1. S UMMER AT THE A CADEMY Introduction to Psychology Days 7 & 8: Personality Ms. Mary-Liz Fuhrman

2. * P ERSONALITY * Chapter 15 pp 595-637

3. C H 15: P ERSONALITY O VERVIEW Psychoanalytic Perspective Humanistic Perspective Trait Perspective Social-Cognitive Perspective Exploring the Self

4. W HAT IS PERSONALITY ? Q: How do you describe your own personality? Personality: an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting Focus is on individual not general human nature Explores: Traits Uniqueness Personal control Sense of self

5. 4 P ERSPECTIVES OF P ERSONALITY Psychoanalytic theory emphasizes the unconscious and irrational aspects of personality. Humanistic theory draws attention to the concept of self and to human potential for healthy growth. Trait theory led to advances in techniques for evaluating and describing personality. The social-cognitive perspective emphasizes the effects of our interactions with the environment Contributions & short-comings

6. P SYCHOANALYTIC P ERSPECTIVE Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austria Medical Doctor: nervous disorders/neurology Developed theory based on evaluations of self and patients: Unconscious region of the mind Psychosexual stages Defense mechanisms

7. P SYCHOANALYTIC P ERSPECTIVE Exploring the Unconscious Free Association: person relaxes and says whatever comes to mind Psychoanalysis: Freud’s theory of personality and associated techniques that attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts seek to expose and interpret unconscious tensions Unconscious: FREUD: reservoir of unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories TODAY: info processing of which we are unaware

8. P SYCHOANALYTIC P ERSPECTIVE Personality Structure “Iceberg” Id: pleasure principle—immediate gratification; strives to satisfy sexual and aggressive drives Ego: reality principle—satisfying the id’s desires realistically; mediates between the id and superego; mostly conscious Superego: internalized ideals and provides standards for judgments

10. P SYCHOANALYTIC P ERSPECTIVE Personality Development FREUD’S PSYCHOSEXUAL STAGES Oral (birth-18 months) Pleasure centers on mouth --Sucking, biting, chewing Anal (18-36 months) Pleasure focuses on the bowel and bladder elimination --coping with demands for control Phallic (3-6 years) Pleasure zone is genitals --coping with incestuous sexual feelings Latency (6 to puberty) Dormant sexual feelings --expanding social contacts Genital (puberty -on) Maturation of sexual interests --exploring intimate relationships

11. P SYCHOANALYTIC P ERSPECTIVE Oedipus Complex: boy’s sexual desires toward his mother and feelings of jealousy and hatred for the rival father Electra Complex Identification: children incorporate their parents’ values into their developing superegos Fixation: lingering focus of pleasure-seeking energies at an earlier psychosexual stage, where conflicts were not resolved

12. P SYCHOANALYTIC P ERSPECTIVE Defense Mechanisms Ego’s protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality Repression: *Basic defense mechanism; banishes anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, & memories ** Dreams and “Slips-Of-The-Tongue” Regression: When faced w/ anxiety, retreat to an earlier psychosexual stage where some energy remains fixated Reaction Formation: unconsciously switching unacceptable impulses into their opposites; express feelings opposite of anxiety-arousing unconscious feelings

13. P SYCHOANALYTIC P ERSPECTIVE Defense Mechanisms Cont’d Projection: people disguise their own threatening impulses by attributing them to others ex: He doesn’t love me ~~ I don’t love him Rationalization: offers self-justifying explanations in place of the real, more threatening, unconscious reasons for one’s actions ex: well I had to check his text messages because… Displacement: shifts sexual or aggressive impulses toward a more acceptable or less threatening object or person; redirecting anger toward a safer outlet ex: yelling at your boyfriend when you are angry w/ your parents

14. T HE H UMANISTIC P ERSPECTIVE 1960s Unhappy w/ Freud and Skinner Freud’s focus was on “sick” people Humanistic: focus on how healthy people strive for self-determination and self-realization Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers

15. T HE H UMANISTIC P ERSPECTIVE Abraham Maslow’s Self-Actualizing Person Heirarchy of Needs pyramid of human needs, beginning at the base w/ physiological needs that must first be satisfied before moving up to psychological needs Goal: Self-Actualization fulfilling one’s potential

17. T HE H UMANISTIC P ERSPECTIVE Maslow studied healthy, creative people Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Eleanor Roosevelt Self-aware, self-accepting, open and spontaneous, loving and caring, not paralyzed by other’s opinions Interests were problem-centered not self- centered

18. T HE H UMANISTIC P ERSPECTIVE E VALUATING THE H UMANISTIC P ERSPECTIVE PROS Influenced counseling, education, child-rearing, and management strategies Today’s popular psych: “Positive Self-Concept is the key to happiness and success” Hierarchy of Needs relates to Business CONS Vague, subjective Assumptions are too optimistic Individualization can lead to self-indulgent, selfish behaviors

19. T HE H UMANISTIC P ERSPECTIVE ELIZABETH KUBLER-ROSS: S TAGES OF G RIEVING Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance

20. T HE T RAIT P ERSPECTIVE stable and enduring behavior patterns Traits: a characteristic pattern of behavior or a disposition to feel and act, as assessed by self- report inventories and peer reports Gordon Allport (1920s) Less explaining; more describing “Types” of personalities Myers-Briggs Type Indicator sorts people according to Jung’s personality types Extroverted/Introverted, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perceiving

22. T HE T RAIT P ERSPECTIVE Assessing Traits Personality Inventories: questionnaire (often t/f or agree/disagree) on which people respont to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors; assesses selected personality traits Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI): the most widely researched and clinically used personality test. Originally designed to identify emotional disorders.

23. The Big 5 Factors Conscientiousness Organized/disorganized, careful/careless, disciplined/impulsive Agreeableness Soft-hearted/ruthless, trusting/suspicious, helpful/uncooperative Neuroticism (emotional stability v. unstability) Calm/anxious, secure/insecure, self-satisfied/self-pitying Openness Imaginative/practical, variety/routine, independent/conforming Extraversion Sociable/retiring, fun-loving/sober, affectionate/reserved T HE T RAIT P ERSPECTIVE

24. How stable are these traits? Conscientiousness increases in 20s Agreeableness increases in 30s How heritable are they? About 50% per dimension How well do they apply to other cultures? Well supported for other cultures Do the Big Five traits predict other personal attributes? Yes! Morning people (conscientious) v. night owls (extraverted) Marital satisfaction decreases with low agreeableness, stability, and openness

25. T HE T RAIT P ERSPECTIVE Evaluating The Trait Perspective The person-situation controversy Effects of interaction w/ the environment Personality traits persist over time and situations Specific behaviors are less consistent Consistency of Expressive Style Unfamiliar/Formal situations—wait for social cues Familiar/Informal (friends)– more comfortable Expressiveness is relatively, consistent Even modest outgoing people are more expressive than inhibited people at their peek

26. T HE S OCIAL -C OGNITIVE P ERSPECTIVE Views behavior as influenced by interaction between persons and their social context Albert Bandura Social: Learn behaviors through conditioning or by observing others and modeling our behavior after theirs Cognitive: What we think about our situations affects our behavior Interaction: How we interpret and respond to external events.

27. T HE S OCIAL -C OGNITIVE P ERSPECTIVE Reciprocal Influences Reciprocal Determinism: the interacting influences between personality and environmental factors *Different people choose different environments: friends, school, jobs– you choose the environment that shapes you *Personalities shape how we interpret and react to events anxious– notice threatening events more *Personalities help create situations to which we react how we view and treat people influences how they treat us

28. S OCIAL -C OGNITIVE P ERSPECTIVE Personal Control Def: Our sense of controlling our environment rather than feeling helpless Internal Locus of Control: we control our own fate External Locus of Control: fate is determined for us Learned Helplessness: the more traumatic events faced, the more helpless, hopeless, and depressed we become

30. E VALUATING THE S OCIAL -C OGNITIVE P ERSPECTIVE PROS More focus on cognition and learning Reminds us that the situation does impact individuals CONS Too much focus on situation and not traits Emotions?

31. E XPLORING T HE S ELF Self is Center of our personality Includes Possible self & feared self Spotlight Effect: overestimating others’ noticing and evaluating our appearance, mistakes, and performance

32. E XPLORING T HE S ELF Benefits of Self-Esteem Self-Esteem: one’s feelings of high or low self-worth Lower self-esteem– more personal problems Why? Success leads to higher self esteem self-esteem reflects reality Gauges our relationships w/ others

33. E XPLORING THE S ELF Self Serving Bias Def: A readiness to perceive oneself favorably Accept more responsibility for good deeds and success than for bad deeds and failures Most people see themselves as above average