?
Judging (J) or Perceiving (P): In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options?

53. Assessing Traits
Personality Inventory - a questionnaire on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors.
Used to assess several personality traits at once.
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) - Assesses abnormal personality traits rather than normal personality traits (most extensively researched & widely used)
Empirically Derived Test - created by determining which test items discriminate between different groups of people on some variable.
Objective (Scored by a computer) – but doesn’t guarantee validity
People can lie

54. The Big-Five Model
Paul Costa & Robert McCrae felt that Raymond Cattell identified too many traits and Hans Eysenck too few
Currently the most widely accepted model of traits
Used factor analysis to develop five central source traits
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
Research has shown these traits to be stable in adulthood, influenced by genetics, and a predictor of behavior.

56. Evaluation of Trait Theory
Trait theory is excellent at labeling behavior, but does not explain why a person acts a certain way
Does not also consider how situations affect a person’s personality
The Big-Five Model is widely used but still does not explain personality

57. Social-Cognitive Perspective
Albert Bandura - views personality as an interaction of our traits with our situations
Social – We learn our behaviors through conditioning, or observing and modeling. (How we interact with our environment)
Cognitive – What we think about our situations affects our behavior

58. Reciprocal Determinism – the interacting influences of behavior, internal cognition, & environment

59. Reciprocal Influences
Different people choose different environments
Your friends, your media - you chose them and then they in turn help shape you
Our personalities shape how we interpret and react to events
Anxious people react to situations differently than calm people
Our personalities help to create situations to which we react
How we view and treat people influences how they treat us
We are both the products and the architects of our environment

61. Personal Control
Whether we control the environment or the environment controls us
External locus of control (Julian Rotter) – perception that chance or outside forces beyond our personal control determine our fate
Internal locus of control – perception that we can control our own fate

62. Personal Control
Self-control – the ability to control impulses and delay gratification
Predicts good adjustment
Better grades
Social success
Benefits of having an internal locus of control:
Achieve more in school
Act more independently
Enjoy better health
Feel less depressed

63. Learned Helplessness vs Personal Control
“Perceived control” is basic to human functioning
Studies show that people thrive when they have empowerment and personal freedom
Learned helplessness – (Seligman) passive resignation – when animals or people experience no control over repeated bad events, they feel helpless, hopeless, and depressed
Drawback – excess freedom can also contribute to decreasing life satisfaction

64. Learned Helplessness

65. Optimism vs Pessimism
Attributional style – your way of explaining positive or negative events
Realistic positive expectations can fuel success
Being optimistic can be beneficial to your health
Realistic anxiety over possible failures can lead to efforts to avoid a negative outcome
Excessive optimism can blind us to real tasks and promote “an unrealistic optimism about future life events”
People are most overconfident when most incompetent (Dunning-Kruger Effect)

66. Exploring the Self The self you hope to become
The Self – the center of personality, organizer of our thoughts, feelings, & actions
Can you have several possible selves? Consider…
The self you hope to become
The self you fear you will become
The self you think you are to your friends
The self you think you are to your family
The self you are at school

67. Exploring the Self
Our self-focused perspective can motivate us or lead us to presume that others are noticing and evaluating us
Spotlight effect - Research studies show how we overestimate our concern that others evaluate our appearance, performance, and blunders -
Fewer people notice what we presume

68. Benefits of Self-Esteem
Self-esteem – one’s feelings of high or low self-worth
A successful life results from a healthy self-image
People with high self-esteem…
Feel good about themselves
Have fewer sleepless nights
Succumb less easily to pressure to conform
Are more persistent at difficult tasks
Are less shy and lonely
When self-esteem is deflated, we view ourselves and others critically; if you’re down on yourself, you’re down on others

69. Self-Serving Bias Research findings:
Most of us have decent self-esteem
Self-Serving Bias – our readiness to perceive ourselves favorably
Research findings:
People accept more responsibility for good deeds than for bad
Most people see themselves as better than average
People accept more responsibility for successes than for failures
Blame unfavorable events or behaviors on external factors

70. Evaluating the Social-Cognitive Approach
One advantage is that this approach includes cognitive, behavioral, and environmental factors
Critics say that social-cognitive psychologists pays too much attention to the situation and not enough attention to the individual, inner traits, unconscious mind, emotions, and genetics