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2. Personality
Module Overview

3. Acknowledgments
This presentation is based on and includes content derived from the following OER resource:
Psychology
An OpenStax book used for this course may be downloaded for free at:

4. Personality
Personality refers to the long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in specific ways.
Personality is what makes us unique individuals. Each person has an idiosyncratic pattern of enduring, long-term characteristics and a manner in which he or she interacts with other individuals and the world.
Our personalities are thought to be long-term, stable, and not easily changed.

5. Historical perspectives on personality
Personality has been studied for over 2,000 years, beginning with Hippocrates and continuing on with the Greek physician Galen.
The concept of personality was further developed by German physician Franz Gall in the 17th century, Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, and William Wundt in the 19th century.
Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic perspective of personality was the first comprehensive theory of personality, holding that personality is formed through early childhood experiences. Other perspectives of personality emerged in reaction to Freud’s psychodynamic perspective, including the learning, humanistic, biological trait, and cultural perspectives.

6. Id, ego, and superego
The unconscious id contains our most primitive drives or urges, and is present from birth. It directs impulses for hunger, thirst, and sex. The id operates on the “pleasure principle,” in which the id seeks immediate gratification.
The superego develops as a child interacts with others, learning the social rules for right and wrong. It acts as our conscience: it is our moral compass that tells us how we should behave.
The ego is the rational part of our personality, the part seen by others. Its job is to balance the demands of the id and superego in the context of reality.

7. Defense mechanisms
According to Freud, anxiety results from the ego’s inability to mediate the conflict between the id and superego, causing the ego to seek to restore balance through various protective measures known as defense mechanisms.
Defense mechanisms are unconscious protective behaviors that aim to reduce anxiety. Everyone uses defense mechanisms but Freud believed that overuse of them may be problematic.
There are several different types of defense mechanisms: denial, displacement, projection, rationalization, reaction, formation, regression, repression, and sublimation.

8. Psychosexual stages of personality development
According to Freud, the personality develops through a series of psychosexual stages. In each stage, pleasure focuses on a specific erogenous zone. Failure to resolve a stage can lead to fixation in that stage, resulting in the development of unhealthy personality traits.
Oral stage (0-1 year): Pleasure is focused on the mouth.
Anal stage (1-3 years): Pleasure is focused on bowel and bladder movements.
Phallic stage (3-6 years): The child is becoming aware of the body and recognizing the difference between boys and girls.
Genital stage (12 years plus): Sexual reawakening occurs as incestuous urges resurface.

9. Alfred Adler and inferiority complex
Alfred Adler was the first major theorist to break away from Freud. He founded the school of psychology called individual psychology, focusing on the drive to compensate for feelings of inferiority.
Adler proposed the concept of the inferiority complex, which refers to a person’s feeling that they lack worth and don’t measure up to the standards of others or of society.
Adler identified three fundamental social tasks that everyone must experience: occupational tasks (careers), societal tasks (friendship), and love tasks (finding an intimate partner for a long-term relationship).
One of Adler’s major contributions to personality psychology was the idea that birth order shapes personality.

10. Jung’s collective unconscious and archetypes
Carl Jung developed the theory of analytical psychology, a continuous learning process mainly occurring in the second half of life.
Jung focused on the collective unconscious, the universal version of the personal unconscious, holding mental patterns or memory traces common to all.
These ancestral memories, which Jung called archetypes, are represented by universal themes in various cultures, as expressed through literature, art, and dreams.
Jung also proposed two attitudes or approaches toward life: extroversion and introversion, considered Jung’s most important contributions to the field of personality psychology.

11. Karen Horney
Karen Horney was known for her disagreement with the Freudian idea that girls have penis envy and are jealous of male biological features. Horney felt that any jealousy is most likely culturally based, due to the greater privileges that males often have.
Overall, Horney’s theories focused on the role of unconscious anxiety, that normal growth can be blocked by basic anxiety stemming from needs not being met, such as childhood experiences of loneliness or isolation. Horney suggested that three styles of coping could be used to handle this anxiety: “moving towards people,” “moving against people,” and “moving away from people.”

12. Behavioral theorists and learning approaches
Learning approaches to personality focus only on the observable behavioral perspective. Behavioral theorists view personality as shaped and affected to a significant degree by reinforcement and consequences outside the organism. People behave in a consistent manner based on prior learning.
Skinner said that we demonstrate consistent behavior patterns because we have developed certain response tendencies.
Mischel focused on the role of personal goals in the self-regulation process.
Rotter proposed the concept of locus of control, which refers to our beliefs about the power we have over our lives. He said that people fall along a continuum between a purely internal and purely external locus of control.

13. Albert Bandura on personality
Albert Bandura, another learning approach theorist, said that environment can determine behavior but at the same time, people can influence the environment with their thoughts and behaviors, which is known as reciprocal determinism.
Bandura also emphasized how we learn from watching others. He believed this type of learning also plays a part in the development of our personality. Bandura discussed the concept of self-efficacy, which is our level of confidence in our own abilities.

14. Humanistic approaches to personality
Humanistic psychologists Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers greatly contributed to our understanding of the the self.
Their theories:
focused on the growth potential of healthy individuals
asserted that people strive to become self-actualized
emphasized the importance of free will and self determination
proposed that each individual desires to become the best person they can

15. Biological approaches to personality
Psychologists who favor the biological approach to personality believe that inherited predispositions, as well as physiological processes, can be used to explain differences in personalities.
A well-known study of the genetic basis for personality, the Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart, studied 350 pairs of twins reared together and apart. The study found that identical twins, whether raised together or apart, have very similar personalities.
These findings suggested the heritability of some personality traits. Heritability refers to the proportion of difference among people that is attributed to genetics.

16. Temperament and personality
Most contemporary psychologists believe temperament has a biological basis, due to its appearance very early in our lives.
Thomas and Chess found that babies could be categorized into one of three temperaments: easy, difficult, or slow to warm up.
Research suggests that there are two dimensions of temperament that are important parts of adult personalities, reactivity and self- regulation. Reactivity refers to how we respond to new or challenging environmental stimuli; self-regulation refers to our ability to control that response.
For example, one person may immediately respond to new stimuli with a high level of anxiety, while another barely notices it.

17. Trait theories of Raymond Cattell
Raymond Cattell, a trait theorist, believed that all people have certain traits, or characteristic ways of behaving. He identified 16 factors, or dimensions of personality: warmth, reasoning, emotional stability, dominance, liveliness, rule-consciousness, social boldness, sensitivity, vigilance, abstractedness, privateness, apprehension, openness to change, self-reliance, perfectionism, and tension.
Cattell developed a personality assessment based on these 16 factors, called the 16PF. Instead of a trait being present or absent, each dimension is scored on a continuum, from high to low.

18. Hans and Sybil Eysenck
Hans and Sybil Eysenck were personality theorists who focused on temperament, inborn, genetically based personality differences.
The Eysenck’s viewed people as having two specific personality dimensions: extroversion/introversion and neuroticism/stability.
Their theory divides people into four quadrants: melancholic, choleric, sanguine, and phlegmatic.
While Cattel’s 16-factor model was considered too broad, the Eysenck’s two-factor system has been criticized for being too narrow. This leads to another personality theory, called the five- factor model, that hits the middle ground; its five factors are referred to as the “big five” personality traits.

19. The Five-Factor Model
The five-factor model is the most popular theory in personality psychology today and the most accurate approximation of the basic trait dimensions. The five traits are: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
In the five-factor model of five traits, the following apply:
Each person has each trait, but they occur along a spectrum.
The five traits represent a range between two extremes.
Most people tend to lie midway along the continuum of each factor.
Traits are relatively stable over our lifespan.
Traits have been shown to exist across ethnicities, cultures, and ages.

20. Personality in collectivist and individualist cultures
Individualist and collectivist cultures place emphasis on different basic values.
Individualistic cultures tend to believe that independence, competition, and personal achievement are important. Individuals in Western nations such as the United States, England, and Australia score high on individualism.
Collectivist cultures value social harmony, respectfulness, and group needs over individual needs. Individuals who live in countries in Asia, Africa, and South America score high on collectivism.
These values influence personality. People in individualist cultures display more personally oriented personality traits, whereas people in collectivist cultures display more social personality traits.

21. Approaches to studying personality in a culture
There are three approaches that can be used to study personality in a cultural context:
The cultural comparative approach seeks to test Western ideas about personality in other cultures to determine whether they can be generalized and if they have cultural validity.
The indigenous approach uses personality assessment instruments that are based on constructs relevant to the culture being studied.
The cross-cultural approach uses a combined approach, which serves as a bridge between Western and indigenous psychology, as a way of understanding both universal and cultural variations in personality.

22. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
Personality tests are techniques of measuring personality. They are used to diagnose psychosocial problems, as well as to screen candidates for college and employment. There are two types of personality tests, self-report inventories and projective tests.
One of the most widely used personality inventories is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), first published in This test asks a series of true/false questions designed to provide a clinical profile of an individual.

23. Projective tests in personality assessment
Another method for assessment of personality is projective testing. This kind of test relies on projection, one of the defense mechanisms proposed by Freud, as a way to assess unconscious processes.
In this type of testing, a series of ambiguous cards is shown to the person being tested, who then is encouraged to project his feelings, impulses, and desires onto the cards by telling a story, interpreting an image, or completing a sentence.
Some examples of projective tests are the Rorschach Inkblot Test, the Thematic Apperception Test, the Contemporized-Themes Concerning Blacks test, the TEMAS (Tell-Me-A-Story), and the Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank.

24. How to study this module
Read the syllabus or schedule of assignments regularly.
Understand key terms; look up and define all unfamiliar words and terms.
Take notes on your readings, assigned media, and lectures.
Discuss topics with classmates.
Frequently review your notes. Make flow charts and outlines from your notes to help you study for assessments.
Complete all course assessments.

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